Tests on five people, including a dead child, for possible bird flu in eastern Turkey have proved negative, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported a Health Ministry official as saying today.
The child tested for bird flu, which has killed more than 70 people in Asia, died yesterday. He was one of several people from the same district who underwent tests in Van hospital near the Iranian border after exhibiting symptoms of influenza.
"The tests on samples from the dead child and four other people suspected (of having bird flu) came back negative," the agency quoted the ministry's basic health services general manager Turan Buzgan as saying.
"The sickness is not a result of bird flu or any influenza virus," he said.
It was not clear what caused the death of 14-year-old Mehmet Ali Kocyigit. He was one of four children from the same family who fell ill.
Turkey , which lies on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread the virus, has suffered two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among poultry in the past three months, the latest last week in the eastern province of Igdir.
No humans are known to have contracted the disease in Turkey or Europe, though veterinary experts across the continent have been on alert culling birds and taking other precautionary measures since October outbreaks in Turkey and Romania.
In the Igdir outbreak, the strain has been identified as the H5 type but authorities are conducting further tests to see whether it is the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed scores of people in east Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of birds.
Turkey has sent samples from Igdir to the World Health Organisation and the European Union for more tests.
All of the patients in Van were from the district of Dogubayazit, a remote, rural area where farming and animal husbandry are the main form of livelihood.