Re: New suspect case (BF) in Konya (Feb 16th)
Re: New suspect case (BF) in Konya (Feb 16th)
Second person tested for bird flu in Turkey <!-- END HEADLINE -->
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A second person has been hospitalised in Turkey with suspected bird flu as authorities announced that the virus had affected poultry in four new locations in the mainly Kurdish southeast, a news agency has reported.
A 27-year-old man was admitted to hospital in the central province of Konya late Thursday
after coming into contact with wild ducks and falling sick, the doctor treating him told the Anatolia news agency Friday.
"The preliminary
symptoms look like bird flu. We have sent blood samples for testing" in capital Ankara, Ibrahim Erayman said.
So far, there have been no reports of suspicious poultry deaths in Konya that could point to the presence of the bird flu virus.
A 67-year-old woman was hospitalised Wednesday with suspected bird flu in Diyarbakir province in the southeast where the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus resurfaced last week in poultry.
The agriculture ministry said in a statement late Thursday that bird flu had been detected in
four new locations: the
hamlet of Bolukcayir as well as the
villages of Kocalar and Akbaba in Diyarbakir province, and in a
neighbourhood in the city of Batman in the province bearing the same name.
It said further analyses were underway to determine the strain present.
Last week, the ministry confirmed that the potentially lethal strain of H5N1 had infected poultry in the
village of Bogazkoy and the
hamlet of Esentepe in Batman province as well as the
village of Akcayir in Diyarbakir.
Authorities have imposed a quarantine area around all the villages, begun slaughtering poultry and carrying out health checks among residents.
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.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2007021...y&printer=1;_ylt=Ah0Vt.QKhNkzELPMHjszYI6KOrgF