Turkey and bird flu. When the chickens come home to roost

The despair, and the hope, surrounding Turkey's bird-flu outbreak

WAS it yet another conspiracy to sabotage Turkey? That was one explanation dished up by some in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party for the outbreak of bird flu across the country. By mid-week, at least 15 people in Turkey had been diagnosed with the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease, and three children had died--though only two were confirmed cases. The deaths of the siblings, in Dogubeyazit, near the Iranian border, were the first bird-flu fatalities outside South-East Asia, where some 76 people have died of the disease since 2003.

Panicked Turks have been flooding hospitals with complaints ranging from tummy-aches to high temperatures. In Ankara, three people have already tested positive for H5N1. All had been in contact with sick animals. In Istanbul, with a population of 10m, three neighbourhoods with infected poultry were put in quarantine. Over a quarter of Turkey's 81 provinces are reported to have infected birds.

Turkey is the first country to report so many separate animal cases simultaneously. This, plus an unusual cluster of mild human cases in Ankara, may give some cause for hope. Perhaps the disease is less virulent than was first thought; in Asia many mild cases may have gone undetected since only those with serious symptoms tend to go to hospital. More worrying is the possibility that, since some of the Ankara cases had only limited contact with birds, the disease may have changed in ways that makes it more easily transmitted from birds to humans.

A ban on Turkish poultry imports had already been imposed by the European Union. Domestic sales of poultry products have plummeted by 90%. Because Turkey is a transit route for migratory birds from the Balkans, Siberia and the Black Sea, further outbreaks seem inevitable. Worst of all may be the impact on Turkey's tourist industry, a mainstay of the economy.

One other plus is that the World Health Organisation declared this week that the Turkish government had performed satisfactorily, at least in dealing with the human cases."The action in the country has been appropriate and the management of this crisis is at the level where it should be," commented Marc Danzon, the WHO's regional director. Yet this sanguine view is not shared by many Turks, who accuse the government of a cover-up. When Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, a 14-year-old, died on January 1st, Turkish health officials said at first that the cause was pneumonia. Cemil Cicek, the justice minister, accused health officials who had raised the alarm over bird flu of "mischievous behaviour". It was not until late last week, just before the second Kocyigit child died, that the health minister, Recep Akdag, confirmed that her brother had contracted bird flu.

Mr Erdogan insisted this week, after over 300,000 birds had been culled, that the situation was fully under control. But his words were contradicted by television footage of children frolicking with chickens in the east. In fairness, the challenge facing the government is huge. Heavy snows and rugged mountains have prevented health workers from reaching many villages thought to have infected birds. And many Kurdish villagers do not understand Turkish, the only language used in many warnings about bird flu.

But the biggest obstacle is the poverty that propels millions of families to breed backyard poultry. The practice leaves the animals vulnerable to infection from migratory birds. Many families are known to be concealing some or all of their birds. In Erzurum, one citizen offered to turn in his two wives rather than his chickens. The government has yet to come up with a satisfactory compensation scheme. Worse still, local mayors, particularly in Kurdish areas, have proved inept at dealing with the outbreak. In Dogubeyazit, municipal workers even told children to help them catch birds with their bare hands.