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.