Another 'bird flu' patient dies
Another 'bird flu' patient dies
Abdul Khalik
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The husband and his five-year-old daughter could not hide their
grief while seeing the most important woman in their lives laid
to rest on Wednesday.
The 25-year-old woman, who tested positive for avian influenza
virus in a test conducted by the Ministry of Health laboratory,
died on Tuesday evening of acute pneumonia worsened by liver
disease.
Ilham Patu, spokesman and head of the bird flu surveillance
unit at Sulianti Saroso Hospital in North Jakarta, where the
woman had been treated for six days, said the resident of
Kunciran Induk, Tangerang, died at 6:55 p.m. on Tuesday.
"We tried to assist her breathing but her lungs were so
damaged that they could function at only 10 percent capacity. We
are still waiting for confirmation from the WHO-appointed
laboratory in Hong Kong to know if she really died from bird
flu," he told The Jakarta Post.
The woman was treated at Tangerang hospital before being
referred to Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases hospital.
Patu said that she arrived at the hospital in a critical
condition.
A Ministry of Health laboratory immediately ran tests on her,
and she was confirmed on Saturday to have been infected with bird
flu.
The WHO laboratory has confirmed 12 bird flu cases in humans
in Indonesia to date, with seven deaths since July.
A hospital in Bandung is currently treating a 16-year-old boy
from Sumedang, a town in West Java, who was confirmed by the
health ministry as suffering bird flu on Sunday.
The Sulianti Saroso hospital accepted a new patient, a five-
year-old child, at 9 p.m. on Tuesday with bird flu symptoms.
As the number of human fatalities continues to rise in the
capital, more infected birds and chickens continue to be found in
more districts across Greater Jakarta.
A senior official at the Jakarta Animal Husbandry, Fisheries,
and Maritime Affairs Agency, Adnan Ahmad, said that his office
had found infected birds in all municipalities in Jakarta and
subsequently culled hundreds of birds there.
Most of the bird flu patients are believed to have been
infected by sick birds in their neighborhoods.