101st bird flu death in idonesia already

amazed

Indonesia reports 101st bird flu death
JAKARTA, Wed.:

A 32-year-old Indonesian man has died of bird flu, the health ministry said today, bringing the death toll to 101 in the nation worst hit by the deadly virus.

[table=200][/table]The man, who died yesterday, was from the Jakarta satellite district of Tangerang, the ministry's bird flu information centre said in a statement.

He was the seventh confirmed death from bird flu this year.

The victim was said to have first shown symptoms similar to bird flu on January 17, but he was only taken to a village clinic on January 21 before being referred to a hospital in the district town of Tangerang on January 24.

The man was then moved to a bird flu referral hospital in Jakarta on January 26, suffering from fever, breathing difficulties, low blood cell count and pneumonia, the health ministry's bird flu centre has said.

The centre said it was not known whether the victim had contact with infected birds but that several of his neighbours were keeping pigeons.

Humans are typically infected with bird flu by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, sparking a deadly global pandemic.

The concern stems from past influenza pandemics. A pandemic in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20 million people worldwide.

The virus is now endemic in birds across nearly all of Indonesia's 33 provinces and deemed by experts to be out of control in the country.

More than half of all bird flu deaths worldwide since 2005 have occurred in Indonesia, World Health Organisation figures show. More than twice as many Indonesians have died of the disease than in Vietnam, which with 48 deaths is the second most affected country.

"The virus is uncontrollable in Indonesia... it means that viral contamination of the environment is quite high," said Ngurah Mahardika, a virologist at Udayana University on the resort island of Bali, which recorded its first two human deaths from the disease last year.

"The reason is that the virus is not under control in animals right now," he said.

The H5N1 virus is mostly spread to humans through contact with infected poultry, but scientists fear it could mutate into a form easily transmittable between humans. The resulting pandemic could kill millions.

Avian influenza has been particularly prevalent in areas surrounding Jakarta, Mahardika said, with the satellite city of Tangerang in neighbouring Banten province of particular concern with its large population living close to poultry.

Tangerang has seen eight confirmed human infections since October last year, all of them fatal.

A quarter of Indonesia's bird flu deaths have occurred in Jakarta, with another 45 percent striking in Banten and the nearby province of West Java, according to health ministry figures.

Both provinces abut the massive capital and receive the overflow of its urban sprawl.

A lack of coordination between government agencies means authorities are not sharing disease samples, raising the possibility of missing detecting strains of the virus that have adapted to humans, Mahardika said.

"The people working in this field never come to the table to talk about it and analyse it together," he said.

Devolution of power over the last 10 years since the fall of authoritarian president Suharto has also hindered coordination efforts, Australian National University Indonesia expert James Fox said.

"You have an area that will try to contain the bird flu epidemic, but there's no guarantee the neighbouring area will do the same. So (bird flu) will always just come back," Fox said.

Unlike other Asian nations which have managed to contain the bird flu virus, Indonesia's gross oversight was to not begin exterminating poultry three or four years ago when the disease first began spreading, he said.

"Most of the other nations decided they would not vaccinate, they would exterminate. The problem is on a veterinary level, (Indonesian authorities) were in denial," Fox said.

"(Exterminating poultry) is not possible anymore, you can only do that when there's a small outbreak, when it first begins. It is now endemic," Fox said.

Muchtar Ihsan, the doctor at the head of the avian influenza team at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital -- one of two bird flu referral hospitals in the capital -- said Indonesia's long practice of families living close to their poultry has proved hard to break.

"This is the habit of the people since hundreds of years ago, it's hard to convince people that it's dangerous," he said. - AFP

amazed

Selesema burung di Asia terus merebak

JAKARTA 31 Jan.

amazed

Budak mangsa baru H5N1

JAKARTA: Virus selesema burung (H5N1) membunuh seorang budak lelaki berusia tiga tahun dan seorang remaja di sini, umum kementerian kesihatan, menjadikan jumlah kematian akibat penyakit itu di negara ini seramai 105 orang.

Mangsa terbaru hanya dikenali sebagai Han, budak lelaki tiga tahun dari ibu kota Indonesia yang meninggal dunia Jumaat lalu di sebuah hospital, lapor radio El-Shinta, kelmarin.

Nyoman Kandun, pegawai kanan Kementerian Kesihatan, mengesahkan laporan itu.

揢jian makmal mengesahkan budak lelaki itu dijangkiti virus jenis H5N1,