01.01.2006

Six people in eastern Turkey, four of them children, are being tested for possible avian influenza, the state Anatolian news agency said on Sunday. The agency said a 35-year-old woman and a five-year old child had been sent to hospital on Sunday in the city of Van, near the Iranian border. Earlier, four children aged between 6 and 15 and from the same family, were admitted to the Van hospital after exhibiting flu symptoms and failing to respond to antibiotics, the Hurriyet newspaper said.All six patients come from the district of Dogubayazit, a remote, rural area near Turkey's border with Armenia. Anatolia quoted local officials as saying they had banned all transportation of poultry in Dogubayazit and that culling of birds would begin shortly as a precautionary measure. Turkey, which lies on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread the virus, has suffered two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease in the past three months. No humans are known to have contracted the disease there, although the six from Dogubayazit are not the first to undergo such checks. The Zaman daily said authorities in Erzurum province, also in eastern Turkey, have culled more than 700 poultry as a precautionary measure after 15 chickens died "in suspicious circumstances". The reports from Van and Erzurum came days after Turkey's Agriculture Ministry announced an outbreak of the disease in chickens in Igdir province, also near the Armenian border, and ordered a precautionary culling of nearly 400 birds.