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October Poultry Deaths in Eastern Turkey
Recombinomics Commentary
January 7, 2006
On the other side of the country, about 1,000 chickens out of a flock of about 6,000 died two days ago near the town of Patnos in the province of Agri near the border with Iran, Gov. Yusuf Yavascan said Saturday. Veterinarians did not suspect bird flu, but samples from the chickens were sent to a laboratory in nearby Erzurum for testing, Yavascan said. The area had not been placed under quarantine.
Up to 1,000 chickens were also reported to have died in the past 15 days in a village near Halfeti, a town in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa. Halfeti Governor Ahmet Odabas told Anatolia news agency that the chickens may have been poisoned from pesticides,
The above comments from media reports in October, 2005 strongly suggests that the H5N1 confirmed in recent OIE reports on outbreaks in Agri and Sanliurfa has been present in these provinces for at least three months. The reports out of Turkey are similar to reports from adjacent countries that have denied the presence of H5N1.
Allowing H5N1 to persist on farms for extended periods of time increases the probability of recombination, leading to more aggressive strains H5N1. Now these same areas are reporting suspect H5N1 human cases in large familial clusters.
These data also indicate that H5N1 is widespread in the Middle East and the presence of the virus is not being reported even though such reporting is mandatory.
The monitoring of H5N1 worldwide remains scandalously poor, claims of increased surveillance notwithstanding.
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