Govt suspects bird flu killed man, two girls

Govt suspects bird flu killed man, two girls

Agencies, Jakarta

The Ministry of Health said on Friday that bird flu may have caused the recent deaths of a man and his two daughters in Tangerang, Banten.

And, the absence of a link between the three victims and diseased poultry has raised concern of possible human-to-human transmission.

The victims, Iwan Siswara Rapei, 38, and his two young daughters, Sabrina Nurul Aisyah, 9, and Thalita Nurul Azizah, 1, are the first human fatalities linked to the disease here.

The three died in the past 10 days.

Officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the health ministry had earlier said Iwan and his two daughters died of an unspecified bacterial infection but not of bird flu or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said that Iwan had clinical symptoms of bird flu but his two daughters tested negative.

"There's a strong suspicion that the father was infected with bird flu but we still have doubts about the test results. So we have sent specimens to a special laboratory in Hong Kong to confirm the results, which will take seven to 10 days," she told a news conference at her office on Friday.

She added that the victims had no history of contact with sick fowl or foreigners within the past four months.

Siti said about 300 people who are under observation as they had contact with the victims, including his wife, another daughter, and the family's housemaid, had showed no signs of sickness -- which included fever and respiratory problems.

Indonesia's WHO spokesperson Sari P. Setiogi said that the international agency was treating Iwan as a "suspected case" of H561 infection until the tests were completed in Hong Kong.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is confirmed to have killed 38 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and four Cambodians since the start of an epidemic in late 2003.

The strain has so far been mainly transmitted between animals, or from an animal passing the virus to a human. But, the WHO has long cautioned that the virus could mutate to allow easy transmission from human to human, which could cause it to spread around the world within months.

WHO representative Georg Petersen said that while the three victims had no known contact with poultry, a more thorough investigation could turn up further information.

Experts fear the strain could mutate into a highly infectious strain that can be easily transmitted from animal to human or from human to human, unleashing a pandemic that would kill tens of millions of people.

Iwan died in hospital of severe pneumonia on Tuesday after his daughter passed away earlier due to the same symptoms. Another daughter died on Thursday.

Siti said as many as 315 people, who had contact with the three dead victims, were being examined by the health ministry's research and development center to determine if they were also infected by the virus or not.

Iwan's wife, identified only as Lien, and their eldest son Fariz, as well as their two maids have all been taken to Bandung, West Java, and are under the tight supervision of health officials.

The health minister called on people not to panic upon hearing the news on the deaths of the three residents linked with bird flu, saying her office has taken anticipatory measures to deal with and prevent the spread of the avian influenza.

The measures included providing at least 44 hospitals across the country with the necessary support to handle bird flue- related diseases and SARS, she added.

In Jakarta, the health ministry has assigned the Suliyanti Suroso Infectious Disease Hospital in Sunter, and the Persahabatan Hospital in Pulo Gadung to deal with patients complaining of similar ailments.

The ministry also set up a command post at the directorate general of disease control and environmental health on Jl. Percetakan Negara, Central Jakarta, for bird flu-related patients. They can also call the office at 4257125.

Siti advised residents, whose family members had a fever and cough for three consecutive days, to get them examined at the designated hospitals.

Millions of poultry died in a bird flu outbreak in the country last year, prompting government to launch a massive vaccination drive.

Last month, the ministry reported the country's first human case of bird flu in a farm worker in South Sulawesi, but the man recovered and showed no further symptoms.