Iraq yesterday reported a third human death which health officials believe was caused by bird flu, as France, Germany, Romania and Serbia recorded more cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease.
Iraqi officials said the woman who died lived near Nassiriya, in the south. More tests were being carried out on human flu sufferers in Baghdad, and also in Cairo, Egypt.
Two fatal cases of human bird flu in Iraq last month, in a teenage girl and her uncle, were previously confirmed in the northern province of Sulaimaniya. The latest death has yet to be confirmed by the World Health Organisation.
France reported 11 new cases of H5N1 in wild birds yesterday in an area already hit by the lethal virus, raising to 29 the total number of cases found among wild birds in the southeastern Ain region.
Dozens of countries have banned poultry imports from France after the H5N1 strain was found on a turkey farm last week in Ain, the first infection of the virus in commercial EU poultry stocks.
In the US, the Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said it was "just a matter of time" before wild birds and possibly poultry flocks in America contracted H5N1.
Japanese researchers said they had developed a new way of producing the drug Tamiflu - considered one of the best defences against bird flu in humans - that does not rely on natural ingredients and may help ensure more stable supplies.
However, here, Dr Joe Barry of the Irish Medical Organisation attacked the "slap-dash approach" which he said was being adopted by the Department of Health to the imminent arrival of bird flu.
Its arrival had been well signalled, he said.
He said national emergency planning documents were predicated on a 24-hour public health medicine service being available. But no such service existed despite numerous calls from the IMO, for more than 10 years, to agree a system with the current and previous governments.
Last night a Health Service Executive spokesman said there was a plan in place to cope with avian flu and a pandemic, but the public health service doctors did not want to take part.
"They have been offered €500 per week to be on call and will be paid that even if nothing happens and they have refused it," said the spokesman.