Turkey stepped up efforts on Wednesday to halt an outbreak of deadly bird flu as a U.N. body warned that the virus risked becoming firmly established there and posed a serious threat to neighboring countries.
The virus has been found in birds in a third of Turkish provinces, killed at least two children and infected more than a dozen people.
The Turkish victims are the first human cases reported outside east Asia since the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus reemerged in 2003. Two more people in China have died from H5N1, bringing the death toll there to five, as the country announced another outbreak in poultry.
Scientists fear H5N1, which is known to have killed 78 people, could mutate into a form that can spread easily between humans, leading to a pandemic.
Doctors from the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday there was no sign of human-to-human transmission in the Turkish outbreak.
However, experts from another U.N. body, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the virus risked becoming a constant problem in Turkey as it is in poultry in parts of Asia.
"The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 could become endemic in Turkey," FAO said in a statement.
Juan Lubroth, senior FAO animal health officer, said the virus may be spreading despite the measures already taken to combat it.
"Far more human and animal exposure to the virus will occur if strict containment does not isolate all known and unknown locations where the bird flu virus is currently present," he said, urging neighboring countries to be on high alert.
SPREAD OF VIRUS
The virus has infected birds in some 30 out of 81 provinces, including Turkey's key tourism region near the Aegean coast, Ankara and the business hub Istanbul. Authorities have stepped up the culling of poultry, with more than 300,000 birds killed since December 26.
The WHO has said that human victims have contracted the disease from close contact with infected poultry.
"There is no transmission from human to human so far with a mutation of the virus. We are not there at the moment, but it is the responsibility for the WHO to look at this," WHO European Regional Director Marc Danzon said in Ankara.
The WHO said it was not clear why so many people had been infected in Turkey so quickly, saying it needed more tests before it could be certain.
Dr. Guenael Rodier, head of the WHO mission to Turkey, said migratory birds crossing Turkey were a likely factor.
"In the future we will probably see some other cases in humans but then we will see less and less cases," he said.
More than 70 people are suspected of having bird flu and are being tested.
In eastern city of Van, where some 40 people are being treated for suspected bird flu, locals complained that officials had failed to take away chickens running freely in the roads where children play.
"I'm worried for our children. I have been calling people for three days asking them to take the chickens away," Cengiz Isik, a 34-year-old waiter, told Reuters.
The authorities have ordered doctors from large cities to be sent to eastern Turkey, which has been worst hit by the virus and where there are not enough doctors.
To reduce the risk of the spread of the virus patients will be carried in different ambulances from other family members, and the clothes of health workers and their vehicles will be disinfected regularly.
Two teenagers died last week from bird flu in eastern Turkey -- the first reported deaths from the virus outside China and Southeast Asia. Their dead sister is also a suspected victim and hundreds of Turks have rushed to hospitals for bird flu tests. <<
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