Turkey's bird flu crisis intensified yesterday with at least 14 people testing positive for the lethal H5N1 strain of the disease as it continues its drift westwards towards mainland Europe.
More than 60 people with flu-like symptoms who had come into contact with fowl were in hospital yesterday for tests, officials said. Three cases were reported at the weekend in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and others confirmed in four Turkish provinces.
The World Health Organisation has not confirmed all of the cases.
The first confirmed victims of the disease outside east Asia lived in the poor Kurdish frontier town of Dogubayazit. Three of Zeki Kocyigit's children died in hospital in Van, a two-and-a-half hour drive across the bleak, snowy mountains. Their deaths marked the beginning of a seemingly ominous trend across Turkey.
Last night Mr Kocyigit said he had no idea bird flu had arrived at his home - a small four-room building with no running water and an outside toilet, perched on a hill overlooking the snow-encrusted town. "There are many black birds that arrive at our lake from elsewhere," he said. He gave thanks for the fact that his surviving child - Ali Hasan, six - had been discharged from hospital after apparently recovering from the illness. The boy arrived home last night to be greeted by wellwishers who had turned up in a freezing plastic marquee erected in Mr Kocyigit's front yard.
Standing in thick snow outside his house yesterday, Mr Kocyigit pointed to the shed-like coop where he had kept his chickens. "We've always liked chickens. I had eight of them. My family liked them too," he said, showing off the area where the birds had sheltered during the freezing winter nights. He added: "And then they fell ill. Shortly after that my children started feeling poorly too." His eldest son Mehmet Ali, 14, had slaughtered one of the ill chickens, a job in this remote eastern region of Turkey traditionally reserved for older children. "We ate the sick chickens and fed them to my wife's sister's family as well," Mr Kocyigit said.
Soon afterwards, all four children - Fatma, 15, Mehmet Ali, Hulya, 11 and Ali Hasan, - developed temperatures and cold-like symptoms, he said.
"I took my son to the local medical clinic. They said he had a cold, gave him an infusion, and sent him home. All the children developed high temperatures. I took them back three days later and explained about the chickens. They realised something was badly wrong."
So far all the people in hospital appear to have worked closely with poultry - in a region where ducks and geese roam the streets, and where many children keep pigeons as a hobby. But yesterday doctors said they feared the virus adapting so it could move from human to human, raising the possibility of a pandemic. Health officials are closely monitoring its development for signs of mutation.
"The more humans infected with the avian virus, the more chance it has to adapt," Guenael Rodier, a senior WHO official for communicable diseases, said during a visit to Dogubayazit, which is 20 miles from the closed border with Iran.
The five newest cases confirmed so far involved people who were in close contact with poultry, and came from four provinces in east and central Turkey, as well as the Black Sea coast, a health ministry official, Turan Buzgan, told AP.
Ten people earlier had tested positive for H5N1 in Turkish labs, four of which have been confirmed by the WHO. "It's clear that the virus is well-established in the region. The frontline between children and animals, particularly backyard poultry, is too large," Rodier said.
Teams of white-suited health ministry officials are already in Dogubayazit culling chickens - some 17,500 had bee killed by yesterday. But with many impoverished Kurdish householders refusing to give up their birds, plenty are eluding cull.
Turkey's health minister, Recep Akdag, who arrived in the town yesterday, urged people to give up their centuries-old habit of raising poultry in their back yards. "The earlier we realise this, the earlier we will be rid of bird flu,' he said.
As Mr Kocyigit waited for his son to return from the hospital, other villagers complained about the primitive medical facilities in the town and the lack of doctors. A group of locals demonstrated at the health ministry building yesterday, shouting: "Send us more doctors now."
For Mr Kocyigit, though, last night was a time for reflection. "God protected my last son," he said. "God cared about him. If people will help us we will send him to school to be educated. I would like my son to grow up to be an educated man."
