Indonesia confirms fifth human bird flu death

An Indonesian woman who died in October had bird flu, bringing total deaths from the disease in the world's fourth most populous country to five, a senior Health Ministry official said yesterday.

Hariadi Wibisono told Reuters the woman's nephew, who was being treated in a Jakarta hospital, had also tested positive for the disease, taking the number of confirmed Indonesian cases to nine. The tests were done by a Hong Kong laboratory.

The woman and the boy lived in the same house in Tangerang, a satellite city of Jakarta, but that did not mean the virus had mutated and jumped from one to the other, Wibisono said.

"No, we cannot confirm that. Both of them got ill because of dead chickens at their house... But we are still investigating these cases," he said, adding that the ministry was awaiting further test results from Hong Kong that might shed light on how the disease was transmitted.

Tests on another two children who were in hospital with bird flu-like symptoms had come back negative, while a similar case involving a nurse was still under investigation, Wibisono said.

He said the eight-year-old boy confirmed with the disease "is in a good condition".

Tangerang, where the boy and his aunt lived, is about 40 km southwest of Jakarta and was the site of Indonesia's first confirmed human deaths from avian influenza in July.

Ilham Patu, spokesman for Jakarta's Sulianti Saroso hospital where the nurse with flu-like symptoms was being treated, said:

"The initial test from the Health Ministry laboratory is negative," he said, but added that further testing was being done in Indonesia and Hong Kong.

The nurse also came from the Tangerang area, Patu said.

The flu's H5N1 virus has infected at least 123 people in Asia and killed 63, giving a known mortality rate of more than 50 per cent.

Most cases have been blamed on direct or indirect contact with infected chickens. But scientists fear the virus will mutate into a form that passes easily between humans. In that case, millions could die and national economies could be crippled.

The disease is widespread among Indonesian's chicken population, which the Agriculture Ministry puts at 1.4 billion.

Bird flu first surfaced among the country's fowl in 2003, and has been found in poultry in 23 of its 33 provinces, killing more than 10 million domesticated birds.

Experts have criticised Indonesia for not culling more fowl, but government officials say that is easier said than done in a country as vast as Indonesia.

Its 17,000 islands dot an archipelago stretching over some 5,000 km with a population of 220 million.

Compounding the problem are what the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates at 30 million "backyard chicken" households accounting for about 200 million birds. These are homes with just a handful of birds, many in urban areas.

Mass culling in such circumstances is expensive and impractical, Jakarta officials say.

Instead they are pursuing a multifaceted approach that includes vaccination, selective culling, educating the populace on such topics as avoiding contact with infected birds, and working with the FAO in defining affected areas.