WHO has been informed of 18 cases of bird flu infection in Turkey, but a hospital official in the city of Van, near Dogubayazit, said at least 30 people are being treated for avian flu-like symptoms.


At the request of the Turkish government, WHO has dispatched a team of five experts to investigate how the disease broke out and how it can be stopped from spreading further.

The latest deaths -- which early tests done in Turkey indicate were caused by the H5N1 strain -- are the first human cases to be discovered outside the Far East, where at least 70 people have died of bird flu. Samples have also been flown to a British lab, where they will be given defeinitive testing for H5N1 and signs as to whether the illness was transmitted between humans.

The fact that only children have died suggests they were likely infected by chickens, said Bernhard Ruf, a respected infectologist in Leipzig, Germany. "Generally, children are considered virus carriers -- they quickly pick up normal influenza viruses and pass them on in high concentrations," he said. If the disease had spread from human to human, he said, it is likely more adults would have been infected. 

That, however, is a cold comfort for worried parents, who have flooded the local hospital in Dogubayazit to get their children tested for the illness. "We're full," one of the hospital's doctors, Huseyin Yurtsever, told reporters. "Everyone's asking if they've been infected." Yurtsever said he had referred all suspicious cases to the university hospital in Van, the nearest large city.

As fear mounted over the westward spread of the disease, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan encouraged people to give any hidden chickens, turkeys and geese in the flu-striken region to health workers, who are culling them to stop the disease's further spread. "We have a problem of education, which we have to overcome quickly," Erdogan said. More than 7,000 birds have already been culled in the region. And at the Muslim country's mosques, Erdogan asked imams to explain to people how they can protect themselves from bird flu during Friday prayers. Government officials are going house to house in Dogubayazit to collect any remaining poultry. They also cautioned children to stay away from animals -- some, apparently, began collecting chickens because they thought the government action had been a game.

Still, the government says it expects only isolated cases of human infection. "We do not expect it (the disease) to spread to a lot of people," Health Minister Recep Akdag told Turkish CNN. "We are not expecting an epidemic in Turkey. But there is a risk for people who come into close contact with fowl."

WHO is also expected to take an active role -- providing measures that can be used to fight bird flu including better communication and exchange of information, tests, and the immediate culling of poultry stocks in the affected areas.

The H5N1 virus, known to kill about 50 percent of humans exposed to it, can currently be transmitted only from birds to humans. But international health officials fear it could mutate  into a form will spread between humans, thus igniting a deadly and highly contagious pandemic. That hasn't happened yet. But the risk of mutation increases with each new human infection. So the main priority for Turkish officials and WHO now is to take every possible measure to prevent further human infections.