Indonesian man dies of bird flu: health ministry

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A 30-year-old Indonesian man has died
of bird flu, a senior health ministry official said on Friday,
citing the results of local tests.

His blood samples have been sent to a World Health
Organisation-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for
confirmation, Hariadi Wibisono, a director at the Health
Ministry, told Reuters. Local tests are not considered
definitive.

If confirmed by the Hong Kong laboratory, the man who died
on Wednesday would be Indonesia’s 25th death from the H5N1
virus, which is endemic in poultry in the world’s fourth most
populous nation.

“We have another positive local test on a 30-year-old man.
He had a history of contact with sick chickens near his house.
He died on April 26,” Wibisono told Reuters.

“We just received the result this morning and the samples
have been sent to Hong Kong.”

Contact with infected birds is the most common means of
transmission of the bird flu virus in humans.

So far, the WHO has confirmed 24 human deaths from the
virus in Indonesia.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate and spread easily
from person to person, triggering a pandemic.