Govt accused of slow response to bird-flu crisis

Local officials in Turkey’s stricken south-east today accused the government of moving too slowly to combat bird flu when it was still confined to fowl as the number of people infected with the deadly H5N1 strain climbed to 18.

Mukkades Kubilay, the mayor of Dogubayazit – where three siblings died a week ago – complained that Ankara sent only three doctors to help and that there were not enough workers to help destroy chickens, ducks and geese as a precaution.

National health and agriculture authorities denied they had done too little, too late, to contain the outbreak, which first surfaced in poultry in December and swiftly spread to people.

Turkey’s agriculture minister, Mehdi Eker, insisted there was no delay in responding to the first reports of infected birds on December 15 and said culling of poultry began immediately.

Health authorities raised the number of people infected with H5N1 from 15 to 18 after it turned up in preliminary tests on two people in south-eastern Turkey and in an 11-year-old girl who died last week.