Tragedy struck a Turkish mother as her three young children died one after another from bird flu in less than a week. Now, her youngest child, 6-year-old Hasan, is hospitalized. The cause was that the children had been playing with the head of a chicken that had died from the flu.
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Neighbors of the Kocyigit family attending the funeral of the three children who died from bird flu |
The horror of bird flu has engulfed a small town at the foot of a snow-covered mountain in western Turkey, near the Iranian border. The Kocyigit family has witnessed the deaths of three of their children. First, 14-year-old Mehmet Ali died on Sunday. Then, his 15-year-old sister Fatma passed away on Thursday, and now 11-year-old Hulya was buried next to her siblings just a day later. All the children exhibited symptoms of high fever, coughing, and throat bleeding. The youngest, 6-year-old Hasan, is still being treated in the hospital but is showing signs of recovery and is no longer on a ventilator.
Meanwhile, villagers, terrified, are rushing to take their children to the hospital at the first sign of any symptoms. Initial investigations indicate that the cause of death was due to the children playing with the head of a chicken that had died from the flu, tossing it around like a ball throughout the house.
Test results from the UK confirm that the Kocyigit children were infected with bird flu, but it remains unclear whether the strain responsible is H5N1. If confirmed, these would be the first fatalities outside the Southeast Asian outbreak.
Another Turkish child, Yusuf Tunc, has also been confirmed to carry the virus, but experts are unsure if he is connected to the Kocyigit children. Currently, there are about 24 other individuals in Turkey showing flu-like symptoms.
Turkey’s Ministry of Health has reported that more than 5,000 doses of Tamiflu have been sent to the affected area, and five ventilators are on their way to the bird flu treatment hospital in Van. Since the end of last year, approximately 14,000 birds in western and southwestern Turkey have been culled.
Mỹ Linh (according to AFP)
