Lagos, Nigeria ? Africa’s first outbreak of the deadly bird flu virus was reported Wednesday in a large commercial farm in Nigeria that raised chickens, geese and ostriches, and 46,000 birds were slaughtered.

International health officials called for help to prevent the spread of the disease on the world’s poorest continent, where governments are ill-equipped to combat it.

Nigeria said the outbreak was on a farm in Jaji, a village in the northern state of Kaduna. Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello told reporters the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus was detected in samples taken Jan. 16 from birds on the farm.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 130 million people, said it would work aggressively to halt the flow of any sick birds to unaffected zones. But farmers accused the government of being slow to respond.

Alex Thiermann, an expert with the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, said it was not known how the virus entered Nigeria, but migratory waterfowl likely played a role because the country is on a “major flyway.”

People watch as a chicken makes its way through a yard in Lagos, Nigeria. A strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that is highly capable of causing the disease has been found on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria, the first reported case in Africa.

No cases of H5N1 bird flu have been reported elsewhere in Africa, and the outbreak appears to be restricted to birds, he said.

“The significance is that it’s a completely new continent that we need to be looking at,” Thiermann said.

Sub-Saharan Africa, with about 600 million of the world’s poorest people, is particularly ill-suited to deal with a major health crisis. With weak and impoverished government institutions in regions where many people keep chickens for food, experts say any mass killings – often a first step in controlling bird flu – will be difficult to pull off.

China, meanwhile, announced another human case of the disease – a 26-year-old woman – bringing to at least 11 the number of people in China who have been infected. Two have died.

And in Iraq, authorities are investigating whether a teenage pigeon seller in the southern part of the country died of the virus. A 15-year-old girl in the northern part of Iraq, near the Turkish border, died of bird flu on Jan. 17. The girl’s uncle died Jan. 27, and health authorities are waiting to learn if he also contracted bird flu.

The World Health Organization said Nigeria has about 140 million poultry and the country’s overtaxed veterinary services need international help. It called on other African countries to act quickly against any suspected outbreaks.

Bird flu began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003, forcing the slaughter of more than 100 million birds and jumping to humans. WHO has confirmed 88 deaths from bird flu out of a total of 165 cases of human infection. Almost all the cases have been in Asia, but the disease recently has been detected in Europe and the Middle East.

A laboratory in Padua, Italy, identified the H5N1 strain in the Nigerian birds, the World Organization for Animal Health said. It said further tests were being carried out to determine how closely the Nigerian strain matched the H5N1 strain detected elsewhere in the world.

The Italian Health Ministry said the bird flu strain is very similar to those found in Siberia and Mongolia.