Chaos in Iraq plagues effort to stop bird flu

... Officials say containing the spread of bird flu in Iraq may be beyond the capabilities of health authorities in some parts of the country, particularly the volatile Anbar province.

"Iraq is a special case and has its unique challenges that are especially difficult, obviously because it is a complex environment," World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson said from neighboring Jordan.

So far, Iraq's only confirmed human case is a 15-year-old girl who died Jan. 17 in the northern Kurdistan region, Iraq's most stable area with a functioning local administration.

But Iraq has been slow to send samples of other suspect cases -- including the girl's uncle, who died Jan. 27 -- to WHO-certified laboratories in London and Cairo, Egypt, despite saying for more than a week that the shipment had been delivered.

"We didn't have the containers to ship the samples and without them, they wouldn't have been accepted for shipment," Dr. Ibtisam Aziz Ali, spokeswoman for a government committee handling the bird flu crisis, acknowledged Thursday.