Turkish boy tests positive for bird flu strain

Turkish health officials today announced that a five-year-old boy had tested positive for the deadly bird flu strain, increasing the number of infected people in Turkey to 19.

The boy’s sister, who died earlier today, tested negative for the H5N1 strain, according to preliminary results, the ministry said.

“With the positive case today, the number of positive bird flu cases in our country has risen to 19,” the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The boy was identified as Muhammet Ozcan. He and his 12-year-old sister, Fatma, who died today had contact with sick birds, authorities said.

Preliminary tests showed his sister tested negative for H5N1, but authorities still suspect the virus caused her death and they are conducting further tests.

The children were from the nearby town of Dogubayazit, also the hometown of three other children who died of bird flu last week, where many have been in close contact with fowl in the poor town, near the Iranian border.

Head physician Dr Huseyin Avni Sahin, who treated the brother and sister at the Van 100th Year Hospital, said: “She was brought to hospital with respiration problems very late,” Sahin told reporters outside the hospital.

The girl’s younger brother was in a serious condition.

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

Tests were under way in Ankara to determine whether more people have the virus, health authorities said.

Dozens of people are in hospital with flu-like symptoms across Turkey, including three children in Istanbul, at the doorstep of Europe. Tests were underway to determine whether any of them have contracted the deadly strain.

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

The World Health Organisation is examining the cases closely as it tracks how the virus may be changing. Health experts are particularly concerned that the virus could mutate into a form that is spread easily among humans.

The three fatalities in Turkey last week were the first known deaths from the virus outside of Asia, where at least 77 have been killed by bird flu since an outbreak began in 2003, according to a tally by the WHO.

Turkish authorities on Sunday continued slaughtering thousands of birds nationwide as a precaution.

The Turkish government on Saturday set up a committee to make urgent recommendations to save the country’s poultry industry, which employs about 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.