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Ankara,
(Reuters) - A second Turkish child from the same family died from bird flu on
Thursday, officials and doctors said, in the first human cases of the disease
outside China and Southeast Asia.
“We
lost Fatma Kocyigit this morning,” Niyazi Tanilir, governor in the eastern
province of Van, said on the CNN Turk news channel. The 15-year-old girl died in
hospital at around6:30 a.m. (0430 GMT(
Her
brother, 14-year-old Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, died in the weekend.
Turkish
officials said on Wednesday that the cause of death was the H5N1 strain of bird
flu.
The
Turkish Health Minister, Recep Akdag, gave no specific details on the boy’s
death, in comments before the second fatality, but said samples had been sent to
the World Health Organization (WHO) and Britain for more tests.
If
the deaths are officially confirmed as being the result of H5N1, they would be
the first outside eastern Asia where more than 70 people have been killed by the
disease since 2003.
The
virus remains hard for people to catch, but there are fears it could mutate into
a form easily transmitted among humans. Experts say a pandemic among humans
could kill millions around the globe and cause massive economic losses.
Seven
Further Patients
Ahmet
Faik Oner, a doctor at the hospital in Van near the Iranian and Armenian
borders, said that after the latest death seven other people were being treated
with similar symptoms.
It
was not known yet whether any have bird flu.
Fatma’s
sister, Hulya, was in a particularly bad condition, Oner told state-run
Anatolian news agency.
Doctors
had originally said Mehmet Ali died of pneumonia on Sunday in the Van hospital,
about 800 km (500 miles) east of the capital Ankara.
A
top WHO official said the boy had probably died from H5N1, which would mark a
dramatic shift westwards for the deadly disease to the threshold of Europe.
“We
are pretty confident that unfortunately it is a human case of H5N1,” Guenael
Rodier, special adviser on communicable diseases at the WHO’s European office,
told Reuters.
Although
more tests would be needed before anybody could be absolutely certain of the
type of virus, Rodier said all the evidence pointed to it being the H5N1 strain.
“[The
boy] died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu,” asserted Huseyin Avni Sahin, head
doctor at the hospital in the town of Van in eastern Turkey, near the Iranian
and Armenian borders, told a televised news conference.
Bird
Flu Tests
Murat
Akova of Hacetepe University in Ankara told CNN Turk television: “Tests were
conducted in two different labs. We found the H5N1 strain of bird flu.
“People
who have close contact with animals should receive special treatment but
vaccinations of the wider population is not necessary for now. The child who
died had been in close contact with poultry.”
In
the wake of the bird flu announcement, the hospital tightened up its
precautionary measures and closed its children’s department to other patients.
All
those receiving treatment in Van had come from the same district of Dogubayazit
on the Armenian border, the health minister said. People in the remote, rural
area live mainly from raising poultry and other livestock.
Nine
other people are being treated with similar symptoms, but it is not known yet
whether any have bird flu.
Akdag
said all those receiving treatment in Van had come from the same district of
Dogubayazit on the Armenian border.
“There
is no occurrence of the disease among humans outside that district,” Akdag
told a news conference in Ankara.
People
in the remote, rural area live mainly from raising poultry and other livestock
Akdag explained. Turkey had sufficient stocks of medicine to combat the disease.
A
U.N. official said the news from Turkey was disturbing but not yet a cause for
panic.
“This
is not the start of the pandemic. The start of the pandemic begins when there is
human to human transfer, confirmed and sustained,” Dr David Nabarro, senior
coordinator for avian influenza at the United Nations, said in a telephone
interview.
Turkey,
on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread the virus, has had
two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among poultry in the past three
months.
Veterinary
experts across Europe have been on alert, culling birds and taking other
precautionary measures since October outbreaks in Turkey and Romania.
Most
of Europe imposed a ban on imports of Turkish live birds at the time, but the
measure was subsequently eased.
In
Asia, measures against the disease have included the slaughter of millions of
birds.
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Taken from Reuters Newswire
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