Azerbaijan reports three people dead with bird flu

BAKU, Mar 14 (Reuters) Azerbaijan's Health Ministry said on Monday three people who died earlier this month had been infected with bird flu in the country's first case in humans.

''Initial analysis from the laboratory shows that the three people who died did so as a result of bird flu,'' Health Ministry spokeswoman Samaya Mamedova said.

The infected people were thought to be members of a family from the Salyan region, in southern Azerbaijan near the Caspian Sea coast, who were hospitalised early in March with suspected bird flu. Four of them died.

The spokeswoman said the results came from a mobile laboratory that was brought into the country from Cairo on Monday.

There was no word on the results of tests that Azerbaijan sent off to a laboratory in Britain approved by the World Health Organisation.

The mobile laboratory tests showed that one of the dead had not been infected with bird flu, the Health Ministry spokeswoman said. She said a further six people from the same area who were in hospital with suspected bird flu were not infected.

Azerbaijan is an eastern neighbour of Turkey, which has also had an outbreak of bird flu in humans. The country also borders Russia, Iran, Georgia and Armenia.

Azerbaijan confirmed its first case of bird flu in migratory birds at the start of February.

Dead birds on the Absheron peninsula near the capital, Baku, and in the Masalla region, near Iran, were found to have the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease.

Reuters SK VP0628