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Turkey, the country seen as the meeting point of East and West, is now being popularly perceived as the gateway into Europe for the deadly strain of the avian flu, but travellers need only keep away from animal markets and eat well-cooked poultry.
Only yesterday, Belgium and all of Europe were gripped for hours until a man feared to be suffering from bird flu tested negative after falling ill upon his return from the Turkish province worst hit by the disease.
The man had undergone tests for the H5N1 avian flu after he checked himself into a hospital on Friday. He had returned the previous day from Turkey where he had traveled in the eastern province of Van.
The Maltese health ministry, like its other European counterparts, says it is still safe to travel to Turkey, the first country outside South East Asia to witness human deaths from the virus, as long as travellers avoid contact with live poultry and eat well-cooked food.
More than 300,000 birds have been culled in Turkey so far, and Juan Labroth, the health officer at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, has said that bird flu could spread to other parts of Europe. The virus has already been detected in fowl in the Aegean port city of Izmir, and in other birds at the resort of Kusadasi, near the Greek island of Samos.
The bird flu virus can be transmitted from birds to humans through close contact with infected birds but there is practically no risk of infection from eating properly cooked poultry.
Since January 2004, a total of 144 human cases of the H5N1 infection have been reported from six countries: Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and China.
World health experts fear the bird flu virus may eventually mutate into a new virus that can be transmitted from human to human leading to a global pandemic. The World Health Organisation estimates that a pandemic can affect up to 25 per cent of the population.
Yet the occurrence of human cases of bird flu in Turkey has not brought any changes to the WHO pandemic alert status which remains at Phase 3.
The health division in Malta is closely following developments in Turkey and is in close contact with the World Health Organisation and the European Centre for Disease Control to take all measures that may be indicated.
In view of the outbreak of bird flu in Turkey, the Food and Veterinary Regulation Division announced last week that imports from Turkey of untreated feathers have been suspended.
Since the disease is likely to have spread to Turkey by migratory birds, the presence of the disease in neighbouring countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq and Syria cannot be excluded.
The veterinary division has also stopped the importation of untreated feathers from these third countries.
The bird flu virus appears to be spreading rapidly westward in Turkey. Last Sunday, three people in the Ankara region tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The Ankara cases are alarming because bird flu in humans had not been previously reported in that part of the country, some 1,000 kilometres from the eastern town of Dogubeyazit where three children died from the virus last week.
They were the first human victims of the flu outside East Asia.
Turkey’s agriculture ministry spokesman Faruk Demirel confirmed to news agencies that samples from a chicken found dead in the district of Kucukcekmece, on Istanbul’s European side, tested positive for avian influenza.
Iran closed one of its border crossings to Turkey on Sunday in a bid to stop the disease from spreading.
Russia’s chief epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko warned his countrymen of travelling to Turkey.
The EU meanwhile continues its complete ban adopted in October 2005 on any imports from Turkey of live birds and poultry products.
But the current patchwork of preparedness in the EU would mean that an outbreak in an ill-equipped country could quickly spread and would be more likely to mature into a human-to-human strain of the disease.
Francesco Frangialli, the secretary-general of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, said it was early to talk about a crisis in tourism in Turkey, or any other country, but gave warning that holidaymakers must be prepared for the virus to spread.
“Despite more cases of bird flu among people being reported, no transmission between humans has been detected. No tourists have been affected, and we believe the current situation does not warrant any form of restriction or other discouragement to travel to any destination,” said Frangialli.
Major medical journals also carried some comforting news this week, suggesting that while the avian flu virus may travel from poultry to people more commonly than previously believed, it is not expected to be as lethal as previously thought.
A team from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine that contact with sick or dead birds may result in a large number of people infected with a mild form of the virus.
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