Dressed in a white plastic suit and armed with a large sack, Hassan Aytac entered the compound and made straight for the chicken coop. From inside there came a lot of squawking. He opened the door. There was an explosion of feathers as around eight chickens charged out into the snow-covered courtyard and ran for their lives.
”It’s a bit like a game of rugby,” said Aytac, dashing after a white hen that had made a bid for freedom. ”They can run away. But we always get them in the end.”
Several small children joined in, chasing a recalcitrant chicken off the roof of a dun-coloured outbuilding. After five minutes, the job was done. ”It’s very hard work,” said Aytac, tying up a wriggling sack of birds as his colleague hosed down the coop with disinfectant. ”It’s very cold. And sometimes the hens run away.”
Hassan (24) is one of around 40 workers rounding up the chicken population of Dogubayazit, the remote Kurdish town in eastern Turkey where three of his cousins — Mehmet Ali Kocyigit (14) Fatma (15) and Hulya (11) — died of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu last week, the first confirmed cases of the disease outside south-east Asia.
The disease now appears to be heading westwards — with 15 cases of H5N1 across the country, including in Ankara, 960km away, and as many as 38 people being treated for bird flu-like symptoms in hospital. On Tuesday Turkish officials urged calm. None of the 15 confirmed cases were ”critical”, said health official Turan Buzgan.
But, inevitably, many fear that Europe could be bird flu’s next destination. The migratory birds that brought the disease to Dogubayazit, a mountainous truck stop next to Mount Ararat, the legendary resting place of Noah’s Ark, and the Iranian border, have already left.
”I found a dead pigeon in my garden a couple of weeks ago. I chucked it in the rubbish bin,” said Sefika Kizildag. ”Four days ago there was a chicken dead in my coop. In the morning he was fine, then he died. Now my daughter is ill. I took her to the doctor. But he didn’t see her. So she came home again.”
Medical facilities in the town are poor; when Turkey’s health minister turned up on Monday, an angry crowd heckled him. It had taken him a week to get there. Local people accuse the government of trying to conceal the problem in birds late last year. They also say official efforts to stop the spread of the disease have been inadequate and far too late. ”I don’t think killing chickens is going to make much difference now,” said Mustafa Dincer, as his daughter handed over two ducks to be slaughtered. ”It’s not going to solve the problem. They kill all the chickens. But they also have to kill all the birds that have flown away.”
After nine days, Aytac and his colleagues have killed about 21 000 birds — a fraction of the poultry still roaming eastern Anatolia. The resources at their disposal are a battered van, disinfectant and sacks that are filled with birds which end up buried alive in a large pit on the outskirts of town. Each householder will be compensated — likely to be five Turkish lira (about $4) per chicken.
Officially, the cull is supposed to be over soon, but a five-minute drive from the agriculture ministry, where the campaign is being coordinated, the birds abound. Yet poor locals, who were on Tuesday celebrating the Muslim Bayram festival and handing out sweets to their neighbours, have overcome their reluctance to part with their poultry if it means their families stay healthy.
For Aytac and his colleagues, meanwhile, collecting infected birds is not the only hazard. At one courtyard a snarling dog greets them. They chuck a couple of snowballs at it and leave. There was scepticism on Tuesday that the cull would make much difference to the disease some still appear to misunderstand. ”Maybe it will spread to Britain now,” said Dincer. ”It started off in Japan. And now it’s here.”
Routes of transmission
People who live with chickens and handle them, dead and alive, are most at risk of catching avian flu, and children are more vulnerable than adults because they have probably not encountered many normal flu virus strains before. The main route of transmission is through direct contact with the birds’ faeces or surfaces or objects contaminated with faeces. The birds excrete large amounts of the virus. If children who have touched the faeces then put their hands to their mouths, they may well get infected.
The World Health Organisation also warns against eating under-cooked chicken which has had the virus. H5N1 is sensitive to heat and normal cooking temperatures of 70°C and above will kill it. But every part of the chicken needs to be well cooked, with no pink remaining, and eggs from suspect chickens must also be cooked until the yolk is no longer runny. Cross-contamination is also a danger. Juices from raw poultry must not come into contact with other food or food preparation surfaces. – Guardian Unlimited Â