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12-year-old Indonesian boy dies from bird flu
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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP): An Indonesian boy died from bird flu in the capital Saturday, bringing the country's death toll from the virus to 88, the Health Ministry said. The 12-year-old junior high school student from Tangerang, on Jakarta's southwestern outskirts, died after being treated for five days at Persahabatan Hospital _ a designed bird-flu hospital in Jakarta _ said Daswir Nurdin of the ministry's bird flu center. "He was reported to have (had) contact with dead chickens close to his school,'' Nurdin said. He said the boy first developed breathing problems and a fever on Sept. 30 and initially visited a local clinic. |
He was brought to Persahabatan on Tuesday, Nurdin said. "His death raised Indonesia's death toll of bird flu to 88'' deaths out of 109 cases, he said. Indonesia has been the country hardest-hit by the virus since it began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. Indonesia's human death toll from the illness now accounts for almost half of the recorded 200 fatalities worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. The boy was the third Indonesian killed by the disease this month. A 21-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman died earlier. |
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and home to millions of backyard chickens, is considered a potential location for a major bird flu outbreak. The disease remains hard for people to catch _ most cases have so far been traced to contact with infected birds _ but experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily between humans, potentially sparking a global pandemic.
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