Thursday, February 15, 2007
Woman hospitalised in Turkey over bird flu outbreak
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (AFP) - Turkish authorities are testing a woman for bird flu in southeastern Turkey where the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus resurfaced last week in poultry, a hospital official has said.
Kevser Trak, 67, from the village of Doluca in Batman province, fell ill around a week ago and was admitted to hospital in the neigbouring province of Diyarbakir late Wednesday, the hospital’s chief doctor Birsel Bac told AFP.
Blood samples from the woman have been sent to capital Ankara for testing, he added Thursday.
The patient’s village is very close to the hamlet of Esentepe, one of three villages in the region where authorities have confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus.
Authorities have imposed a quarantine area around all the villages, begun slaughtering poultry and carrying out health checks among residents.
Seven other people were briefly hospitalised under suspicion of having contracted the disease, before being released after their tests came out negative.
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.