2 more bird flu deaths confirmed
2 more bird flu deaths confirmed
Agence France-Presse, Jakarta
Indonesia's bird flu death toll has risen to 11 amid worrying new evidence that the virus may be developing resistance to Tamiflu, the only drug known to be effective against it.
Test results from a World Health Organization-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong showed on Thursday that a 39-year-old Indonesian man and an eight-year-old boy were the country's latest victims of the H5N1 strain of the virus.
"It's been confirmed. We were informed of the results this morning," Ilham Patu, a spokesman for Sulianti Saroso hospital, the main center here for the treatment of bird flu, told AFP.
The country routinely sends samples of cases that test positive locally to Hong Kong for verification.
The man, a resident of South Jakarta, died on Dec. 13, a day after being admitted to the hospital, while the boy died two days later at a private hospital in Jakarta.
Most victims have come from densely-populated Jakarta, where many people still live in close proximity to poultry, providing ideal conditions for the virus to pass to humans.
Hundreds of officials and veterinary students began visiting houses across the capital on Thursday, looking for sick poultry as part of a nationwide campaign to fight the disease, agriculture ministry official Makmur said.
"The surveillance is aimed at monitoring poultry that may be infected with bird flu," he said, adding that the students were trained last month by experts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Meanwhile in Vietnam, bird flu has become resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu in two fatal cases, a doctor said in what he described as a worrying development.
Tamiflu is considered a frontline defense against bird flu and the most effective treatment available to counter the H5N1 strain.
Menno de Jong, from the Institute of Tropical Diseases in southern Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, said Tamiflu was ineffective in fighting the virus in two girls who died despite being given full doses of the drug.