Bird flu patients discharged, journalist cleared

The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed yesterday that three people who caught the deadly bird flu virus have been discharged from hospital in Turkey as the government stepped up efforts to fight the outbreak.

Belgium's Health Ministry also said tests on a journalist who felt ill after returning from Turkey's worst hit province showed he did not have bird flu.

Turkey's government met yesterday to discuss measures to help the country's $3 billion poultry industry, which is at risk of collapse after the outbreak swept large parts of the country. The Agriculture Ministry said more than 590,000 wild birds and poultry had been culled and farmers were being compensated.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), in Turkey to help authorities fight the outbreak, said three H5N1 infected people, aged eight to 17, had been discharged from hospital.

Donors have promised to step up contributions for fighting bird flu, with the European Union pledging $100 million as concerns linger that the disease could mutate to strike humans and unleash a pandemic.

The virus still mostly affects birds but has infected about 150 people worldwide and killed at least 78.

The human victims of the disease had all been in East Asia until the outbreak in Turkey brought the virus to the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Three infected children died last week in eastern Turkey. The WHO said a four-year-old girl who died on Friday in the eastern province Van had pneumonia, not bird flu. Worries that the disease had reached the European Union were quashed yesterday when health officials told a mass of reporters from across the 25-naton bloc that the journalist had tested negative for bird flu and just had seasonal human flu.

The Russian freelance television journalist, who had been living in Belgium, went to hospital in Brussels on Friday upon feeling ill when he returned on Thursday from an assignment in Turkey's Van province.

Government officials said the journalist had visited affected farms in Turkey and seen bird flu patients in hospital, but had had no direct contact with poultry. He is being kept in isolation while tests continue.

A European Commission spokesman said earlier the EU's executive body was closely monitoring the case. If he had tested positive, it would have been the first confirmed human case in the EU since the bird flu re-emerged in late 2003.