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    Posted: January 19 2006 at 5:27pm

We had a thread for these but with the crash I can't seem to find it.  If I run across it I will merg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aVog CsaMkBQ8&refer=europe#

Turkey's Bird Flu Spread Shows Rich-Poor Divide, Risks EU Talks

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Istanbul farmer Hasan Bozol owns a one- story house nestled among the city's high-rise blocks in the financial district, and his nine chickens live in the front yard.

``I'm not afraid of bird flu,'' said Bozol, 49, whose animals tend to wander into the street, forcing commuting bankers to screech their cars to a halt. ``Why should I kill my hens? I don't want to lose money.''

An outbreak of Avian influenza this month has infected fowl and killed four people in the east of Turkey near the Iranian border, where incomes are just 30 percent of the Istanbul average. European Union officials are concerned the disease may spread further west unless the government eradicates poverty in a country where 40 percent of the people are farmers.

Turkish authorities probably failed to see ``the scale of the problem early enough,'' EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a Jan. 12 interview in Brussels.

Turkey started talks to join the 25-nation bloc in October, and the financial divide is cited by the European Union as a hurdle. The country is counting on membership to get billions of dollars in investments and reduce unemployment of 9.7 percent.

``The outbreak showed the truth in what has now become a cliche: one side of Turkey is like Switzerland while the other is like Afghanistan,'' said Yarkin Cebeci, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Istanbul, on Jan. 18.

Thirteen Provinces

Turkey on Dec. 28 reported an outbreak of avian influenza among fowl in an area bordering Iran. Four days later, four children were hospitalized in a neighboring province with suspected infection. The virus has since spread to 13 of 81 provinces and infected 21 people, killing four.

Pictures published in European media that show village children running after fowl to help authorities in their culling efforts aren't helping Turkey's image, said Mehmet Gerz, head of research at Yapi Kredi Yatirim brokerage in Istanbul.

``These have strengthened the image of Turkey as being `very different' from Europe,'' Gerz said in an interview. ``These types of images lower public support for Turkey's bid further. The bird flu epidemic exposed once again the gap between eastern and western Turkey.''

Worldwide, the H5N1 virus has killed at least 79 of the 148 people known to have been infected, the World Health Organization said Jan. 14. Apart from the Turkey cases, all were in eastern Asia, where the first bird-to-human transmission occurred in 2003.

Response Delay

The rising cases of the disease in birds increase the risk of the virus changing into a form more contagious to people. Health officials say such a development may start a pandemic similar to one that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918.

Bird flu first appeared in Turkey in October in the western province of Balikesir. It was eradicated in days, winning authorities praise from the international community. The second outbreak in eastern Agri went undetected for a month, according to documents filed by Turkey at the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.

The delay probably led to the spread of the virus, said Bernard Vallat, head of the Animal Health group.

``There are two different levels of administration in Turkey, this is clear,'' said Vallat in an interview in Beijing. ``The west is better administered with public veterinary services than in the east.''

Child Deaths

In Van in the east, Mehmet Emin Ozcan hesitated before taking his sick daughter to the hospital because of an unpaid debt to another state hospital from eight years ago, the father told Istanbul-based Hurriyet daily. Twelve-year-old Fatma Ozcan, who never went to school, died on Jan. 15.

The Kocyigit family's four children played soccer with the head of a slaughtered sick chicken, according to neighbors' accounts in Istanbul-based daily Sabah. They hadn't heard of the avian influenza affecting people in Asia since 2003 or the virus's appearance in western Turkey two months earlier, which was reported in national media. Three of the four died.

In Agri, the literacy rate is 68 percent, compared with the national average of 87 percent. In the Marmara region, Turkey's most developed western region which includes Istanbul, the rate is 92 percent, according to the State Planning Organization.

Just 13 percent of children attend secondary school in Agri. Income per capita is $568 in Agri, compared with $3,268 in Marmara, government statistics show.

Cull Compensation

``In remote villages of Turkey, it is possible that information on touching sick chicken being risky didn't reach people,'' said Bernardus Ganter, WHO regional adviser on communicable diseases, in Copenhagen on Jan. 5. ``In situations of poverty, people eat sick chicken.''

The Turkish authorities must offer cash incentives to convince the rural poor to alter their way of life, according to the World Bank's office in Turkey.

In a Jan. 17 speech, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government was paying ``every penny'' of compensation that farmers deserved. ``All our citizens should trust that the state is going to be there for them wherever the need rises.''

Bozol isn't convinced.

``The government never pays what they say they will over sick animals or such,'' he said. ``If our fate is death, it will come from somewhere. If God wants that to be from birds, I can't argue against it.''


 

To contact the reporter on this story:
Yalman Onaran in Istanbul at  yonaran@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 19, 2006 19:13 EST

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