BRUSSELS, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Fears of bird flu in Europe mounted Thursday as a Turkish girl became the
second victim of the highly contagious avian influenza strain outside east Asia.
The European Union has sent experts to the city of Van in eastern Turkey to
assess the situation and taken samples from both the deceased children and the dead birds, the European Commission said Thursday. The tests have been sent to a British laboratory to confirm the presence of the virus.
Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag Wednesday said the two children,
who are from Dogubeyazit on the Iranian border, had tested positive for bird
flu. The 14 year old boy, who died Sunday, was the first casualty of the
lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu outside south-east Asia, where it has killed
more than 70 people and wiped out millions of birds.
Several other members of the family are still hospitalized after having had
contact with infected birds, probably through eating infected chicken.
Turkish poultry has been banned by the European Union since October, when the first signs of the disease surfaced in western Turkey.
