Indonesia to send blood samples for bird flu test

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Blood samples from two Indonesians
hospitalized in Jakarta will be tested for the bird flu virus
even though initial results showed both have typhoid, health
officials said on Monday.

The two men, including a news photographer who had recently
photographed chicken farms, are under close observation
following the recent deaths of three members of a family from
the virus, officials said. The samples would be sent to Hong
Kong, they said.

Both men have been treated at a hospital in North Jakarta
and are suffering from high fever and flu symptoms.

“The temporary diagnosis is typhoid. We have sent specimens
to the WHO this morning for further tests,” said Evi Zelvino, a
spokeswoman at the Jakarta health agency, referring to the
World Health Organization.

The WHO’s spokeswoman in Indonesia, Sari Setiogi, said they
planned to send the samples to a laboratory in Hong Kong for
testing and results should be known in 7-10 days.

Health experts are still puzzled how the country’s first
victims — a father and his two young daughters — contracted
the H5N1 virus this month in the world’s fourth-most populous
country.

Avian influenza, which arrived in Asia in late 2003, has so
far killed more than 50 people in the region including Vietnam,
Thailand and Cambodia.

Zelvino also said an investigation would be carried out on
a Malaysian national who died earlier this month. Doctors have
said the Malaysian died from typhoid, although local media have
speculated about the cause of his death.

In a sprawling archipelago dotted with small farms, and
where even many urban families keep chickens, pinpointing the
source of the bird flu virus is difficult.

On Sunday, officials slaughtered a number of pigs and fowl
infected by bird flu near where the three victims of the virus
lived, but the cull was lower than initially planned partly to
protect the local economy.

In Indonesia, the virus has spread to 21 provinces out of
33 over the past two years, killing more than 9.5 million
fowls.