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Sister of Bird Flu Victim Also Dies

Bird flu killed a second teenager in eastern Turkey early Thursday, one day after health officials confirmed her brother as the first fatality by the virus outside of East Asia. Fatma Kocyigit, 15, died four days after her brother in the same hospital where four members of the family were admitted several weeks ago, according to the semi-official Anatolia news agency.

The health minister, Recep Akdag, said Muhammet Ali Kocyigit apparently contracted the virus from ailing chickens at his family`s home in the shadow of Mount Ararat, near the Armenian border. Lung tissue from the boy tested positive for the H5N1 virus at two Turkish labs and was being sent to a World Health Organization laboratory in London for more tests.

"This really doesn`t change the overall complexion of the pandemic influenza risk," said epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm, at the University of Minnesota. "We could have expected that as the virus moves out of Southeast Asia into poultry throughout the world that there could be isolated cases of H5N1 among those with contact with the birds."