[Turkey] Poverty, ignorance contribute to bird flu deaths in Turkey

from The Gulf Times Online

By Florence Biedermann

ANKARA: Fatma Oczan was 16 and beautiful and she died unnecessarily this week in Turkey of bird flu, as much the victim of poverty and ignorance as of the H5N1 strain of the virus.

According to Agriculture Minister Mehdi Aker ignorance is the “main challenge” the authorities face in seeking to halt the spread of the disease.

The story of Fatma, Turkey’s fourth bird flu victim, who might have lived had she been taken to hospital in time, bears him out.

She and her little brother Muhammet, aged five, were taken to hospital in the small eastern town of Dogubeyazit, near the border with Iran on January 10.

Doctors there urged her father to transfer the children to the city of Van where more sophisticated facilities were available.

“I don’t have the green card” providing access to free medical care, the father complained.

“I can’t go to Van. If they have to die, let them die!” he told Turkish television. “Let them be cared for here!”

Even so the next day the two were taken to Van. But that was a week after the symptoms had appeared and to be fully beneficial Tamiflu, seen as the most effective drug at the moment, needs to be taken within 48 hours.

Fatma was 16 but official records gave her age as 12 as her birth was only registered some years after it took place.

That often happens in rural Turkey where girls are often not registered at all so they do not have to be sent to school, in theory compulsory, or can be excluded from inheritance rights.

Fatma, whose mother was dead, lived with her stepmother and had never been to school.
The Turkish authorities and the UN Unicef children’s agency recognise the problem and in 2003 launched a programme in the east and southeast of Turkey with the slogan: “Come on girls, off to school!”

But poverty and old patriarchal attitudes mean that some 640,000 Turkish girls of school age do not receive an education, Unicef says.

And so Fatma spent the days of her short life doing household tasks. It was she who, to celebrate New Year’s Day, killed and cut up the infected duck that was to be the main dish of the festive meal, helped by Muhammet.

On January 4 the two displayed the first symptoms. Not until January 10 did their father take them to Dogubeyazit.

Fatma died on January 15. She is buried in the small village of Sagdic, where she lies next to her mother.