Officially, there are only a few birds left to catch in Kiziksa, where Turkish authorities have responded quickly to an H5N1 bird flu outbreak. But indiscreet roosters still crow from behind walls. Newly hatched chicks waddle across dirt roads. And villagers hide fowl from certain slaughter.
Many locals do not believe there was ever bird flu in this farming village of 1,900, and though most have exchanged their birds for a good price offered by the government, almost no one is worried about the birds who "escaped" destruction.
Convincing farmers like those in Kiziksa to give up their birds for culling is a key strategy for fighting the disease. In the past week, the outbreaks in Turkey and Romania have been confirmed as the H5N1 strain of the virus, which has killed more than half of the 117 people it infected in Asia, mostly poultry farmers infected directly by birds. But scientists fear the strain could mutate and cause a human pandemic.
Authorities in Turkey have scrambled to contain the outbreak in Kiziksa, but there have been reports of unexplained bird deaths across the country -- including 1,000 chickens found dead Saturday in Patnos, near the border with Iran.
The CHA news agency showed people in Patnos hurling hundreds of dead chickens onto a truck using shovels or their bare hands. It was not clear what caused the Patnos birds' deaths, and officials in Iran said on Saturday a "mysterious disease," which was not bird flu, had killed about 3,700 wild ducks in that country. In Kiziksa, as in other rural villages, getting farmers to hand over the birds they have worked with for all their lives has not been easy.
"The chickens are gone. It's finished," said a man who gave his first name as Ismail, wiping his hands together. After someone pointed out a giant rooster sitting in a bush just behind him, he said: "That one? That one's ours. We could not catch him."
A group of women in headscarves chatting in the middle of a dirt road paid no attention to four baby chicks chirping in the grass nearby.
"Look child, those ones just came into the world yesterday," Ismigul Gokkarmian said. "There's no point in giving them up." Her friend said it was a shame, a sin to destroy so many animals.
Health officials had vowed that not one bird would survive in Kiziksa, where 1,800 turkeys died in two days of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Teams of scientists from the EU are expected to arrive in both Turkey and Romania to help study and contain the outbreak, and though there are no reports in Europe of the virus passing to humans, veterinarians in Kiziksa have said privately that they worry it might.
Villagers seemed unconcerned, and said the birds in Kiziksa that died of bird flu this week had not been well cared for and probably got ill when it rained. Health officials believe the most efficient way of containing bird flu is the wholesale destruction of birds in the affected area, a tactic that many villagers said was unnecessary. To get villagers to comply, governments have used tactics including threats of fines and jail time for not turning in birds, and paying above-market prices for each animal delivered to authorities for destruction.
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