Bird flu: Turkish girl dies

A 12-year-old Turkish girl died today as tests were carried out to see if she was the latest victim of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, doctors said.

Eighteen people have tested positive for H5N1 in Turkey and tests were under way in Ankara today to determine whether more people, including 12-year-old Fatma Ozcan, have the virus, health authorities said.

Ozcan died this morning of suspected bird flu, Huseyin Avni Sahin, the head physician of the Van hospital told the Anatolia news agency. Earlier doctors said she was on a respirator.

Her five-year-old brother, Muhammet, was also in a serious condition and had been tested for H5N1, authorities said.

“Her brother has a fever and the infection in his lung is light, it’s not advancing,” said another doctor, Ahmet Faik Oner.

Authorities said new test results would be announced later today. It was not clear whether the brother and the sister had been in contact with fowl.

Dozens of people have been admitted to hospital with flu-like symptoms across Turkey, including two children in Istanbul.

Health officials have said that all 18 people with confirmed H5N1 infection - including three children who died last week in eastern Turkey – apparently had touched or played with birds, and that there was no evidence of person-to-person infection.

Two of the 18 have been discharged from hospital and the World Health Organisation is examining the cases closely as it tracks how the virus may be changing and tries to determine whether the strain may not always be as lethal as earlier believed.

The three fatalities were the first known deaths from the virus outside of Asia, where at least 77 have been killed by bird flu since 2003.

The WHO said on Friday that a 29-year-old Indonesian woman who died this week had tested positive for bird flu, bringing its toll worldwide to at least 79 people.

WHO has so far only confirmed two out of the three deaths in Turkey were from the H5N1 strain.

Turkish authorities today continued slaughtering thousands of chickens, turkeys and geese nationwide as a precaution.

The Turkish government on Saturday set up a committee to make urgent recommendations to save the country’s €3.6bn poultry industry, which employs 100,000 people.

At least 455,000 domestic birds have been culled, and bird flu in birds is now confirmed or suspected in 26 of Turkey’s 81 provinces.