Suspected bird flu patient dies in Jakarta

Agencies, Jakarta

A 23-year-old man, who was suspected of suffering from bird flu, died last week at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital for infectious disease in Jakarta.

Slamet Wibowo, a resident of Bogor, died at the hospital early on Thursday morning, only several hours after he was admitted there.

Ilham Patu, the hospital spokesman, said that both clinical and blood tests by the hospital indicated Slamet was bird flu positive.

The hospital has sent tissue and blood samples from Slamet to a World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory in Hong Kong for further confirmation, he said.

"He'd had contact with birds and poultry as he bred birds and some of his neighbors raised chickens," Ilham said at his office.

The Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday that there were 85 patients in the country suspected to have been infected by bird flu as of Oct. 4.

As many as 11 of them have died.

However, WHO's laboratory has so far confirmed only four cases of bird flu in the country. Only one of the four cases survived.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is being transmitted from poultry to humans, has killed 43 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.

WHO has called on Indonesians to stay calm, saying there is no evidence so far that H5N1 was spreading between humans.

The government earlier declared it was facing an "extraordinary" outbreak of the virus.

Meanwhile, Australia will host a regional meeting on bird flu in Brisbane on Oct. 31 to coordinate an Asia-Pacific response to a potential pandemic, AP reported.

The two-day meeting in the eastern city of Brisbane will bring together disease response coordinators from all 21 countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group plus observers from other regional neighbors, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

The results of the meeting will be discussed by APEC leaders when they meet in South Korea in November.

The meeting was announced a day after Australian officials came to Jakarta for top-level discussions about Indonesia's capacity to respond to a possible pandemic.

In a related development, Reuters reported that Indonesian health authorities have found chickens which tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus but which appear to be healthy, a sign that the bug may become harder to detect.