Turkey bird flu: Three dead, two sick, 24 possibly affected

A British laboratory has found that two Turkish teenagers who died earlier this week had bird flu, authorities said, and a health official in Geneva said scientists were closing in on identifying the virus as the deadly H5N1 strain.

“If it’s confirmed, these would be the first human cases outside China and Southeast Asia,” World Health Organisation spokeswoman Christine McNab said yesterday.

The strain has already killed more than 70 people in East Asia since 2003. Authorities are closely monitoring H5N1 for fear it could mutate into a form easily passed among humans and spark a pandemic.

Birds in Turkey, Romania, Russia and Croatia have recently tested positive for H5N1.

An 11-year-old girl died yesterday of suspected bird flu in eastern Turkey - days after her teenage brother and sister succumbed to the disease – and their doctor said they probably contracted the illness by playing with dead chickens.

A British laboratory confirmed the two teenagers who died had suffered from bird flu, but that tests had not yet been completed in order to determine whether it was the H5N1 strain, said a Turkish health ministry official.

The British lab also confirmed that another child, Yusuf Tunc, tested positive for bird flu, the official said. It was unclear whether Tunc, hospitalised in eastern Van, had any connection to the dead teenagers. He was reported to be in serious condition.

Separately, the Health Ministry announced late yesterday that yet another patient, who was hospitalised in Van, tested positive for bird flu according to preliminary tests carried out at a Turkish lab in Istanbul.

Apart from Tunc, 19 other people were hospitalised in Van with flu-like symptoms. Authorities said tests were still underway to determine whether any of them had contracted bird flu. Five other people also with flu-like symptoms were hospitalised in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir, officials said.

Preliminary tests in Turkey indicated two of the siblings died of H5N1, and scientists examining samples at a laboratory in Britain have already confirmed that the virus is in the H5 family and appear to be close to determining if it is the deadly H5N1, McNab said.

The Health Ministry said more than 5,000 boxes of the antiviral drug Tamiflu were sent to eastern Turkey and five artificial respiration machines were also sent to the hospital in Van.

In Switzerland, Tamiflu maker Roche Pharmaceuticals said it had expedited the delivery of 100,000 packs of the drug.

Turks across the country hunted for the influenza medicine in pharmacies, while in the eastern part of Turkey, even simple gloves and masks were in high demand. Hospitals and clinics in eastern and south-eastern parts of the country, where some H5N1 bird flu cases were confirmed in fowl, were overwhelmed with people suffering from regular human flu.

WHO was also conducting tests to check whether the bird flu cases resulted from human-to-human transmission, spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said in Geneva. Results are expected “in the next few days,” she said.

Authorities and residents have culled thousands of fowl throughout the country in recent days.