Nigeria to test two children for bird flu

Nigerian health workers are to test two children who fell sick on their father's poultry farm to find out if they have been infected with bird flu, a state official said Thursday.

"We have received a complaint ... from a farmer that the doves, geese and chickens he is raising are dying rapidly and his two kids are sick. They are coughing blood," said Sa'idu Baba Chori, a Kaduna State agriculture official.

"We're now going there to take samples of the birds for laboratory analysis. The kids will also be examined to diagnose the nature of their ailment," he told reporters outside Sambawa Farm, in northern Nigeria.

The new suspected outbreak which may have affected the children is nearby, on the outskirts of the city of Kaduna, he said.

Sambawa is one of four Nigerian farms now known to have been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which can be transmitted from birds to humans and has killed 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 1997.

On Wednesday, Nigerian officials confirmed that they had found the first case of the disease in Africa after 45,000 chickens fell sick and died in Sambawa. They are putting measures in place to contain the outbreak.