DAKAR, 8 December (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

NIGERIA: Tracking bird flu

COTE D IVOIRE: Suspicion and denial over bird flu

COTE D IVOIRE: Police patrol streets after protests

WEST AFRICA: Compensation needed after culling

SENEGAL: Attacks in Casamance despite peace move

WEST AFRICA: World's poorest region needs $300m in aid this year – UN

WEST AFRICA: Communities choose health over tradition

LIBERIA: Health, justice lacking for abused women

NIGERIA: Tracking bird flu

In the small, dusty village of Birnin Yero all of Ibrahim Alkeri's eight chickens have died in the past month.

Some of his neighbours have also lost their fowl. It could be a seasonal flu that often affects birds during the cool, dry months, some villagers say. Others fear the return of the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus that decimated their poultry stock 11 months ago.

Birnin Yero is next to Sambawa Farms in northern Kaduna State where Africa's first case of bird flu was discovered early this year. Across Africa, bird flu has hit Nigeria, the continent's most populous country, hardest. It has also been found in several other African countries, including Niger, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti.

ww.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56677 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=NIGERIA

COTE D IVOIRE: Suspicion and denial over bird flu

Poultry breeders in Cote d'Ivoire have accused the government of inventing two recent cases of bird flu in an attempt to slow down local production and cash in on pricier imported birds ahead of the Christian and Muslim holiday season.

"Here nobody really believes in bird flu," said Ibrahim Bakayoko, manager of one of the dozen poultry farms around Abatta, 30 km northeast of the main city, Abidjan. "It is only in the press that we were informed of the discovery of the illness in our area. Health authorities arrived here and all of the poultry farmers expressed our unhappiness. It strongly resembles a plot to slow down our production."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56657 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE

COTE D IVOIRE: Police patrol streets after protests

Anti-government protests have intensified in recent days and the most recent left two people dead with no apparent end in sight to a political impasse that has pitted the president against his prime minister.

The country was calm on Wednesday but police maintained street patrols. Thousands of protesters turned out in San-Pedro, Divo, Tanda, Bouafle and Agnibilekrou on Tuesday to call on President Laurent Gbagbo to annul recent decrees reinstating officials blamed for a toxic waste scandal in September. Protest organisers put the number of demonstrators at 50,000 while police put the figure at 10,000.

Of the two people killed on Tuesday, one died from a gunshot wound and the other died after police fired teargas to disperse the demonstrators, according to political opposition leaders.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56645 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE

WEST AFRICA: Compensation needed after culling

To stop deadly strains of bird flu from mutating and infecting humans, millions of infected poultry will have to be culled as soon as an outbreak is reported and farmers must be compensated, agriculture specialists said on Wednesday.

"Our biggest challenge is the poor, small-scale farmers," Christopher Delgado, a World Bank agricultural economist, told IRIN at an international conference on bird flu that opened in Bamako in Wednesday.

More than a 100 countries and international organisations are represented at the three-day conference where experts exchange information and government ministers agree on policies and funding objectives. Delgado led an interagency task force that wrote a report for the conference on controling the spread of bird flu in developing countries through compensation.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56643 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=WEST_AFRICA

SENEGAL: Attacks in Casamance despite peace move

One person was dead on Tuesday following an armed attack on vehicles in the southern Casamance region just over two weeks after President Abdoulaye Wade asked local elders to help end the rebellion.

About 20 men on Monday night ambushed five vehicles on a road 80 km north of the regional capital, Ziguinchor, and robbed the occupants, hospital sources said. One of the passengers died and five others were injured.

Thousands of people have crossed the border into neighbouring Gambia in recent months to escape fighting between the rebels and government troops. Others have fled after seeing the army, fearing skirmishes were imminent.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56631 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=SENEGAL

WEST AFRICA: World's poorest region needs $300m in aid this year – UN

The United Nations and relief NGOs in West Africa have jointly asked donors for US $309 million in aid for 2007 to keep humanitarian projects rolling in the region's 16 poorest countries.

The appeal is made annually and covers the requirements for the agriculture, food, water, health and human rights projects overseen by the UN and all its partners.

The Consolidated Annual Appeal (CAP) covers the needs of the West African region, where 250 million people live in the landlocked and dirt poor countries that form the arid Sahel region, as well as coastal Liberia, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, which are emerging from conflict, and the politically unstable Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56630 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=WEST_AFRICA

WEST AFRICA: Communities choose health over tradition

About 150 communities in Guinea on Sunday collectively abandoned the practice of female genital cutting - a landmark declaration in a country where more than 97 percent of women undergo the ritual, the event's organisers said on Monday.

Delegations led by women from each village converged on the central Guinean town of Lalya to speak about genital excision and participate in the declaration. All of Guinea's ethnic groups practice genital cutting, despite a law that forbids it.

The Senegal-based NGO Tostan organised the Guinea declaration after working with communities to show how traditional practices such as genital cutting are harming individuals and communities.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56613 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=WEST_AFRICA

LIBERIA: Health, justice lacking for abused women

"It was a shock for me when I was raped," the lithe 15-year-old girl said with tears running down her face. "The man called and asked me to help him wash his clothes. After doing the washing, he told me to clean up his bedroom and while doing that he jumped on me, tore off my clothes and began raping me."

Explaining her ordeal to IRIN, the girl, who did not want to be named or identified in any way, said the man raped her four months ago. The case was reported to the local court, but has yet to be heard.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56612 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=LIBERIA

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