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Turkey-Kurdistan: Second child dies from
bird flu in Van
5.1.2006
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ISTANBUL, Jan 5 - A second Turkey Kurdish child
from the same family died from bird flu on Thursday
at a hospital in eastern Turkey (Northern
Kurdistan) where she was being treated, a regional
governor said.
Her brother, 14-year-old Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, had
already died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu,
officials said on Wednesday, confirming the first
human death from the disease outside China and
southeast Asia.
"We lost Fatma Kocyigit this morning," Niyazi
Tanilir, governor in the eastern province of Van,
said on the CNN Turk news channel. Newspapers said
Fatma was 15-years-old. She died around 6:30 a.m.
(0430 GMT).
He said one patient was in a critical condition
whereas another patient was in a less serious
condition.
A top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said
the boy had probably died from H5N1, which would
mark a dramatic shift westwards for the deadly
disease to the threshold of Europe.
Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag gave no specific
details on the boy's death but said samples had been
sent to the WHO and Britain for more tests.
If the boy's death is officially confirmed as being
the result of H5N1, it would be the first outside
eastern Asia where more than 70 people have been
killed by the disease since 2003.
The virus remains hard for people to catch, but
there are fears it could mutate into a form easily
transmitted among humans. Experts say a pandemic
among humans could kill millions around the globe
and cause massive economic losses.
Reuters
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