On the Turkish seaside resort of Kusadasi, located on the coast of the Aegean Sea, mass cases of bird deaths have been recorded. If bird infection with the avian influenza virus in Kusadasi is officially confirmed, this will be the first case of the spread of the deadly dangerous disease in the country's resort regions, where about 20 million foreign tourists vacation annually.... \n\t \nThe situation with avian influenza in Turkey is acquiring catastrophic proportions. In the province of Agri, which borders Armenia and Iran, 25 people with signs of the disease have been hospitalized. In the hospitals of Van province there are currently 35 people with symptoms of avian influenza infection. About 30 more people have been hospitalized in hospitals in Istanbul, as well as the cities of Erzurum, Sivas, Batman and Diyarbakir in eastern and southeastern Turkey. \n \nThe World Health Organization (WHO), based on the results of laboratory tests, has already confirmed 15 cases of human avian influenza in Turkey. At the same time, WHO announced that it has not detected signs of human-to-human transmission of the avian influenza virus in the country. \n \nThe first outbreak of the human-dangerous type of avian influenza was recorded in Turkey last week. To date, the presence of the virus has been confirmed in 16 of the country's 81 provinces, mainly in the east and southeast. \n \nIn Istanbul, a city with a population of 14 million people, following Ankara, by order of the local governor, the sale of chicken meat at markets has been banned and a partial quarantine has been introduced. In three districts of the Turkish metropolis, where the H5N1 virus has been detected in poultry, culling of birds has begun in a three-kilometer zone. In total, more than 100,000 head of poultry have already been culled in the country over the past few days. \n \nThe first cases of illness and death of people from avian influenza outside Southeast Asia have already been recorded in Turkey. \n \nAvian influenza has spread across the world \n \nIn Japan, avian influenza has been found in 77 people. All the sick people live in Saitama and Ibaraki prefectures. The H5N2 strain has been found in the blood of these people - a weaker variety of the virus compared to the human-deadly H5N1. In Japan, only one case of human infection with the H5N1 strain has been recorded so far. There have been no fatal cases in the country. \n \nA new case of human avian influenza has been registered in China. The patient is a six-year-old child living in a rural area of Hunan province. This is not the first case of human illness with this disease in China. Two deaths of patients and one death with suspected avian influenza have been officially registered. \n \nAnother victim of the deadly dangerous virus in Indonesia was a 39-year-old resident of the country. The total number of victims of the epidemic in Indonesia has thus reached 12 people. \n \nMeanwhile, the authorities of Vietnam announced that they had managed to cope with the virus. Over the past two months, not a single case of human avian influenza has been recorded in the country. \n \nThe century-old flu \n \nThe disease now known as avian influenza was discovered in Italy a hundred years ago, but at that time it did not cause particular concern among doctors. \n \nAvian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by one of the strains of type A influenza virus, which is similar to the virus of ordinary human influenza. The symptoms are also similar: high fever, headache, malaise, sore throat, mild cough. This infection is dangerous due to its complications: the development of viral pneumonia, damage to the kidneys, liver, and hematopoietic organs. It is precisely these severe consequences that lead to the death of patients. \n \nThe human form of avian influenza caused by the H5N1 virus strain was first detected in 1997 in Hong Kong. At that time, 18 people became infected, six of whom died. The number of victims of this disease, which appeared in Southeast Asia in 2003, is at least 74 people, mainly in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. More than 140 million chickens were culled in the region. Losses to the poultry industry are estimated by experts at $15 billion. \n \nPublished in the newspaper "DELO" No. 53 of January 11, 2006.