TURKISH health authorities first detected the bird flu virus in October 2005 when turkeys in the north-western part of the country were reported sick. It was established that they were carrying the same strain of H5N1 bird flu that was isolated in August 2005 from poultry in Siberia, which meant that the deadly strain had reached Europe as feared.

Evidence of poultry infected with bird flu appeared at the beginning of 2006 when a farmer in the eastern Turkish town of Diyadin reported that almost all of his birds had died simultaneously. The local health and veterinary institutions did not take the report seriously and the farmer and his family ate some of the birds. According to the farmer, the rest of the dead birds had been “thrown over the fence where stray dogs might have taken them away”. 

It took local authorities several days to realise that the threat of the bird flu was serious and on January 7 the first cases were officially reported to the local media. 

According to experts, the slow response helped bird flu to take hold in the vast eastern reaches of the country. It allowed the disease to move from village to village unchecked, and in the past week from bird to human. After the first reported cases, the situation developed intensively and on January 17 the Turkish Bird Flu National Co-ordination Centre issued a declaration saying that the total number of Turkish cities suspected of harbouring the bird flu virus had reached 29, including the capital Ankara and the city of Istanbul. The total number of destroyed birds suspected of carrying the bird flu virus rose to 931 000.

According to Juan Lubroth, expert in contagious diseases at The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, people in Europe should not panic about the bird flu epidemic. Bird flu was discovered in 13 different regions out of 83, and the deadly H5N1 strain was detected in only one of those regions. The only thing known to the authorities so far was that the other cases belonged to a virus named H5.

On January 16, Van Yuzuncu Yil University (VYU) School of Medicine Research Hospital reported that 12-year-old Fatma Ozcan had died from the bird flu virus, bringing the bird flu victim toll in Turkey to four, all of them children. The Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan tried to reassure Turkish consumers and on January 17 released a media statement saying that it was safe to eat chicken despite the outbreak of bird flu in the country.

According to Klaus Stohr, co-ordinator of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) influenza programmes, the disproportionate levels of human and animal cases in Turkey suggested only two possibilities. Either the virus in Turkey was a new strain that was more easily picked up by humans, or it was the same strain as the one in previous outbreaks in South East Asia, but had been circulating for some time undetected. Stohr also said that it was less likely that the virus had mutated to a more virulent form, as there was no increase in cases among people who had been in contact with the first children who died from the disease in Van province. “If we were dealing with a virus of a different characteristic, with higher transmissibility between humans, we would have first seen more cases among health care workers, among the playmates of these children, more cases in the village, than what we are seeing now.” It was more likely the disease was more widespread than thought in birds and that surveillance had not picked this up. However, Stohr stressed that there was “currently too little data” to rule out a mutation in the virus. 

Romania: ready for a bird flu sequel

Romania already had an encounter with the bird flu virus last autumn and the country still remembers the panic caused by the news of the outbreak. The first cases of bird flu in Romania were found on October 7 2005 and were confirmed to be the same lethal H5N1 strain which has caused the deaths of over 70 people in Asia.

Romanian authorities, together with the help of the European Union, managed to quarantine the eastern region of the country where tests confirmed Europe’s first appearance of a deadly strain. The virus has been found at 23 sites in the Danube delta, and more than 120 000 birds have been culled since the first discovery of the virus. So far, Romania has not detected any new cases of bird flu.

The outbreak in Turkey has caused more concern in local Romanian media, since the country has experience bird flu hysteria before. Authorities claimed that they have launched a contingency action plan to prevent the spread of bird flu within the country. The state has 500 000 anti-viral doses, of which it has distributed 300 000. A further one million are on order. It has about 15 000 capsules of the anti-viral Tamiflu vaccine. Special measures enforced in areas previously affected by bird flu include a cull of house birds, quarantine, vaccines for inhabitants, disinfectant spraying of vehicles and a ban on activities like fishing.

On January 13, 2006 Gheorghe Flutur, Romania’s agricultural minister, said that Romania had taken all necessary measures to prevent the spread of bird flu in the region. “Bird flu in Romania is under control,”  Flutur told a news conference at the International Green Week food and farm fair in Berlin.  There has also been extensive co-operation with Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria, he said, explaining that the area in Romania where bird flu appeared was very close to these countries.

This article used information from the following websites:
www.iht.com, www.zaman.com, www.expatia.com, www.newscientist.com.