Patients on the mend, but another woman tests positive

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Some patients displaying bird flu symptoms at the Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital in North Jakarta were improving, but another woman was declared to have tested positive for the virus on Saturday.

The 30-year-old woman from Bekasi, West Java, was admitted to the hospital on Thursday after previously showing bird flu symptoms. A nephew of the woman said his aunt kept more than a dozen chickens at her home and all had died suddenly.

"The test result shows that it's bird flu," said the Ministry of Health's director general of disease control, I Nyoman Kandun, as quoted by news portal detik.com on Saturday.

He said that the woman and two other patients who had been confirmed as suffering from bird flu were now being treated at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital.

Over the past three months, four people have died of bird flu. Earlier this week, a 5-year-old girl who was suspected of suffering from bird flu died at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital, but authorities are still waiting for confirmation from the World Health Organization's laboratory in Hong Kong that she died of bird flu.

Sulianti Saroso is one of 44 hospitals nationwide that have been designated to treat bird flu patients as the government stepped up the fight against the virus following an increase in the number of victims.

But hospital deputy director Sardikin Giri Putro said that some patients who had earlier been displaying bird flu symptoms were now improving. The hospital is currently treating some 19 patients with bird flu symptoms.

"Generally, their conditions is improving, except for one person. Unless further tests show otherwise, at least four of them can be discharged today," Sardikin was quoted as saying by AFP on Saturday.

Sardikin said two people who visited Jakarta's Ranggunan Zoo where many birds have been found to be infected with the virus, were admitted to the hospital on Friday night and Saturday morning.

The H5N1 bird flu strain has killed 63 people in Southeast Asia since 2003, the majority of them in Vietnam.

The WHO's biggest fear is that H5N1 may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that would make it highly infectious and lethal to millions in a global pandemic.

But the WHO in Geneva has urged calm, saying investigations in Indonesia had produced no evidence that H5N1 was spreading easily from person to person.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday urged the culling of birds in infected areas but warned against overstating the threat.

Foreign donors on Friday promised to help the government in its battle against bird flu after the United Nations warned of a worrying situation and urged the country to improve its virus control policies.