A TEENAGE farm boy in Turkey has died after contracting the human form of bird flu in what is feared to be the first human fatality outside East Asia from the H5N1 strain.

The 14-year-old boy’s sister is in a serious condition in hospital after testing positive for bird flu, Recep Akdag, the country’s Health Minister, confirmed last night. A third sibling is also suspected of having the virus.

More than 70 people — most of them farm workers in close contact with fowl — have died from the H5N1 strain of the virus in East Asia since 2003, where it has devastated flocks.

The H5N1 strain has been closely monitored amid fears that it could mutate into a form easily passed between people and consequently cause a pandemic. Samples from the Turkish victims are being sent to Britain for analysis.

Government officials here were considering the implications of the fatality last night, although both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Department of Health said that their advice remained the same.

A spokesman for Defra said: “It is clear that if there are birds that are sick then people living cheek by jowl with them are at risk. The key is to keep birds and people separate.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “At the moment we are trying to clarify exactly what has happened, but the level of risk has not changed. There is no human-to-human transmission. We have robust systems in place for monitoring this.”

The Turkish boy, Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, died in a hospital in the southeastern Van province on Sunday. The confirmation of the death contradicts a statement from the Turkish Government this week which said his death was not caused by bird flu.

Turkey, along with Romania, Croatia and Russia, has conducted a cull of birds to try to prevent the transmission to human beings. Turkey, which lies on the path of migratory birds that are thought to spread the virus, has suffered two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among poultry in the past three months.

The boy was among two brothers and two sisters between 6 and 15 who were admitted to hospital last week after developing high fevers, coughing and bleeding in their throats. The children all helped to raise poultry on a small farm in the town of Dogubeyazit, near Mount Ararat and 40 miles from the town of Aralik, where Turkish authorities said last week that some chickens tested positive for an H5 variant of bird flu.

Experience in Asia has shown that if there is avian flu, there will be a few human cases. The virus does not transmit easily to human beings, but those who do catch it suffer badly. The death rate is running at between 40 and 50 per cent.

Public health specialists in Britain may be concerned at the implication that bird flu is more widely spread in Turkey than has been acknowledged, and at the apparent confusion over the diagnosis.

Results from more than 60,000 tests on wild birds and domestic poultry within the European Commission’s borders are being analysed by the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge. The agency is also conducting tests on 8,000 chickens and turkeys and at least 3,000 wild birds in Britain to determine whether there is a reservoir of the disease in the country.

The Defra spokesman said: “Farmers should keep a close eye on their poultry for health problems and if there are suspicions then family members should be isolated, protective clothing should be worn and of course it should be reported to the authorities very quickly.

“The evidence from Asia suggests that humans have to have very close proximity to sick animals for humans to contract bird flu.”

Debby Reynolds, the Chief Veterinary Officer, has urged those keeping poultry to feed and water them indoors where possible in order to keep them away from wild birds.

Some farmers are restricting the movement of poultry and are using netting to protect their flocks from wild birds. Those working with poultry are being advised to shower and change their clothes before coming into contact with birds.

'FOWL PLAGUE' FIRST APPEARED IN 1878

There were a small number of cases of avian influenza in the US and Canada in 2004. But the US strain, in Texas, was H5N2, not the same as the strain in South-East Asia

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