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Child tested for bird flu dies in Turkey
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-01-02 10:36
ANKARA (Reuters) - A child being tested for possible avian influenza died in
a Turkish hospital on Sunday, but doctors said there was no evidence he had
fallen victim to the deadly disease which has killed more than 70 people in
Asia.
A veterinary worker
holds poultry as locals stand next to him in Dogubayazit, a remote, rural
area near Turkey's border with Armenia January 1, 2006.
[Reuters] | Five other people from the same region of eastern Turkey, four of them
children, are undergoing tests in Van hospital near the Iranian border after
exhibiting flu symptoms and failing to react to antibiotics.
"Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, 14, died despite all our efforts to save him," the head
doctor at the Van hospital, Huseyin Avni Sahin, told NTV commercial television,
adding that the cause of his death was not yet known.
He said a team of experts from the capital Ankara would travel to the region
on Monday to investigate.
Turkey, which lies on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread
the virus, has suffered two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among
poultry in the past three months, the latest last week in the eastern province
of Igdir.
No humans are known to have contracted the disease in Turkey or Europe,
though veterinary experts across the continent have been on alert culling birds
and taking other precautionary measures since October outbreaks in Turkey and
Romania.
In the Igdir outbreak, the strain has been identified as the H5 type but
authorities are conducting further tests to see whether it is the deadly H5N1
strain that has killed scores of people in east Asia since 2003 and forced the
slaughter of millions of birds.
Turkey has sent samples from Igdir to the World Health Organization and the
European Union for more tests.
All six of the Van patients, including the dead boy, are from the district of
Dogubayazit, a remote, rural area where farming and animal husbandry are the
main form of livelihood.
CULLING OF BIRDS
The Anatolia state news agency quoted local officials as saying they had
banned all transportation of poultry in Dogubayazit and that culling of birds
would begin shortly as a precautionary measure.
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