Children most likely victims of bird flu

ONE victim is a five-year-old boy who got sick after killing a duck for New Year’s dinner and is now in critical condition.

Another is his 12-year-old sister, who died last weekend. Three were siblings who succumbed in rapid succession, leaving their grieving parents with just one surviving child.

Just as in east and south-east Asia, where at least 77 people have died of bird flu since it re-emerged there in 2003, children appear to be particularly susceptible to the lethal H5N1 strain - if only because they are more likely to touch or play with diseased birds.

“So far it looks like the same pattern,” World Health Organisation spokeswoman Maria Cheng said today.

Ms Cheng said the UN health agency did not yet have figures for the number of children who have contracted H5N1 worldwide and declined to offer an estimate.

But in Turkey, the WHO had a clearer picture. All but two of the 21 confirmed human cases have involved children aged four to 18.

Turkey’s Health Ministry said preliminary tests had detected the deadly strain in another child taken to hospital in the eastern city of Erzurum. It said the child came from Dogubayazit - the home of all four children who so far have died.

Officials said samples from the child were being sent to a WHO laboratory in Britain for independent confirmation.

Experts are concerned the virus could mutate into a form that would spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions.

The WHO has stressed it has no evidence of person-to-person infection occurring in Turkey.

“If the disease was spreading directly among people, we would have seen more cases by now,” Ms Cheng said.

A team of US influenza experts met with WHO and Turkish health officials in the capital, Ankara, today and planned to decide later whether to travel to other afflicted areas. The US Centres for Disease Control also sent experts to Turkey to help combat the disease.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Turks to be “careful and cool-headed” and said everything was being done to contain the crisis.

With Turks complaining of symptoms still checking into hospitals, there were concerns the virus might still be spreading to people despite the slaughter of nearly one million fowl.

Among those getting treatment were three children with bird flu symptoms in Istanbul, where Europe and Asia meet at the Bosporus Strait.

Officials were waiting to see if tests confirmed that they, too, were infected with H5N1, which would bring the virus in humans right to Europe’s doorstep.