Cluster of bird flu cases feared
Cluster of bird flu cases feared
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Heavy rain over the past week may have contributed to five new
cases of suspected avian influenza, the head of the avian
influenza surveillance unit at Sulianti Saroso Hospital said on
Wednesday.
After a quiet week on the bird flu front, five new suspected
avian influenza patients were admitted to Sulianti Saroso
Hospital this week, with one of the patients dying of respiratory
distress on Tuesday evening.
Ilham Patu said that although there were no studies on bird
flu outbreak patterns in connection with changes in the weather,
people should nevertheless do what they could to build up their
immunity during the change in the seasons.
"It is a fact that influenza in Indonesia peaks between
November and January, the rainy season, when people's resistance
to illness is compromised because of the weather," he told The
Jakarta Post.
A 39-year-old man from Mampang Prapatan in South Jakarta died
on Tuesday evening, a day after being transferred to Sulianti
Saroso from a hospital in Cilandak, South Jakarta.
The man displayed symptoms of bird flu, including high fever,
breathing difficulties and a rapid lowering of the white blood
cell count. Test results, however, will only be available later
this week.
However, the Jakarta Health Agency is not waiting. It moved on
Wednesday to collect blood samples from the man's neighbors to
determine whether bird flu has spread through the neighborhood.
Tempo Interaktif reported that several neighbors said chickens
in the neighborhood began dying suddenly about six months ago.
"Every morning five to eight of them would be found dead,"
Mustari, who lived about 50 meters from the deceased, said.
Another neighbor, Dany Hamdani, also reported that many of his
chickens had died. "About 30 of my chickens died suddenly, just
like with Pak Mustari's chickens."
He said they disposed of the dead chickens in the nearby
river.
To date, there have been 14 confirmed human bird flu cases in
Indonesia, with nine deaths.
Separately, the increasing number of bird flu cases in family
clusters underlines the concern over the possibility of human-to-
human transmission.
A 35-year-old woman from Kembangan Utara, West Jakarta, and
her two-year-old son were admitted to Sulianti Saroso Hospital's
isolation ward late Tuesday night, after being treated for three
days at Soekamto Police Hospital in East Jakarta.
Before the woman was admitted to Soekamto hospital, Ilham
said, she lost another son to a high fever and coughing. The
woman and her family live in an area where many birds and
chickens are kept in people's yards.
"Their blood tests and polymerase chain reaction tests have
not come back yet, but we suspect this is a family cluster,"
Ilham Patu said, adding that so far there has been five family
clusters in the country.
A cluster is when members of the same family, same household
or even the same school suffer from the same disease.
These types of cluster cases are being carefully monitored
because they could be the first suggestion of a viral or
epidemiologic change in the bird flu virus.
So far, all of the cluster cases in Indonesia have been caused
by bird to human infection, Ilham said.