January 9, 2006

 

Twelve new suspected bird flu cases in Turkey
 

 

Hospitals admitted a dozen new suspected bird flu patients Monday, as the disease appeared to be spreading in Turkey with three people in the capital Ankara testing positive for the deadly H5N1 strain.

 

Muharrem Canak and his younger brother Iskender tested positive for H5N1 in preliminary tests by Turkish labs, along with a man, in the first suspected cases outside the eastern city of Van.

 

The boys apparently caught the virus while playing with gloves that their father had used to handle two dead wild ducks near a dam just outside Ankara, their doctor Metin Dogan said. The boys did not appear sick despite testing positive for the virus, Dogan said.

 

Health officials caution that the virus has so far only been confirmed in humans who were in close and prolonged contact with fowl, but are monitoring the virus for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans and spark a pandemic.

 

Two other siblings have died in Van and a third also died of suspected bird flu in the city, but the cause of death has not yet been confirmed by a World Health Organization laboratory.

 

If confirmed, the third sibling and the three new cases in Ankara, about 1,000 kilometres west of Van, would bring to 10 the total number of bird flu cases in humans in Turkey. Seven are currently in hospital and three have died.

 

Maria Cheng, a WHO spokeswoman in Geneva, said the UN health agency had too little information to confirm the three cases in Ankara.

 

The fatalities here were the first caused by the virus outside of 74 deaths in East Asia, where the virus killed more than half of the people it infected.

 

A UK laboratory confirmed the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus in a Turkish boy, and Cheng said the WHO has accepted Turkish testing as confirming the infection in a girl as well. Both children are in intensive care in Van, about 97 kilometres from the Iranian border. Another brother and sister in Van also were found to be positive for H5N1 in the preliminary tests, health ministry official Turan Buzgan said.

 

Health officials believe the best way to fight the spread of bird flu is the wholesale destruction of poultry in the affected area. But they often run into problems in rural areas like Dogubayazit, where villagers have resisted turning in their animals.