Number of Victims Jumps in Turkish Bird Flu Outbreak
Date: 10-Jan-06
Country: TURKEY
Author: Baris Atayman
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the victims appear to have contracted the virus directly from infected birds, allaying fears it was now passing dangerously from person to person.
The Turkish authorities said the 14 victims included three children from the same family in an impoverished region of eastern Turkey who died last week. The WHO said it was now treating the cases announced by the Turks as confirmed.
Bird flu is known to have killed 74 people in east Asia since the latest outbreak emerged in late 2003. Human cases had been confined to that part of the world until the virus was identified in Turkey last week.
China confirmed its eighth human infection from bird flu on Monday, the latest victim a six-year-old boy from the central Hunan province who is being treated in hospital.
Indonesia said local tests showed a 39-year-old man had died from the virus earlier this month after contact with dead chickens. If confirmed, it would be the 12th death in Indonesia.
Worried Turks rushed to hospitals on Monday for tests for the virus, which kills more than half of those it infects.
Thirteen children were among 23 people undergoing tests for bird flu in Istanbul, a teeming city of 12 million which is the country's commercial hub and the gateway to Europe from Asia.
Experts fear the deadly H5N1 strain will mutate just enough to allow it to pass easily from person to person. If it does so, it could cause a catastrophic pandemic, killing tens of millions of people, because humans lack immunity to it.
However, a WHO team visiting Dogubayazit, the home village of the dead children, said the evidence there pointed to infection from diseased chickens.
"At the moment there is no element in this village indicating human-to-human transmission. It's typically similar to what we have seen so far (in Asia)," Guenael Rodier, heading the WHO's mission to Turkey and a specialist on communicable diseases, told Reuters Television.
CASES ACROSS TURKEY
Investments and the economy could take a hit if tourism suffers as a result of health fears in Turkey, analysts say.
Russia told its citizens on Sunday to avoid travelling to Turkey, a popular destination for Russians.
"It has the potential to become quite serious depending on how long it stretches out," said Sonal Desai, senior emerging market economist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Milan.
Turkey has said it is treating human cases drawn from three broadareas, including victims from around the capital Ankara, about 400 km (250 miles) east of Istanbul.
The other victims are from the Black Sea area in the north and the east where the deaths were reported last week.
"The total number of cases in our country is 14 confirmed by laboratory tests, and out of those 14, three children have died," Turkey's Health Minister Recep Akdag told a news conference.
Speaking in Dogubayazit, the home village of the three dead children, he appealed to people to stay away from poultry, and to keep their children away from the birds too.
Ali Hasan Kocyigit, the six-year-old brother of the dead children, was discharged from hospital on Monday after being confirmed as free of the disease, Turkish television reported.
"This should be a lesson to all of the Turkish nation. Everybody should take care of their children much more than before," said Ali Hasan's uncle Isa Kocyigit.
"We didn't know this virus before. But now, we lost three children in our family. The last one is living, thank God!," he added as they left hospital in the eastern city of Van.
(Additional reporting by Ayse Sarioglu in Ankara, Daniel Bases and Jeremy Gaunt in London)