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A third sibling in Turkey dies from bird flu

As fear moves through a poor town, 20 people in the region are hospitalized with flulike symptoms.

DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey - The mother wailed as the white shroud bearing the body of her 11-year-old daughter was lowered into a simple grave Friday, her third child to die in less than a week from bird flu. An imam in a surgical mask read prayers.

Panic over bird flu has spread across this town near the Iranian border, with scared villagers bringing children to the hospital.

"Everyone wonders if they've got it," said Dr. Huseyin Yurtsever, who treated the children of Marifet and Zeki Kocyigit before sending them to a larger hospital in the city of Van, with high fevers, coughing and bleeding in their throats. The doctor said the children had played with the heads of chickens that died of bird flu.

Mehmet Ali, 14, died first, on Sunday. Then, his 15-year-old sister, Fatma, died Thursday. Hulya, 11, died Friday and was buried beside her siblings.

A fourth Kocyigit child, 6-year-old Ali Hasan, is hospitalized in Van, but has improved and is no longer on a respirator.

A British laboratory confirmed the Kocyigit teenagers suffered from bird flu, but tests have not been completed to determine if it was the H5N1 strain, the Turkish Health Ministry reported.

The strain has killed more than 70 people in East Asia since 2003. Authorities are monitoring H5N1 for fear it could mutate into a form easily passed among humans.

The British lab also confirmed another child, Yusuf Tunc, tested positive for bird flu, the Health Ministry said. It was unclear whether Tunc, reported to be in serious condition in Van, had any link to the Kocyigit children.

Separately, the Health Ministry said late Friday that yet another patient, who was hospitalized in Van, tested positive in preliminary tests for bird flu.

Nineteen other people were hospitalized in Van with flulike symptoms, while five were hospitalized in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

Officials apparently did not report the bird flu outbreak in Dogubayazit last month, despite indications that birds in the vicinity had contracted the disease.

"This is taking us by surprise. We thought the chance to have a human case was very small," said Joseph Domenech, chief of animal health at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Office in Rome.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified January 7, 2006, 01:25:29]