Fears grow as five new human cases of bird flu reported in Turkey

TURKEY announced five more human cases of bird flu countrywide, bringing to 14 the number of people stricken by the lethal H5N1 virus and raising fresh alarms over its menacing westward advance.

There were also reports that laboratory tests showed an Indonesian man had died of the deadly flu.

In Turkey, some 100 people were awaiting test results, including 10 from Istanbul, the country’s business and tourism hub on the doorstep of Europe, where the presence of the disease among birds has already been confirmed, officials said.

Turkish laboratories identified four of the new cases as children from three northern provinces, confirming that the virus is steadily advancing from remote, rural eastern areas to the more urbanised west, with three H5N1 carriers already hospitalised in the capital Ankara.

The European Union sought to bolster its defences, announcing new import bans on six countries surrounding Turkey and confirming that EU experts were accompanying a World Health Organisation team currently assessing the situation in the worst-hit areas in the east.

The new cases bring to 12 the number of people currently under treatment, all but one of them small children and teenagers.

Two children from the same family died in eastern Turkey last week after playing with sick chickens, becoming the first human fatalities outside the virus’s eastern Asian origins.

A third sibling also died but she tested negative for the bird flu virus.

Of the new cases, two siblings aged four and five, currently hospitalised in Ankara, have not yet shown any sign of illness, senior health ministry official Turan Buzgan said.

A five-year-old boy from Corum, initially treated for pneumonia, was brought to the same hospital in Ankara and is now improving. A 12-year-old is undergoing treatment in Samsun, on the Black Sea coast.

The fifth patient, aged 18, was hospitalised in Van, where the three siblings perished last week and four other children infected with H5N1 are undergoing treatment.

As the emergency cull of fowl continued across the country, officials said the agriculture ministry was drafting legislation to ban outdoor poultry breeding.

China yesterday announced its eighth confirmed human case of bird flu, a six-year-old boy who was being treated in a hospital in central Hunan province, state media reported.