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Human bird flu spreads in turkey { January 9 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3dd4efc6-810c-11da-8b55-0000779e2340.htmlhttp://news.ft.com/cms/s/3dd4efc6-810c-11da-8b55-0000779e2340.html
Human bird flu spreads in Turkey
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Published: January 9 2006 12:37 | Last updated: January 9 2006 17:52
Turkey’s bird flu crisis deepened on Monday after the health ministry announced that five more people had been infected with the deadliest strain of the virus and the government faced intense criticism of its handling of the worsening outbreak.
As a team of officials from the World Health Organisation finally overcame severe winter weather to reach the remote eastern village of Dogubayazit, where the outbreak started, incidents of the disease were reported across western and northern Turkey and a mass cull of poultry continued in the east.
Officials in Istanbul said quarantine zones were being established and a cull of birds ordered in three districts of the city, where 23 people, most of them children, are undergoing tests for the disease. The outbreak reached the outskirts of Ankara at the weekend as it spread westward, sparking a rush of people to hospitals in towns and cities across the country.
Fourteen people have now contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus in Turkey, according to Recep Akdag, the health minister. Three of them – children from the same family – died last week. The children’s six-year-old brother was released from hospital in the eastern city of Van on Monday after apparently not contracting the virus.
The WHO have confirmed on Monday evening that all the 14 cases are H5N1, which scientists believe could cause a global pandemic of bird flu if it can be transmitted from person to person. WHO officials said there was no evidence that such mutation was occurring in the Turkish cases and that infections were most likely to be caused by close contact with infected poultry.
Doctors warned the public on Monday to take extra precautions during this week’s Bayram festival, when animals – generally lambs and cattle – are slaughtered on Turkey’s streets to mark the Muslim feast of Sacrifice.
Amid signs that a lack of personnel was hampering the cull of birds in Turkey’s mountainous and snowbound east, local officials appealed to people to dig pits in which to bury birds. This factor and others have sparked a furore in the Turkish press, which is accusing the government of being slow to respond to the outbreak and of misleading the public in its initial statements about when the disease was first detected in the east.
It has also been revealed that Turan Aslan, head of the country’s chief public health laboratory, is on the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, even though all medical personnel have been ordered to report to work.
Cumhuriyet, the country’s main nationalist newspaper, described the response to the outbreak as “like panic after an earthquake”. Hurriyet, the best-selling daily, accused the government and officials of being “ignorant and incompetent”. However, Guenael Rodier, head of the WHO team visiting Turkey, said he had seen “excellent engagement at the highest level” in the attempt to control the outbreak.
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