Ninth human avian flu fatality confirmed, new patients reported
Ninth human avian flu fatality confirmed, new patients reported
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari has confirmed a 35 year-
old man who died last month as the country's ninth human bird flu
fatality.
"The World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory in Hong Kong
has confirmed the test results. We now have nine confirmed bird
flu deaths from a total of 14 infections," Siti said on Tuesday
on the sidelines of an awards ceremony.
The latest casualty was a man identified by his initials only
as AW, a resident of West Jakarta, who died on Nov. 19 at the
private Pantai Indah Kapuk hospital in North Jakarta.
Doctors had initially planned to transfer AW to the avian flu
treatment center at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital, but were unable
to move him due to his critical condition.
The Ministry of Health's director general of disease control I
Nyoman Kandun said the man had been in contact with chickens that
carried the H5N1 virus.
"He was building his house and around it there were many
chickens and birds running around. Researchers tested those birds
and they tested positive for H5N1," Kandun said.
Meanwhile, Sulianti Saroso Hospital spokesman Ilham Patu said
that five new suspected bird flu patients were admitted overnight
on Monday and Tuesday from several areas of Jakarta.
"We now have a total of six patients being treated for
suspected bird flu infections," Patu told AFP.
Some of the five admitted, he said, were in a worse condition
than the sixth patient, a 23-year-old woman who has been in
intensive care for the past few days.
Siti said over the weekend the government expected to
vaccinate 47 million people who have direct contact with poultry
and birds across the country against regular human influenza.
The vaccination would reduce the opportunity for H5N1 to
mutate with the ordinary human flu virus and becomes easily
transmissible.
The cost of the vaccination drive, however, is estimated at Rp
5 trillion (nearly US$500 million), which the state budget cannot
afford.
The bird flu virus has killed 71 people in Asia since 2003,
out of 138 people known to have been infected.
There has been fear that contact between infected birds and
humans could eventually result in the virus mutating into a form
that could easily pass between humans, sparking a pandemic that
could kill millions.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in
parts of Asia, and has affected poultry in two-thirds of the
provinces in the country.
The WHO has recommended the mass culling of poultry to
effectively contain the spread of the virus, but the government
said it lacked the funds to compensate farmers and bird owners.