Topic: Rise of Antibiotic Resistant Pathogens
Country: Turkey
Delegate Name: Duncan Burns
School: Roeper School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Turkey position papers GLIMUN 2010 committees
The Republic of Turkey, as most countries, has suffered from the increasingly resilient strains of infectious diseases that seem to have become more frequent in recent years, with the H5N1 influenza or “avian flu” in 2006 and the H1N1 “swine flu”. Of the two outbreaks, the H1N1 virus caused a significantly higher death toll in Turkey with over 600 reported dead. It was dealt with fairly quickly with vaccinations; on the other hand the H5N1 virus swept rapidly over the globe through migrating birds but only caused 12 deaths in the Republic of Turkey.
Yet there is still no effective H5N1 vaccination so it continues to loom over the globe causing unease. Both of these diseases are in part a result of animal-based viruses that have significant antibiotic resistance crossing the species barrier to infect humans. As with many crossover viruses, they are particularly antibiotic resistant due to the indiscriminate use of antibiotics given to mammals and fowl on animal feedlots. Human cases of this disease are rare but almost always deadly; this frequency could change in a single mutation of the strain as it has shown the ability to change to infect other mammals such as dogs and cats.
For Turkey the persistent issue pertaining to H5N1 is control of its poultry, which at its core stems from an important idea to keep in mind when dealing with infectious disease, control. Turkey’s rural farms, which greatly contributed to the spread of the virus within the country, would likely not have been such incubators of disease if the government public health officials had stepped in to control the situation earlier. The Republic of Turkey regrets this inaction and believes that firmer sanitation and transportation control in hand with further vaccine research is the key to dealing with any pandemic. Learning from its experience, Turkey is willing to act with all other nations to develop a realistic resolution which would provide a clear set of actions to help prevent antibiotic resistant pathogen outbreaks.
