Preliminary Tests Detect Bird Flu In One
More Northern Kurdistan Village
AFP-Feb 12, 2007- Preliminary tests have
detected bird flu among poultry in another village in southeastern Turkey
(Northern Kurdistan) after the presence of the potentially H5N1 virus was
confirmed last week in the region, the agriculture ministry said.
Tests done on three dead chicken taken from the
village of Akcayir in the mainly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir "have come out
positive. Detailed laboratory analyses are underway," said a ministry statement.
A spokeswoman for the ministry said that it was
not yet clear what strain of bird flu had affected poultry in the region.
The village and five nearby hamlets were placed
under quarantine and the culling of animals had already commenced, the statement
said.
The H5N1 virus, which claimed four lives in
Turkey a year ago, resurfaced last week in the village of Bogazkoy in the
neighboring province of Batman.
The health ministry said Monday that three
people, who were hospitalised on the suspicion that they might have contracted
the disease, have tested negative for the virus.
The two women, aged 68 and 33, and a
three-year-old boy from Bogazkoy were put under observation at the weekend in a
hospital in nearby Diyarbakir city.
"They all tested negative," an official from
the ministry's press service told AFP. "There is no-one currently in hospital on
suspicion of bird flu."
Four children from Bogazkoy who were
hospitalised after the outbreak was confirmed in the village on Thursday also
tested negative at the weekend.
A 10-kilometre (six-mile) quarantine zone has
been imposed around Bogazkoy, covering three neighbouring villages, and all
poultry in the area have been slaughtered.
Two World Health Organisation (WHO) experts
visited the quarantine zone on Sunday to see the measures on the ground, local
sub-governor Tarkan Keskin told Anatolia news agency.
Medical screening of people in 48 other
villages in the region continued Monday, he said, adding that the authorities
would hold a meeting with village elders to raise awareness about the disease.
A major bird flu outbreak in Turkey killed four
teenagers in January last year in a remote region near the border with Iran,
from where the virus quickly spread to more than a half of the country's 81
provinces.
