- Hello, Jeff - Turkey is the big story re bird flu. Dogs
dying in the outbreak area? This is novel:
-
- In nearby Bozkurt village, local administrator Ahmet
Koylu said chickens and dogs were dying but that no one had come to investigate.
On Saturday [7 Jan 2006], officials reported a new bird flu case in poultry
in a village near Bursa, in western Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported.
-
- From ProMed Mail
-
-
- 5 People Test Positive For H5N1 In Ankara
And Van
- 1-8-6
-
- ANKARA (Reuters) -- 3 patients in the Turkish capital
Ankara and 2 in the eastern town of Van have tested positive for the most
pathogenic strain [?] of bird flu, H5N1, the state Anatolian news agency
reported on Sunday [8 Jan 2006]. It quoted senior health ministry official
Turan Buzgan as saying that out of 28 samples diagnosed on Sunday [8 Jan
2006], 5 had tested positive for H5N1.
-
-
- 3 People Found With (Suspected)
- Avian Influenza In Turkish Capital
- 1-8-6
-
- (Reuters) -- Turkey announced on Sunday [8 Jan 2006]
that 3 people had tested positive for bird flu in the Turkish capital,
Ankara, marking a further westward advance of the infection towards the
frontiers of Europe. Ankara Governor Kemal Onal told the state-run Anatolia
news agency that 2 children and one adult had been diagnosed with the infection;
but it was not clear whether they were suffering from the H5N1 avian virus
that has killed 3 people in the remote east of the country.
-
- The agency said a 5-year old boy had been admitted to
the hospital with suspected avian influenza in Corum in central Turkey.
The virus has been spreading since October 2005 among [poultry] flocks
in Turkey, having advanced from Southeast Asia, but no people in Turkey
had been reported infected until last week [1st week January 2006]. The
emergence of human cases of the flu in the Van area, near the borders with
Iran and Armenia, raised fears that the disease might advance to major
Turkish population centers and to Europe.
-
- It seems highly likely that the children who died in
the Van region caught the virus directly from chickens. But world health
authorities are concerned that human exposure to avian influenza could
lead to the emergence of a mutation, allowing easier transmission between
humans and raising the prospect of a pandemic.
-
-
- Turkey - 30 Suspected Bird Flu Cases,
- Mostly Children, Now Under Observation
-
- By Alexander G. Higgins, Benjamin Harvey,
- Selcan Hacaoglu and Suzan Fraser]
- 1-8-6
-
- (AP) -- Teenage siblings who died of avian influenza
in Turkey were the 1st humans outside East Asia to succumb to the deadly
H5N1 strain that has apparently been spread by migratory birds, WHO stated
on Saturday 7 Jan 2006. A British laboratory confirmed on Saturday that
a 15-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother were infected with the virus,
said Maria Cheng, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization.
-
- Testing is continuing on an 11-year-old sister who died
Friday [6 Jan 2006]. "She had similar symptoms, and the clinical course
of her illness was the same," Cheng said. "So it would be very
probable that she died of H5N1, but right now, we don't have the laboratory
test to prove that."
-
- 5 WHO experts were to travel Sunday [8 Jan 2006] to the
city of Van, near the border with Iran, not far from the village where
the 3 children died, to try to determine whether the disease was spread
from animals or other humans. Iran has restricted movement along its border
to prevent the disease from spreading into that country. Cheng said Turkish
laboratories have so far found that 2 other children in a Turkish hospital
are infected with H5N1. The British lab Saturday [7 Jan 2006] confirmed
one of the cases and may be about to confirm the other, she said.
-
- Altogether, Turkish officials are testing about 30 patients
-- most of them children -- for [suspected] avian influenza, she said.
The spread of the disease from East Asia, where it has killed more than
70 people, was "a concern," but the global risk assessment of
a human pandemic was unchanged, she said. "Right now, these new cases
in Turkey don't elevate the global risk assessment, so we're still in the
same pandemic alert phase that we've been in for the last couple of years,"
said Cheng. "But it's something that needs to be monitored very closely."
-
- Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said Saturday [7
Jan 2006] there was no reason to suspect human-to-human transmission, and
he urged calm, saying there was no risk of a pandemic. But Dr. Gencay Gursoy,
head of the Istanbul Physicians Association, said the situation was grave.
"Turkey and the world are facing the threat of a serious infection,"
he said.
-
- So far, the H5N1 virus has been capable in rare cases
of transmitting from poultry to humans in close contact with them. Experts
fear that if the virus should mutate to a strain that passes easily among
people, it could set off a human flu pandemic. "At the moment, we
don't know enough about the situation to tell whether or not the virus
has changed in some way," said Cheng.
-
- The doctor of the 3 siblings who died said they probably
contracted the illness by playing with dead chickens. Cheng said the area
is rural with a lot of poultry farming and that residents tend to live
in close proximity to their birds. She said the cases were worrying in
part because of the distance from East Asia. "It is a jump,"
she said. "And if you look at how H5N1 has spread in animals, it sort
of follows that pattern and implicates the role of migratory birds, because
we started seeing last year [2005] H5N1 being detected in the Ural mountains,
in Siberia, Mongolia, Turkey, Romania."
-
- Authorities have culled thousands of fowl in the affected
regions, but in the village of Dagdelen, on the outskirts of Dogubayazit
-- the hometown of the 3 children who died -- villagers gathered outside
an Agriculture Ministry building to complain that no one had come to cull
their fowl. In nearby Bozkurt village, local administrator Ahmet Koylu
said chickens and dogs were dying but that no one had come to investigate.
On Saturday [7 Jan 2006], officials reported a new bird flu case in poultry
in a village near Bursa, in western Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported.
-
-
- Human Avian Influenza Cases Spread West In
Turkey
-
- (Reuters) -- Turkey reported 3 people infected with a
deadly strain of bird flu in the capital Ankara on Sunday [8 Jan 2006],
marking a further westward advance of human infection towards the fringes
of Europe. The 1st case outside eastern Asia of the virus jumping from
birds to humans emerged in Turkey last Wednesday [4 Jan 2006]. 3 children
in the remote eastern Van region died of the highly potent H5N1 strain
that has killed some 70 people in Asia.
-
- Ankara Governor Kemal Onal told the state-run Anatolia
news agency on Sunday [8 Jan 2006] that 2 children and one adult had been
diagnosed with the infection in the capital, about 400 km (250 miles) from
Turkey's densely populated largest city, Istanbul, Europe and the Mediterranean
area. The agency said a 5-year-old boy had also been admitted to the hospital
with suspected bird flu in Corum in central Turkey. CNN Turk television
said 2 of the 3 infected Ankara children had been brought to Ankara from
nearby Beypazari after contact with dead wild birds.
-
- It seems highly likely the children who died in the Van
region also caught the virus directly from chickens. But world health authorities
are concerned human exposure to the bird flu could lead to the emergence
of a mutation, allowing easier transmission between humans and raising
the prospect of a global pandemic. A team of World Health Organization
doctors is in Turkey to help investigate the deaths and look for any signs
of transmission between humans. Russia has warned against travel to Turkey.
Moscow raised the early prospect of economic damage to Turkey's vital tourist
industry, warning Russians against traveling to Turkey after the human
infections.
-
- Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has appealed to Turks to
help in a mass cull aimed at stemming the advance of the virus and promised
adequate compensation to farmers and families who rely on poultry for their
living. But in the Dogubayazit district hit by the virus, local people
have accused the authorities of being slow in acting. A Reuters reporter
saw chickens still walking on the streets and some escaping as they were
about to be carried in large bags to be buried alive in pits.
-
- Erdogan said the government was taking all necessary
measures and allocating funds to combat the spread of the disease. The
virus spreads quickly among chickens, killing them in a day, and the best
way to control it is to quickly slaughter all poultry in an affected area.
But this can be difficult in countries where, as is common in eastern Turkey,
people keep small backyard flocks.
-
- _____
-
- ProMED-mail
- promed@promedmail.org
-
- The death of dogs in an outbreak area is a novel observation,
but not necessarily related to avian influenza infection. The high frequency
of children among confirmed and suspected human cases of H5N1 avian influenza
is a continuing feature of the disease situation in Turkey. The number
of human cases confirmed by the WHO-reference laboratory in the UK appears
to have risen to 3 (possibly 4), but this has not yet been publicly acknowledged
by WHO. - Mod.CP
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, DVM, PhD- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural
Economics
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
-
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, DVM, PhD- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural
Economics
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
-
- http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
- Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Also my new website:
-
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
|
