Turkey PM backs bird flu cull as cases mount

By Umit Bektas

DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan appealed to Turks not to hide poultry to escape bird
flu culls, while U.N. health experts on Saturday confirmed two
more children in Turkey had the deadly strain of the virus.

Residents in eastern Turkey, where three children died of
the disease this week, pleaded for more help.

“We apply to the officials but they don’t come to take our
chickens. I cannot bring them myself. I have no money,” a
middle-aged man said in Dogubayazit, the town where the dead
children lived, near the Armenian and Iranian borders.

A Reuters reporter saw chickens still walking on the
streets, and some escaping just before they were 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, CNN Turk reported.

He urged people not to hide their poultry.

“Peoples’ losses will be compensated. Nobody will be
allowed to suffer losses,” he told reporters late on Friday.

“We should not panic. Our people should not be making
efforts to hide chickens, turkeys or geese.”

In Geneva, World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman
Maria Cheng said: “A 5-year-old and an 8-year-old have been
confirmed with the H5N1 virus, these are children that are
already hospitalized.”

She said they were from the same region where the three
others died from bird flu this week.

A team of WHO doctors who flew to Turkey to investigate the
first human bird flu fatalities on the threshold of Europe were
stuck in Ankara due to fog.

The European Commission said its laboratory at Weybridge,
England, had confirmed that the strain of bird flu found in
Turkey is the H5N1 form.

SEVERED HEADS OF BIRDS

The virus killed 74 people in east Asia before it claimed
the lives of the three children from the same family in eastern
Turkey. Some of the victims had played with the severed heads
of infected birds, doctors said.

Experts plan to study the outbreak for signs the virus was
passing from person to person, mutating into a form easily
transmitted among humans. Experts say a pandemic among humans
could kill millions and cause massive economic losses.

Referring to the latest human cases in Turkey, U.N. bird
flu coordinator Dr. David Nabarro, told CNN television: “Thus
far we think this is influenza coming from birds into the human
population and we have no evidence yet of change that takes us
closer to the pandemic that we are all looking out for.”

Turkey’s Ministry of Environment and Forests banned hunting
of all wild birds throughout the country and asked hunters to
avoid contact with them.

Despite government efforts, residents complain that even
after they ask for assistance, chickens are not being taken
away for days. Some say they do not have money to pay for
trucks to bring poultry to the city center for culling.

POULTRY TRADE NORMAL

Four members of a family from Sanliurfa, near the Syrian
border, who fell ill after eating a sick chicken, were in
hospital for observation, an official said.

A family of seven people, including five children, from the
eastern town of Ardahan, was sent to hospital in Istanbul on
Saturday, also on bird flu suspicions.

Elsewhere, people say hospitals are overcrowded and doctors
do not examine and treat them adequately, sending them home
after brief examinations.

In some areas, trade in poultry continued as normal and
people expressed doubts the disease even exists.

A correspondent working for Reuters in Diyarbakir in
southeastern Turkey said people still slaughtered chickens on
the streets in front of children.

“We don’t have bird flu in this city,” a man who bought a
turkey from a street seller said, showing the bird to
cameramen.

A poultry seller complained the government pays 7-9 lira
($5.25-$6.75) compensation for a turkey, which is normally sold
for 30 lira in the market, and that is why they do not want to
give their poultry to officials for culling.

“These bird flu rumors are produced intentionally to raise
lamb sales. There is no problem with our poultry,” a street
seller said.

(Additional reporting by Selcuk Gokoluk, Mustafa
Yukselbaba, and Pilar Wolfsteller in Zurich)