Infectious Disease
WHO Confirms 42nd Bird Flu Death In Indonesia
By Sara Andrews
Jul 20, 2006 - 11:50:00 AM

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20 July, (foodconsumer.org) - Indonesia's struggles with bird flu threaten to blow out of control after the World Health Organisation (WHO) accredited laboratory in Hong Kong confirmed the country's 42nd human bird flu death on Thursday.

Local tests on a 44-year-old man who died July 12 had indicated the presence of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza virus. Samples were sent out to Hong Kong and the confirmatory test results were released today.

"The man was confirmed to have bird flu by the Hong Kong laboratory. There were dead chickens around him, but chickens around his neighborhood tested negative for bird flu," said I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of communicable disease control at the Health Ministry.

Indonesia has testing facilities, but bird flu tests still need to be confirmed by World Health Organization-affiliated centres. These centers are located in Hong Kong and the US. Indonesia is struggling to deal with bird flu and the death toll has hit the roof since January this year.

World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari Setiogi says Indonesia's early detection and surveillance of the disease has been very good. However the main challenge is to educate the public about the threat from dead chickens and other poultry.

"I mean they put backyard chickens for example at night inside the house instead of in a pen or something like that. For them it's something very usual. So we have to again and again remind them that the public should avoid contact with sick or dead poultry," said Setiogi.

Indonesia has registered more bird flu deaths this year than any other country. In fact there were fears of human-to-human transmission in a cluster in which seven family members died of bird flu. The World Health Organization confirmed that partial human-to-human transmission had occurred in Indonesia.

Health experts have criticized Indonesia for failing to take strict measures to curb bird flu. The country did not sanction culling poultry until the situation nearly got out of hand.

The government has defended itself by claiming that it does not have enough money to compensate farmers and hence cannot take up culling operations on a large scale.

According to World Health Organization figures 131 humans have so far fallen a victim to H5N1 virus. Although most deaths have occurred in Asia, the majority of them reported this year have occurred in Indonesia.

The bird flu virus first surfaced in Asia in 1997 and then again resurfaced in 2003. Since then it has spread rapidly across Asia and Europe as well as Africa.

Till now the virus has only been transmitted after close contact with infected birds and coming in contact with saliva, nasal secretions, and feces.

The fear is that if the virus mutates to an easily transmissible form between humans it would trigger a pandemic worldwide.

n fact scientists reported last Thursday in the journal Nature that multiple mutations had occurred in the Indonesian family cluster, but the significance of these mutations remains unclear.

Earlier last week a three-year-old girl was confirmed as the country's 41st victim of bird flu. The latest death takes the bird flu toll to 42, which is on par with Vietnam. Experts feel it is only a matter of time before Indonesia overtakes Vietnam.