Bird flu claims 40th human victim in Indonesia

By Telly Nathalia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A World Health Organization laboratory
test has confirmed a 5-year-old Indonesian boy who died last
month was infected with bird flu, a health ministry official
said on Monday.

His death takes the total number of confirmed bird flu
fatalities in the country to 40.

The victim died on June 16 in Tulungagung in East Java
province after being admitted to hospital on June 8, I Nyoman
Kandun, director general for communicable disease control at
the health ministry, told Reuters.

The infection was confirmed to be from the H5N1 avian virus
by a WHO laboratory in Hong Kong, he said.

An official at the health ministry’s bird flu center who
declined to be identified said: “There was a dead chicken near
his house.”

The chicken cage was 15 meters (49 ft) from the boy’s home,
the official added.

Indonesia has seen a steady rise in human bird flu
infections and deaths since its first known outbreak of H5N1 in
poultry in late 2003, and has registered more deaths this year
than any other country.

Indonesia has 220 million people and an estimated 1.2
billion chickens, some 30 percent of them in the yards of homes
in both rural and urban areas.

The bird flu virus is endemic in poultry in nearly all of
the 33 provinces in Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands
sprawling across some 5,000 km (3,100 miles).

Despite the climbing death toll, the government has
resisted mass culling of birds, saying it is too costly and
impractical.

Vaccination has been preferred to culling, which has been
done only sporadically at selective farms and their immediate
surroundings.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease but many
countries around the world are on alert over fears it may
mutate into a disease that could pass easily among people and
trigger a pandemic, killing millions.

Indonesia drew international attention in May when the
virus killed members of a single family in North Sumatra.
Experts said there could have been limited human-to-human
transmission in this cluster case.

But they stressed genetic analyses of the virus have not
shown all of the traits that are known so far to allow it to
spread easily among people.