CDC Confirms Two More Bird Flu Deaths in Indonesia
Date: 23-Dec-05
Country: INDONESIA
Author: Ade Rina and Jerry Norton
"... we have received confirmation from CDC Atlanta that the two, N and M, are positive," Hariadi Wibisono, director of the department charged with control of animal-borne diseases, told Reuters.
He was referring to the cases of a 39-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy who had previously tested positive locally for the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
Local tests are not considered definitive. The CDC laboratory tests are among those recognised by the World Health Organisation, Wibisono said.
Both victims died earlier this month. In addition to the 11 deaths, five individuals in Indonesia have been confirmed as having the disease but are still alive.
Wibisono had said earlier it was unclear if the boy had contact with infected chickens. In the case of the 39-year-old, a WHO official has said there were reports of sick and dying poultry in the neighbourhood.
Experts fear the virus will mutate into one that can be passed from human to human, rather than from fowl to people, and that such a mutation might spark a pandemic killing millions.
The latest Indonesian deaths would take the known global total to 73, while cases including survivors would rise to 141. All the deaths so far have been in Asia.
Indonesia will launch house-to-house surveillance of poultry in Jakarta in a bid to halt the spread of the flu, a minister said earlier this week.
Local communities, student volunteers and military forces will be deployed to inspect poultry across the sprawling capital of some 12 million people. Several of the victims so far have come from the Jakarta area.
Since August 2003, 10 million poultry have died from the disease in Indonesia or been killed to prevent its spread.
Indonesia, with 220 million people, has millions of chickens and ducks, the majority in the yards of rural or urban homes, including many in Jakarta.
Such a close relationship between people and livestock has helped spread the disease in humans and the virus has been found in poultry in two-thirds of the nation's 33 provinces.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation has launched its own grass roots scheme covering Java Island. The UN agency says Indonesian efforts to control bird flu should be stepped up and the government needs to draft an effective national strategy.
Indonesia is also preparing an early bird flu warning system that will involve local governments setting up health posts in all villages, where doctors and nurses would be on the lookout for flu cases in birds and humans.
