Turkey reports 21st human case of Bird Flu
Jan 17 2:28 PM US/Eastern
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Turkey announced that another child was diagnosed with bird flu, raising to 21 the total number of human cases in the country, among them four teenagers already dead and a small boy in worsening condition.
With the lethal virus now raging at the threshold of Europe, officials from half of the world's nations gathered in Beijing for a two-day meeting aimed at raising 1.5 billion dollars to help fight the disease.
The Turkish health ministry identified the new case of H5N1 infection as a child from the remote eastern town of Dogubeyazit, near the border with Iran, from where the four dead also hailed.
The child, whose details were not released, was in intensive care in a hospital in the eastern city of Erzurum.
Meanwhile, in Van, further east, five-year-old Muhammed Ozcan, the brother of one of the four victims, was reported in deteriorating condition.
"The infection in his lungs advanced a bit more last night," Huseyin Avni Sahin, the chief physician of the Van hospital, told AFP by telephone. "His condition is now worse than yesterday."
The boy, described as the gravest case so far among the H5N1 carriers under treatment, did not require an artificial respirator yet, he said.
The disease has killed four teenagers in Turkey since January 1, including the boy's sister, all of whom were in close contact with sick birds that their impoverished families bred in backyards.
The 16-year-old Fatma Ozcan died Sunday, about two weeks after she and her brother slaughtered a sick duck for food.
The other three victims -- a brother and two sisters -- perished earlier this month, becoming the first human fatalities of the virus outside its origins in Asia.
Sahin said late diagnosis and treatment were likely a "primary factor in fatality cases".
The four dead adolescents were brought to the hospital days after they began showing the symptoms of the disease, doctors said.
Days before Fatma Ozcan perished, she was shown on television, sitting visibly sick on a hospital bench in Dogubeyazit, as her father argued with a doctor against sending the two children to a larger hospital.
The impoverished man agreed to send the children to Van only after he was persuaded that he would not be charged for their treatment.
The government has told villagers to halt backyard breeding, blamed for most of the human H5N1 infections in Turkey, a vast country which lies on the routes of migratory birds who are believed to be spreading the virus.
Officials said 932,000 birds had been slaughtered as of Monday afternoon, since the outbreak started late December in an area near Dogubeyazit.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed warnings Tuesday over the dangers of backyard breeding and said the government was stepping up efforts to increase the people's awareness.
"Turkey's struggle against the disease has been successful so far and the current situation is not of a dimension that should cause citizens to worry," Erdogan said.
The virus has reached birds in the center and west of Turkey, including the capital Ankara, a touristic region on the Aegean coast, and the country's biggest city, Istanbul.
Scientists fear that the more the virus spreads, the greater the chance H5N1 will mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans, possibly sparking a global pandemic that could claim tens of millions of lives.
Turkish Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker stressed the need for greater international cooperation in fighting the disease.
He complained that some countries, including neighbors of Turkey, were hiding the presence of the virus on their soil.
"This is a global problem... Countries with non-transparent regimes in particular are hiding the disease," Eker told NTV television Monday, ahead of his departure to China to attend the international bird flu gathering.
"Some countries around us, where we know that the disease exists, do not officially acknowledge that, either," he said.
Since reappearing in Southeast Asia in 2003, the virus has killed about 80 people and infected some 150 in six countries, according to a World Health Organization toll. Most the dead are in Vietnam.
