Death of second Turkish teenager sparks fear of bird flu spreading

A SECOND Turkish teenager died of bird flu yesterday as a virus that has killed 74 people in east Asia claimed its first lives far to the west, on the fringes of Europe and the Middle East.

In a sign the disease may have infected people over a wide area of eastern Turkey, six people from a different province were taken to hospital with suspected bird flu. In all, doctors said 18 patients were under scrutiny and two of them very sick.

“There is no need for panic. This is not an epidemic spread from human to human,” Huseyin Avni Sahin, chief doctor at Van hospital near the Iranian border where all the patients are being treated, told CNN Turk television.

The deadly H5N1 bird flu 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 and cause massive economic losses.

All the previously confirmed victims have been from south-east Asia and China. H5N1 has killed around half of the people known to have been infected with the virus.

The Turkish teenagers who died were in remote, rural Agri province next to the Armenian border. People there live, as in the affected areas of the Far East, in close proximity with livestock and poultry, which they mostly raise for their own consumption.

Fatma Kocyigit, 15, who died on Thursday, was buried in a grave covered with lime as a precaution, like her 14-year-old brother Mehmet Ali, who died at the weekend. Doctors had originally said he died of pneumonia. Their 11-year- old sister, Hulya, and a six-year-old brother, Ali Hasan, were also sick.

Turkish officials have said the cause of Mehmet Ali’s death was the H5N1 strain of bird flu - a diagnosis provisionally backed by the World Health Organisation.

“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 said.