AFP Photo
Cormorants swim in
Golden Horn, downtown Istanbul. A child
under treatment in eastern Turkey has
tested positive for bird flu, becoming
the 21st person to be infected with the
disease in the country, including four
adolescents already dead, the health
ministry said Tuesday.
|
ANKARA
(AFP) - Turkey announced that another child was diagnosed with
bird flu, raising to 21 the number of human cases in the
country, including four teenagers already dead and a boy in
worsening health.
With the lethal virus now raging at the threshold of Europe,
officials from half of the world's nations gathered in Beijing
for a two-day meeting aimed at raising 1.5 billion dollars to
help fight the disease.
A team of experts from the United States began work in Turkey
Tuesday to help local officials in their efforts to stem the
outbreak as the Turkish government said it had the situation
under control.
The Turkish health ministry identified the new case of H5N1
infection as a child from the remote eastern town of Dogubeyazit,
near the border with Iran, from where the four dead also hailed.
The child, aged four-and-a-half years, fell sick after eating
chicken and was put under intensive care in a hospital in the
eastern city of Erzurum after he began to suffer difficulties in
breathing, said the head of the hospital, Akin Aktas, according
to the Anatolia news agency.
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"The patient's general condition is good," Aktas said of the
latest case, without specifycing whether the patient was a boy
or a girl.
Meanwhile, in Van, further east, five-year-old Muhammed Ozcan,
the brother of one of the four victims, was reported in
deteriorating condition.
"The infection in his lungs advanced a bit more last night,"
Huseyin Avni Sahin, the chief physician of the Van hospital,
told AFP by telephone.
"His condition is now worse than yesterday."
The boy, described as the gravest case so far among the H5N1
carriers under treatment, did not require an artifical
respirator yet, he said.
The disease has killed four teenagers in Turkey since January 1,
including the boy's sister, all of whom were in close contact
with sick birds that their impoverished families bred in
backyards.
The 16-year-old Fatma Ozcan died Sunday, about two weeks after
she and her brother slaughtered a sick duck for food.
The other three victims -- a brother and two sisters --
perished earlier this month, becoming the first human fatalities
of the virus outside its origins in Asia.
Sahin said late diagnosis and treatment were likely a "primary
factor in fatality cases."
The four dead adolescents were brought to the hospital days
after they began showing the symptoms of the disease, doctors
said.
The US embassy in Ankara said the US team, including experts in
animal and health surveillance, laboratory capacity and public
health communications, would hold |
talks with Turkish officials in Ankara before heading out to
regions stricken with the virus.
Neighbouring Bulgaria offered to help with Turkey to combat the
outbreak by offering a meeting between agriculture ministers
from the two countries to discuss joint measures. "This meeting
could take place at the border and they (the two ministers)
could talk about the necessary measures," Bulgarian Prime
Minister Sergei Stanishev told a press conference here.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there was
nothing to fear, adding that the government was stepping up
efforts to increase the people's awareness. "Turkey's struggle
against the disease has been successful so far and the current
situation is not of a dimension that should cause citizens to
worry," he said.
The government has told villagers to halt backyard breeding,
blamed for most of the human H5N1 infections in Turkey, a vast
country which lies on the routes of migratory birds who are
believed to be spreading the virus.
Officials said 932,000 birds had been slaughtered as of Monday
afternoon, since the outbreak started late December in an area
near Dogubeyazit and then steadily spread west.
Scientists fear that the more the virus spreads, the greater
the chance H5N1 will mutate into a form that is easily
transmissible between humans, possibly sparking a global
pandemic that could claim tens of millions of lives.
Since reappearing in Southeast Asia in 2003, the virus has
killed about 80 people and infected some 150 in six countries,
according to a World Health Organization toll. Most of the dead
were in Vietnam. |
