To panic or not to panic? Two United Nations agencies gave out conflicting messages on the today on the risk posed by the Turkish bird flu crisis.

So far 15 Turks have been infected by what appears to be the lethal H5N1 variant of the virus, which doctors and public health experts fear could mutate into a strain transmissible between humans to cause a global pandemic.

The number of infections has puzzled health experts, but a senior official of the World Health Organisation said today that there was no sign of any human-to-human transmission and he was confident that Turkey was doing everything it could to manage the outbreaks.

"The worst situation is a panic situation. There is no reason to panic," Dr Marc Danzon, the WHO's regional director for Europe, told a press conference in Ankara. "The risk is global ... We need to exercise solidarity."

But in Rome, the message from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was that Turkey should avoid any complacency and step up its campaign against the virus to stop it become endemic. The FAO warned Turkey's neighbours, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Iran and Syria, to put control and surveillance measures in place immediately.

"The virus may be spreading despite the control measures already taken," said Juan Lubroth, the FAO's senior animal health officer. "Far more human and animal exposure to the virus will occur if strict containment does not isolate all known and unknown locations where the bird flu virus is currently present."

In a statement, the FAO said that it had sent a team of experts to Turkey. It urged Ankara to apply a nationwide control campaign and said that poultry in outbreak areas should only be moved with the permission of veterinarians.

Mr Lubroth said control measures in the outbreak areas should include "humane culling, strict isolation and, if and when appropriate, vaccination".

Turkey’s 15 suspected cases in one week is a record for the current bird flu outbreak. The WHO has so far confirmed only four of the cases as H5N1, but said it is confident the remaining samples would be positive. Three people died of the virus last week, including two children.

Asked about whether countries should ban or restrict their citizens from travelling to Turkey, Dr Danzon called it "a non-story" and said there was no reason to take such measures.

All of the cases in Turkey appeared to have involved adults or children who touched or played with infected birds - including a girl who hugged and kissed dead chickens.

"The people of the country need to perfectly understand that the danger is contact between sick or dead poultry and a human being, especially a child," Dr Danzon said. "This is the key point for the future. This is where we need to pass messages to the population and inform local leaders."

But European governments are scrambling to halt the westward spread of the virus and are taking their own measures to prevent it crossing the borders from Turkey.

In Italy, a consumer group urged the government to impose a ban on travel to Turkey, and in Greece, veterinary inspectors stepped up border checks. Serbia has stepped up inspection of people, vehicles and luggage coming from Turkey and told citizens who have recently visited Turkey to report to hospital in case of any bird flu symptoms.

In Germany, Horst Seehofer, the Agriculture Minister, said that the Government was set to insist that all poultry be kept indoors to prevent bird flu outbreaks. Several of Germany's 16 states have already increased controls of travellers entering the country from Turkey.

Anxious to demonstrate to its citizens and the European Union that it was taking decisive action, Turkey today ordered more than 300,000 fowl destroyed as a precaution, doubling the number already culled.

"The situation has been taken seriously from the beginning; in Turkey," Dr Danzon said. "The action in the country has been appropriate and the management of this crisis is at the level where it should be and we are satisfied both by the type of action taken by the Ministry of Health and by the possibility of our team to act independently and with transparency."

But WHO officials admitted that they were baffled by the number of humans infected in Turkey, which they said might only be explained by the behaviour of poultry farming families. Authorities distributed leaflets in eastern regions most affected by the outbreak, cautioning people not to touch fowl, while television spots urged people to wash their hands after contact with poultry.

Dr. Guenael Rodier, who heads the WHO team in Turkey, said: "In the future we will probably see some other cases in humans but then we will see less and less cases."

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