AFP Photo A young girl waits in the line for a medical checkup at the emergency hall of Dogubayazit hospital, in the eastern Turkish city of Agri. Turkey announced its third bird flu death and two new cases of human infection as the authorities mounted a public information campaign to combat the disease, which experts fear may spread into neighbouring countries.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey announced its third bird flu death and two new cases of human infection as the authorities mounted a public information campaign to combat the disease, which experts fear may spread into neighbouring countries.
 
 Indonesia also reported a new death amid dire warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO) over a growing threat of a possible influenza pandemic.
 
 The Turkish health ministry said new tests showed that an 11-year-old girl who died last week at a hospital in the eastern Turkish city of Van had succumbed to the highly virulent H5N1 strain. She was the sister of two siblings, aged 14 and 15, who also died of bird flu, the first human casualties of the disease outside Southeast Asia and China, where the disease has killed nearly 80 people since 2003.
 
 The ministry said two more patients from the southeastern cities of Siirt and Sanliurfa identified as carriers of the virus were in stable condition. Anatolia news agency said both were children.
 
 The test results brought to 18 the number of Turks infected with the disease -- including the three who died -- since it emerged in the east of the country last month.
 
 In a brighter development, a 12-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, under treatement for H5N1 infection in the north and east of the country repectively, were discharged after they responded positively to treatment, officials said.
 
 At a WHO-sponsored meeting in Tokyo to discuss measures against a possible pandemic, the organisation's director for the Western Pacific issued a sombre warning. "As the new human cases in Turkey show, the situation is worsening with each passing month and the threat of an influenza pandemic is continuing to grow every day," Shigeru Omi told delegates.
 
 The WHO and the British-government-funded Medical Research Council said in a statement in London that an analysis of one of two viruses taken from two flu deaths in Turkey suggested the H5N1 strain was mutating towards a form adapted to humans.
 
 Scientists fear that millions could die in a worldwide pandemic if the virus mutates into a form that would make it communicable among humans.
 
 In Indonesia, the health ministry said a 29-year-old woman had died of bird flu, following the death last week of a 39-year-old man. If the results are confirmed by the WHO, Indonesia's H5N1 death toll would rise to 13 and the worldwide toll to 80. 

 In a bid to prevent fresh infections, Turkey's agriculture ministry said it had sent leaflets to all of the country's 81 provinces, informing people about the disease and how it spreads.