Four more villages in southeastern Turkey quarantined over bird flu fear
13/2/2007 17:44
Four more villages in southeastern Turkey have been quarantined over bird
flu fears after the authorities confirmed last week the new outbreak of the
virus in the region, local newspaper Zaman reported on its website
yesterday.
Mustafa Kayhan, the head of the agriculture department in the
southeastern province of Diyarbakir, was quoted as saying that the village of
Akcay and three nearby hamlets in Silvan town were placed under quarantine after
some chickens died in a farm there.
"There is a suspicion of bird flu,"
Kayhan said, adding that samples from dead chickens were sent to a laboratory in
Elazig province for analyses yesterday.
Last week, the Turkish authorities
confirmed that the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus have been found in the village of
Bogazkoy in Diyarbakir's neighboring province of Batman, just over a year after
the virus claimed the lives of four children in the region.
The Health
Ministry said yesterday that three people with flu- like symptoms, aged between
68 and three years old, have tested negative for the virus.
Earlier, four
children from bird flu-stricken Bogazkoy village who were hospitalized on
suspicion that they might have contracted the disease, also have tested negative
for the virus, the ministry said.
No human cases have yet been reported since
the outbreak, officials said.
Local media reported that the authorities have
imposed a 10-km quarantine zone around Bogazkoy and nearby villages and culled
more than 1,300 chicken, turkeys and ducks in the area.
Bird flu was firstly
found in Turkey in October, 2005 when a total of 1,800 turkeys died in a farm in
Kiziksa village of Manyas.
Last year, four children from the east of the
country died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu after having contact with chickens
carrying the virus.
Xinhua
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