Two more Turks beat bird flu
2006-01-22 20:54
Van - Turkish authorities took hope on Sunday that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu could be brought under control, after two toddlers were discharged from an Ankara hospital.
A third child was steadily improving from the lethal virus.
The Canak brothers, Muharrem, 5, and Iskender, 2, left Ankara's Numune Hospital on Saturday night to return to their home in Beypazari.
Four people have died of the virus in Turkey since the current outbreak began in December.
They Canak brothers owe their recovery partly to their parents, who immediately took the children to a hospital two weeks ago as soon as they saw them playing with a discarded pair of gloves an uncle had worn to handle a brace of ducks dead of avian influenza.
They became the seventh and eighth patients cured of bird flu among the 21 cases confirmed in Turkey so far.
Authorities have drawn hope from the statistics, saying they compare favourably with the mortality rate from bird flu in eastern Asia, where it has claimed about 80 lives - or 58% of all confirmed cases - since 2003.
"In my opinion, the virus is probably mutating in a manner favourable to humans," said Van hospital's chief physician, Huseyin Avni Sahin.
All four who died here from the disease - the first victims outside China and Southeast Asia - were treated at Sahin's hospital, where four more children are currently undergoing treatment, including five-year-old Muhammed Ozcan.
The boy, whose 16-year-old sister Fatma was the last person to die of H5N1 in Turkey on January 15, spent several days hovering between life and death and is now steadily improving, despite having been brought late to the hospital.
The Van hospital has been at the centre of the war against bird flu in Turkey since the first cases arrived here late in December from the remote town of Dogubeyazit, near Turkey's border with Iran.
"We gained a lot of experience" since then, Sahin explained.
"We react much faster now and put the patients under medication much faster than we used to.
"If the virus does not mutate into a form transmissible between humans, I am convinced that we will overcome the crisis," he said.