Turkey scrambles to contain bird flu outbreak

Turkey today raced to contain an outbreak of bird flu and reassure the world it had the potentially fatal illness under control, after preliminary tests showed at least 15 people – two of them children who have died – were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain.

Health officials handed out leaflets, and imams blared warnings from mosque loudspeakers in the mostly Muslim country, which has recorded the first human deaths outside eastern Asia, where bird flu has claimed 76 lives since 2003.

Jittery European governments, scrambling to avoid the spectre of a mutation that could trigger a pandemic capable of killing millions, sprayed down trucks from Turkey with disinfectant.

In Italy, a consumer group urged the government to impose a ban on travel to Turkey, and in Greece, veterinary inspectors stepped up border checks.

Underscoring how neighbouring countries felt especially vulnerable as the virus crept westward, Bulgaria began issuing its citizens special instructions on how to deal with an outbreak.

Turkey’s government, anxious to demonstrate to its citizens and the European Union that it was taking decisive action, ordered more than 300,000 fowl destroyed as a precaution. Health officials said today that most of the 70 or so people hospitalised with flu-like symptoms had tested negative for bird flu.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the notion that “an idea of panic was created, as though the country was invaded.”

“Everything is under control,” he said, adding that the country had no shortage of vaccine or medicines.

The bird flu outbreak comes at a difficult time for Turkey.

The country has been anxious to join the EU, and is working to improve an image marred by allegations of human rights abuses against minority Kurds.

Turkey has also been in the spotlight for its plans to release Mehmet Ali Agca from prison on Thursday, which have revived embarrassing memories of the Turkish gunman’s 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

Erdogan spoke during a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, whose government said Tuesday up to 77 Japanese – most of them chicken farm workers – may have become infected by H5N2, a less potent strain not previously been known to infect humans.

Guenael Rodier, a senior World Health Organisation official for communicable diseases, said Tuesday that the Turkish outbreak appeared confined to cases in which the illness spread from animals to humans, rather than person to person.

“It seems to be clear that we are dealing with a situation similar to what we have seen in Asia, which means in practice a number of small sites, family clusters of disease involving many children and always with documented or reported contact with infected birds, typically backyard poultry,” he said.

Preliminary tests Tuesday showed another person had tested positive for the H5N1 strain, bringing the number of suspected and confirmed cases up to 15, a Health Ministry official said. The ministry had given the toll as 15 on Monday, but today said one of those earlier cases had not been validated.

Two of those patients – siblings in the eastern city of Van – have died from the disease over the past week.

The newest case reported today – a woman hospitalised in the central Anatolia city of Sivas – tested positive for H5N1 in Turkish lab tests, which the WHO had yet to confirm, the Health Ministry official said.

The WHO so far has confirmed only four of the 15 reported cases as H5N1, but the agency warned that each new human case increased the virus’ chances of mutating into a form that could easily pass from human to human and spark a pandemic.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which has two experts on a WHO-led team in Turkey, had erroneously announced that nine cases were confirmed by the WHO, but ECDC spokesman Ben Duncan later said the number was still four.

Outbreaks among birds also worry experts, as they also afford the virus opportunities to mutate.

Authorities distributed leaflets in eastern regions most affected by the outbreak, cautioning people not to touch fowl, while television spots urged people to wash their hands after contact with poultry.

Imams also issued warnings through mosque loudspeakers in the western town of Yesilova in Burdur province, the Anatolia news agency reported.

One patient, Gulsen Yesilirmak, said from her hospital bed in Sivas that she felt sick after throwing out dead chickens from a coop.

“I threw out one, and another died and I threw out that, too. Then I got sick ... I sat down exhausted, and I had a headache,” Yesilirmak told private CNN-Turk television, struggling to breathe through a protective mask. Her eyes were red.