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Lone bird flu survivor home
10/01/2006 07:40 - (SA)
Dogubayazit - Marifet Kocyigit was finally able to hug her only surviving child, days after burying three children, the victims of a bird flu outbreak in eastern Turkey.
The Kurdish-speaking mother said: "This is my whole world." She was speaking after she received her six-year-old son, Ali Hasan, on the doorstep of her house. "It's like I'm forgetting everything."
The family said the little boy didn't yet know that his older brother Mehmet, 14, and his two sisters, Fatma, 15, and Hulya, 11, were dead.
His uncle, Uncle Mustafa Kocyigit said the three children had been seen playing with the head of a sick chicken, from which they were believed to have contracted the virus.
Boy discharged from hospital
Ali Hasan didn't contract bird flu, but had been admitted to hospital along with the other three since December 31.
He was released from the hospital in Van on Monday afternoon and was brought 200km over difficult, snowy roads to his home in Dogubayazit, the last Turkish town before the Iranian border.
Mehmet and Fatma became the first confirmed bird flu fatalities outside eastern Asia, where 74 people had been killed by H5N1 since 2003.
Hulya also died of suspected bird flu, but a World Health Organisation lab had yet to confirm H5N1 as the cause.
Officials feared that if the virus mutated to a form easily passable among humans, it could create a deadly pandemic.
So far, the disease had been confirmed only in people who had been in close contact with sick birds.
Snow-covered hill
Their 40-year-old father, Zeki, said: "The children really loved the chickens. That's why they took care of them."
The father said he hadn't heard of the bird flu virus before the outbreak in Dogubayazit, though a similar outbreak in October in a village in the west of the country led to the culling of more than 10 000 birds there.
At the family's house on the crest of a snow-covered hill, the father, mother, three uncles, an aunt and the village mayor all waited for the child to arrive.
When he did, he was immediately snatched up into his mother's arms, and he smiled as they exchanged kisses.
Marifet started to speak about her other children: "The other ones I lost...", but broke down before she could finish.
Hasan Kocyigit, one of the uncles, said she would faint and yelled at those gathered around to give her space. Ali Hasan smiled and hummed a tune, but didn't say a word.
- AP
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