Associated Press Writer
AP Graphic BIRD FLU
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Doc: 00027404 DB: research–d–2006–1 Date: Fri Jan 6 19:38:44 2006
Alert Categories: agr law med
Profiler Categories: Agriculture Law Medical
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Family loses three children to bird flu in poor Turkish town
Eds: LEADS with 22 grafs to update with another person in Van testing positive. Pickup 23rd graf pvs 'As teams ...'.
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AP Graphic BIRD FLU
By BENJAMIN HARVEY
Associated Press Writer
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey (AP) – The mother wailed as the white shroud bearing the body of her 11-year-old daughter was lowered into a simple grave Friday, her third child to die in less than a week from bird flu. An imam in a surgical mask and rubber gloves read prayers.
Panic over bird flu has spread across this town beneath the snow-covered mountains of eastern Turkey near the Iranian border, with scared villagers bringing their children to the hospital at the first sign of any illness.
"Everyone wonders if they've got it," said Dr. Huseyin Yurtsever, who treated the children of Marifet and Zeki Kocyigit before sending them to a larger hospital in the city of Van, with high fevers, coughing and bleeding in their throats. The doctor said the children had played with the heads of chickens that died of bird flu.
Zeki Kocyigit said that when he took his four ailing children to Van, "It was really hard for them to breathe."
Mehmet Ali, 14, died first, on Sunday. Then, his 15-year-old sister, Fatma, died Thursday. Hulya, 11, died Friday and was buried beside her siblings.
A fourth Kocyigit child, 6-year-old Ali Hasan, is hospitalized in Van, but he has improved considerably and is no longer on a respirator.
"We're suffering," said an uncle, Hasan Kocyigit.
A British laboratory confirmed the Kocyigit teenagers suffered from bird flu, but tests have not been completed to determine if it was the H5N1 strain, the Turkish Health Ministry reported. If so, they would be the first people outside of East Asia to die in the latest outbreak of the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The strain has killed more than 70 people in East Asia since 2003. Authorities are closely monitoring H5N1 for fear it could mutate into a form easily passed among humans and spark a pandemic. Birds in Turkey, Romania, Russia and Croatia have recently tested positive for H5N1.
The World Health Organization also is conducting tests to check whether the bird flu cases resulted from human-to-human transmission, spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said in Geneva. Results are expected in a few days, she said.
The British lab also confirmed that another child, Yusuf Tunc, tested positive for bird flu, the Health Ministry said. It was unclear whether Tunc, who was reported to be hospitalized in serious condition in Van, had any connection to the Kocyigit children.
Separately, the Health Ministry said late Friday that yet another patient, who was hospitalized in Van, tested positive for bird flu according to preliminary tests carried out at a Turkish lab in Istanbul.
Apart from Tunc, 19 other people were hospitalized in Van with flu-like symptoms, while five were hospitalized in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.
Yurtsever said the Kocyigit children most likely contracted the virus while playing with the heads of dead chickens. The children had reportedly tossed the chicken heads like balls inside their house.
Bird flu does not easily infect humans, and only those in close contact with poultry are at risk. In Dogubayazit, 750 miles east of Ankara, that's nearly everyone.
On the main streets of this town of 56,000 people, cars and trucks compete with carts bearing live animals and with flocks of sheep. The people of Dogubayazit are accustomed to living near their animals, and often it is the children who deal most with them. The people have seen their animals sicken before, but until now never thought it could put them in danger.
"They knew the animals were sick, but who knew it would kill them?" Hasan Kocyigit said.
Turks across the country hunted for the influenza medicine in pharmacies, while in the eastern part of Turkey, even simple gloves and masks were in high demand. Hospitals and clinics in eastern and southeastern parts of the country, where some H5N1 bird flu cases have been confirmed in fowl, were overwhelmed with people suffering from ordinary human flu.
The Health Ministry said more than 5,000 boxes of the antiviral drug Tamiflu were sent to eastern Turkey and five artificial respiration machines were also sent to the hospital in Van.
Less than three months ago, Turkey tackled a large outbreak of bird flu in a village in the west. No one there got sick, and the country was praised for its effective response.
Things are different in the eastern Turkey. Education is key to controlling the spread of the virus, but that is hampered by poverty and the inability of many in Dogubayazit, a largely Kurdish town, to speak Turkish.
Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker said authorities have killed 14,000 fowl in 10 separate areas in eastern and southeastern Turkey.
As teams dressed in protective suits went from backyard to backyard in Dogubayazit rounding up poultry for destruction, mourners trekked up the hill to the simple, concrete Kocyigit home. They took off their shoes before entering to sit with Marifet, the grieving mother.
Hutfetin Kocyigit, another uncle of the dead children, echoed the complaints of his neighbors that the local hospital was ineffective and the one in Van was too far away – 120 miles over a sometimes barely visible road through a craggy chain of mountains that includes Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark is said to have landed after the Biblical great flood.
"If there were a hospital here, if they could have diagnosed it, maybe it would have been different," he said.
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Doc: 00038254 DB: research–d–2006–1 Date: Mon Jan 9 17:36:16 2006
Alert Categories: chl med
Profiler Categories: Children Medical
*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8F1DIFG3 01-09-2006 16:44:30 BC-Bird Flu-Last Child:Only surviving chil
aD8F1EAO09 01-09-2006 17:36:16*F BC-Bird Flu-Last Child, 1st Ld-Writethru:O
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Only surviving child of Turkish family hit by bird flu arrives home
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By BENJAMIN HARVEY
Associated Press Writer
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey (AP) – Marifet Kocyigit was finally able to hug her only surviving child Monday, days after burying a son and two daughters, the victims of a bird flu outbreak in eastern Turkey.
Six-year-old Ali Hasan did not contract the deadly virus, but had been hospitalized since Dec. 31 while tests were performed. He was released from the hospital in Van on Monday and traveled 120 miles over difficult, snowy roads to his home in Dogubayazit, a largely Kurdish town bordering Iran.
"This is my whole world," a relative translated the Kurdish-speaking mother as saying after she received her 6-year-old son, Ali Hasan, on the doorstep of her house. "It's like I'm forgetting everything."
The little boy doesn't yet know that his 14-year-old brother, Mehmet, and his two sisters, Fatma, 15, and Hulya, 11, are dead, the family said.
The three children had been seen playing with a sick chicken, from which they are believed to have contracted the virus, uncle Mustafa Kocyigit said.
U.N. and Turkish authorities urged citizens to follow health guidelines for working with poultry and to keep children away from dead birds.
Mehmet and Fatma became the first confirmed fatalities from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu outside East Asia, where 74 people have been killed since 2003. Hulya also was believed to have died of bird flu, but a World Health Organization lab has yet to confirm the cause.
Turkey has reported 15 suspected or confirmed cases, including the three deaths.
WHO officials have said the Turkish victims appear to be catching the disease from infected domestic birds, the normal path of the disease, and not from each other. But they fear the virus could mutate to a form easily transmissible among humans and create a deadly pandemic.
"The children really loved the chickens," said their 40-year-old father, Zeki. "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.
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, wearing a white head scarf, started to speak about her other children: "The other ones I lost..." but she broke down before she could finish. Hasan Kocyigit, one of the uncles, expressed concern that mother 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.
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Doc: 00044900 DB: research–d–2006–1 Date: Tue Jan 10 20:43:54 2006
Alert Categories: law med sci
Profiler Categories: Law Medical Science
*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8F2075OB 01-10-2006 13:57:27 BC-Turkey-Deadly Kiss:Bird flu infects Tur
aD8F265MG0 01-10-2006 20:43:54*F BC-Turkey-Deadly Kiss, 1st Ld-Writethru:Bi
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Bird flu infects Turkish girl who loved – and kissed – her ailing chickens
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By BENJAMIN HARVEY
Associated Press Writer
VAN, Turkey (AP) – Sumeyya Mamuk considered the chickens in her backyard to be beloved pets. The 8-year-old girl fed them, petted them and took care of them. When they started to get sick and die, she hugged them and tenderly kissed them goodbye.
The next morning, her face and eyes were swollen and she had a high fever. Her father took her to a hospital, and five days later she was confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
"The chickens were sick. One had puffed up and she touched it. We told her not to. She loved chickens a lot," her father, Abdulkerim Mamuk, said of the second youngest of his eight children. "She held them in her arms."
Her oldest brother, Sadun, said Sumeyya loved animals and took care of puppies and kittens in Van's Yalim Erez neighborhood.
When her mother saw Sumeyya holding one of the dying chickens, she yelled at her and hit the girl to get her away.
Sumeyya began to cry. She wiped her tears with the hand she'd been using to comfort the dying chicken.
"She wiped her face," said her father, speaking in broken Turkish and wearing a leather jacket and a typical Kurdish headdress in their bright, clean home. "She started to swell. She had a really high fever."
Following a few tense days when her family worried if she would recover, Sumeyya's condition has improved due to quick treatment with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, said Dr. Huseyin Avni Sahin, chief physician at the Van 100th Year Hospital.
But at least two other children have died of the same virus in Turkey, and as of Tuesday, 15 people had tested positive for infection in preliminary tests. Many are children.
The disease also appears to be spreading.
In parts of the world where the virus has been deadly – until now only in East Asia – children like Sumeyya have been the worst hit.
"It was the same in Asia," said Dr. Guenael Rodier, a scientist with the World Health Organization who has been chasing the virus around the world. "It mainly occurred in family clusters of small size, and mainly in children."
Even if not animal lovers like Sumeyya, children in poor agricultural towns tend to be extremely comfortable with the animals they share their lives with. It has been particularly difficult to convince them that this proximity can now be dangerous.
In Dogubayazit, the Turkish town near the Iranian border where most of the current cases originated, children usually outnumbered workers in trying to round up chickens for culling. Boys and girls led cows and sheep down the main streets. As adult out-of-towners fled from terrifying dogs that snarled from nearly every backyard, little local children giggled.
As the H5N1 bird flu virus spreads, scientists monitoring it for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans say education on its dangers is crucial to fighting it. Rodier said his organization was considering implementing a program aimed solely at rural children.
"It's child behavior," he said. "They play with everything."
As for Sumeyya, she is expected to be released from the hospital and join her family and her other pets – dogs, cats and cows – in the next few days.
"She's gotten better," Sahin said. "In a few days, she'll be released."
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Doc: 00063913 DB: research–d–2006–1 Date: Sat Jan 14 05:19:45 2006
Alert Categories: agr law mun
Profiler Categories: Agriculture Law Municipal
*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
aD8F4D0G80 01-14-2006 05:19:45*F BC-Turkey-Goodbye Birds:Fight with bird fl
Copyright 2006 By The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Fight with bird flu portends permanent changes in Turkey's rural life
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By BENJAMIN HARVEY
Associated Press Writer
ARALIK, Turkey (AP) – No more tractors idling as ducks waddle across a dirt road. No more turkeys gobbling in open fields. No more fetching fresh eggs from the backyard coop. No more roosters crowing at dawn.
In Turkey, the outbreak of bird flu is changing the rural scenery and threatening a way of life.
Yet up to now, there has been no significant discussion of what Turkey's countryside might look like when the bird flu crisis passes, or how its impoverished people will get by without the domestic birds on which many of them rely.
In the midst of the worst bird flu epidemic outside of southeast Asia, top government officials have warned Turkey is at permanent risk of outbreaks because it is on the path of several species of migratory birds.
At least 18 people in Turkey have been confirmed to be infected with the deadly H5N1 strain, including three siblings who died last week.
Because of the risk, Health Minister Recep Akdag has insisted raising birds in backyards must "history," and the sooner Turks learn that, the better.
Yet the state has not come up with a long-term plan to compensate people for what could be a painful upheaval, other than to pay a basic market rate of $3.70 for delivering a chicken or a duck to authorities, $11 for a goose and $15 for a turkey.
No rules have been drawn up for the post-crisis period, and it was unclear if people would be banned from raising poultry altogether or be allowed to keep birds in enclosed spaces like coops to keep poultry from mingling with wild fowl – a costly prospect for poor families.
In parts of the east, where raising birds in backyards is a way of life for nearly every family and a means of surviving for some, many scared residents have vowed off poultry, but don't seemed to have grasped the implications.
"We won't eat them, and we won't raise them," said Ahmet Inanc, 35, in the Seslitas village outside of Dogubayazit, where bird flu has claimed the lives of the three siblings. "If we don't raise chickens and don't die, it will be better for us."
Many believed Turkey would look after them.
"The state will take care of us," said Kahraman Duman, 56, who on Friday gave up seven geese, eight chickens and a turkey to men in white protective suits who would bag, bury and disinfect them. "It's OK if it's forever."
But one official rounding up poultry in Seslitas on Friday seemed to doubt the government would come through.
"They fed their kids with their eggs. They don't have other money. They'll be ruined," the official from the Dogubayazit Agriculture Ministry said as he jumped a stone fence to go from one house to the next. He would not give his name because Turkish officials are rarely allowed to speak to the media.
Domestic birds have been eliminated from the landscape in towns and villages where the virus has been found, like Aralik near the Armenian border, believed to be the starting point of the last series of outbreaks.
They soon will disappear from other towns across the country. Officials said Friday the virus has been confirmed in 13 of Turkey's 81 provinces and is suspected in 18 more.
Butcher Ishak Isik, 58, stood in his "Meat and Chicken Gallery" in Aralik and stated proudly: "There are no chickens here." Although the outbreak started in Aralik, Isik said precautions were taken quickly and the town had no human illnesses and few bird deaths.
On Aralik's back streets, chicken coops were empty, and aside from wild fowl on power lines and a pile of feathers here and there, there was no sign of bird life.
"It's hard, we need to eat. We used the eggs, we used the meat," said Melek Guzelkaya, 52, who said she gave up 30 chickens. "We're waiting from an answer from the state."
"Almost everyone had them," said Okan Duman, who was riding a bicycle home and said he'd given up seven or eight chickens. "I don't know what I'll do. Maybe cattle."
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Doc: 00040842 DB: online–d–2006–1 Date: Tue Jan 17 09:08:29 2006
*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***
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Blog: Destruction Teams Tackling Bird Flu
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As Turkey becomes the latest country to face the outbreak of the deadly bird flu, AP writer Benjamin Harvey is filing these periodic reports from the rural area most affected.
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SUNDAY, Jan. 15, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT and VAN, Turkey – The workers are sick of shoving live animals into bags and making them suffer.
We don't like it much either. The geese scream, the chickens run confused, some of the ducks have beautiful blue eyes. You don't care much when one gets away. Turkey has destroyed more than 450,000 so far. No one knows a better solution.
We lose track of the pickup we're following when an old villager says he'll fight us if we don't come into his house for tea.
Leaving, we get a chance to appreciate the scenery: a mosque beneath Mt. Ararat, 1,300 feet taller than Europe's highest peak; a man on horseback galloping across the snow; beautiful, and fierce, dogs kicking up snow in full sprint and baying for others to come chase us from hundreds of yards away; a dozen low donkeys carrying mountain water to nearby villages.
We go back to Van for a story on why people here are catching bird flu and not dying, but Fatma Ozcan, 12, dies while we're outside the hospital.
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SATURDAY, Jan. 14
IGDIR, Turkey – "I loved that dog," Serhat said, the ash from his cigarette falling onto a female pitbull's supine body inside a wooden crate.
Nearby, chained to a tree, was Jack, the "husband dog" that killed her a few nights ago. Jack had killed another 20-25 other dogs in his time, Serhat said, but was getting old now and not as strong as he used to be.
Our driver had gone to fix the car, which was sagging and sounded like it had popped a spring, and left us at a dance club and animal farm in Igdir for lunch. We walked outside to get away from the loud Ricky Martin music and the curious Azerbaijani girls.
Showing me around the place was Murat: entrepreneur, animal lover.
I asked if they made the dogs fight for money, or if Jack just went crazy and killed.
"No, no! Not for money," another man interjected, crossing his hands. "It's like this," he said. "Someone says to you, 'my dog can do this' and you say, 'my dog can do this.'" Since Jack was panting near the tree and looking a little crazy, we surmised he'd never proved his owners wrong.
Murat then showed us his flipping pigeons, and I finally understood why people keep them as pets here. They have feathery feet and do tight, loud little flips in the air. Never seen anything like it. Murat said he had thirty of them, they ate alongside the rabbits, they were expensive, asked me if the state was gathering them up too. I told him it was.
"I wouldn't give them up," he said. "I love animals, I really love them."
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FRIDAY, Jan. 13, 2006
SESLITAS and ARALIK, Turkey – We're in Seslitas village, chasing chickens some 12-15 miles (20-25 kilometers) away from Dogubayazit, and an old man with wet and soiled hands is grabbing my arm, telling me he slaughtered seven birds. I tell him I'm a reporter, and point to one of the men from the Agriculture Ministry.
The old man shows us an indistinguishable pile of feathers and bones in a pit, says a dog or a wolf must have eaten them. He says there were seven geese, and he cut them up. He wants to be reimbursed for them. A worker with a pump sprayer hooked up to a liquid case he's wearing like a backpack back comes over, looks into the pit and sprays down the mess with disinfectant. He tells the man there's no money for dead birds.
The man grabs my arm again, and pleads with me that there were seven birds there.
"Some villagers get scared and kill their animals on their own," another worker says with a shrug. They didn't know the system, and there's nothing more he can do.
Later, we go to Aralik on the Armenian border, where the current outbreak is believed to have originated and the poultry population was quickly destroyed, to see how people are getting by without birds. Surprisingly, they don't seem to care much. A colleague suggested the residents believed that either God would provide or the state would.
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THURSDAY, Jan. 12, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – The destruction teams are going way outside of the city now, to the surrounding villages.
At one house, a fight breaks out when one of the residents accuses a worker of stealing a horse. The worker's protective suit gets torn and covered in his own blood.
He's sticking his fingers into his mouth to feel if one of his teeth is loose.
Other workers throughout the week could be seen rounding up birds one minute, shoving a cigarette into their mouths with the same hand the next. If these guys don't get sick we reporters shouldn't have anything to worry about.
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WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – My alarm goes off at 5:40 a.m., but I'm not in shape to be chasing chickens. Ankara orders me to go to a doctor.
I go to the local hospital, which is now relatively empty of patients. I tell them I'm a reporter, I've been here for six days, say last night I started to feel sick, tell them my symptoms.
The doctor's assistant I'm talking to pulls his mask over his face as I'm talking.
Throwing up? Yes. What color? Dark, all liquid, lots – filled up the toilet, in fact. Blood? I don't know. Diarrhea too? Yep. And your stomach hurts? Yes. Headache? A little. Fever? Can't tell. You're American? Yes. Welcome to Dogubayazit. Thank you.
They draw blood, then bring me back to the lab, where I watch it being tested. Within a few minutes, they tell me I'm OK, my white blood cell count looks good, no infection. The doctor tells me to stay away from the local food, get some rest. Eat boiled potatoes, he says.
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TUESDAY, Jan. 10, 2006
VAN and DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – My room is freezing, and I'm shivering underneath the blankets, my teeth chattering. I put on two long-sleeve shirts, a cashmere sweater and a fleece vest, take another blanket from the cabinet and go back to bed.
We'd spent the day traveling to Van and back to track down and meet with the family of a girl infected with the virus after she tried to comfort dying chickens. We talk with her family in her house. Her oldest brother keeps repeating: "Maybe I've got it, too. Maybe I've got it, too." He insists we stay for lunch, but we can't.
At around 11:30 p.m., back in Dogubayazit, I start throwing up.
We've been careful around birds, but after a few days here it gets hard to stay clean. You find yourself with workers near a chicken coop one minute, typing on your keyboard still wearing your gloves the next. I take a Tamiflu, an anti-flu medicine, just in case, although I'm worried I'll just throw it back up.
I call Volkan, an AP Television News cameraman, to ask how he feels. He'd been sick before but says he's fine. I write a note to the office asking whether I should be taking Tamiflu or not and go back to bed, nauseous, cold and spinning.
Meanwhile, the news headline is: Turkey confirms 15 humans infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the most since the virus began to sweep southeast Asia in 2003.
–––
MONDAY, Jan. 9, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – We've been walking around town in white suits since we came, and people continue to approach us thinking we're the destruction teams, here to deal with chickens. They ask us why we haven't come to their neighborhood yet – their chickens are dying, they can't touch them, the place needs to be disinfected.
More than a week after the initial death from bird flu here, the first Turkish minister, Health Minister Recep Akdag, arrives in Dogubayazit. He comes with a group from the WHO, the World Health Organization, and goes to visit the family that lost three children to the virus.
The family is poor, like most families here, and lives in a simple concrete structure high on a hill, with a view of the town to one side and the snow-covered mountains to the other. The sound of women crying comes from inside.
When Akdag first arrives in town, he is greeted with clapping from gathered townspeople. When he leaves, police have to hold back a group of men screaming: "There are no doctors!" and asking why it took so long for someone to come.
Reports say Prime Minister Erdogan called to express his condolences to the Kocyigit family and asked to speak with the mother. The family, which is Kurdish, tells him mother is too weak to speak but speculation is that they don't put her on the line because she can't speak Turkish.
In the outbreak in the west in October, the village was filled with men from the Agriculture Ministry in Ankara helping to round up, gas and dispose of birds. This one has been managed locally, without enough workers for the job.
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SUNDAY, Jan. 8, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – A worker punches a child in the back who was laughing and running in and out of chicken coops. The worker yells at him to stay away, it's dangerous. He sends another group of children scattering in all directions, yelling in Kurdish. Workers are getting fed up with the kids who follow them around everywhere, getting in the way, taking no precautions.
Word seems to be getting out about the virus, though, and villagers are yelling at the workers from the hilltops to come and get their chickens.
Some of them.
Acting on a hint from a little boy, workers go to one house and pound on a wooden door serving as an entrance in a stone fence. No one answers. They start to kick the door harder. The kid says there are lots of chickens in there. The workers climb over the stone fence and go back to a hut in the back of the yard. They are greeted by a woman in a headscarf screaming in Kurdish.
"It's contagious!" one of the workers screams, translated by another worker into Turkish.
"I don't care! Mine aren't sick!" the woman screams back, blocking the door.
The workers give up after a yelling match, saying they'll come back with the police. It's their second time to this neighborhood, they say, and residents are now giving up the birds they'd hidden before. Some of the birds residents are delivering are now dead.
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SATURDAY, Jan. 7, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – This is what we mean when we write about culling:
Birds are pulled out of their pens or chased down in the open, grabbed by their wings or necks, and stuffed hard into a sack. If their heads stick out, a worker grabs the birds by the neck and pushes them down.
When the sack is filled with birds, workers squash it down, tie the top, and throw the squawking heap onto the back of a truck, usually with a thud and a "gaawakk." The sacks hop around.
Some of the birds suffocate before they reach the dump. Those that don't are either buried alive, or drenched in gas and set on fire. Then workers pile dirt and lime on top.
Many of the women here complain that it's a shame to destroy so many live animals and either refuse to answer the door or only give up a few birds.
Villagers here say their birds have been dying. A couple of kids start digging to show the limp, dead animals. The village head says around 15 dogs have died too after eating sick birds. He shows us two of them, lying in separate places.
Many people here say they've never heard of bird flu. Just three months earlier, we were in Kiziksa, a village in the west, for a similar outbreak that led to the culling of more than 10,000 birds.
This is much bigger. People are dying, the disease is spreading among birds, and hundreds of thousands of chickens will be destroyed.
–––
FRIDAY, Jan. 6, 2006
DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey – The road from Van to Dogubayazit, where the bird flu cases originated, is across some 120 miles of snow-covered roads and a chain of craggy mountains that includes Mt. Ararat, where Noah's Ark is said to have landed after the flood. On the way down, our cameramen see wolves to the side of the road.
There is a military checkpoint along the way, but not for bird flu. Some of the soldiers carry machine guns to deal with threats including an ongoing Kurdish rebel insurgency that has left almost 40,000 dead in Turkey since 1984. Others carry shovels to deal with the snow that renders the road barely visible in places.
The only traffic coming from the opposite direction is vans and buses filled with Iranians. This is the road ambulances have been using to cart bird flu patients to the hospital.
We get to Dogubayazit around 7 a.m.
One of the first things that strikes you is that children and animals, usually together, are everywhere. Many people here – almost all Kurds – don't speak Turkish. This despite the fact that it was illegal even to speak Kurdish in Turkey until 1991.
Residents have already flooded to the local Agriculture Ministry to complain that no one is coming to get their sick birds. They say just go to any riverbank and you'll see dead animals. Eight three-man teams, a total of 24 men, in protective gear spread out across the city of 56,000 in pickups to gather up and destroy fowl, going house-to-house and backyard-to-backyard. Packs of children follow them everywhere.
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THURSDAY, Jan. 5, 2006
VAN, Turkey – The hospital is in lockdown. They've emptied out an entire ward just for bird flu patients, but no one else is allowed in. We spend most of the day freezing outside. The chief doctor comes out and asks for more resources, including respirators.
Even the tea men wear masks.
Mehmet's sister, Fatma Kocyigit, 15, dies of bird flu here.
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WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4, 2006
ISTANBUL, Turkey – A Turkish lab confirms that 14-year-old Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, who died on Sunday, was infected with bird flu. Turkey had earlier announced that the boy died of pneumonia.
I cancel plans for a holiday to the Autonomous Republic of Nakchivan (Azerbaijan), and get on the next available flight to Van in southeastern Turkey, along with AP photographer Murad Sezer.
The death is the first of bird flu outside of East Asia, and Kocyigit's sister is also in critical and worsening condition at a hospital in Van.
Our office gathers supplies: masks, gloves, protective suits, boots, and Tamiflu, a medicine that attacks the influenza virus is believed to provide early protection against bird flu.