Bird flu death toll in Indonesia raises to 48
The Star, 10 Sept 2006

JAKARTA: An eight-year-old girl who died last year has been confirmed as Indonesia’s latest bird flu case, the World health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.

The WHO said that the girl from Tangerang, a suburb on the outskirts of here, who died in July 2005, was Indonesia’s 48^th fatality.

A recent revision in the way WHO confirmed H5N1 infection, meant that the girl, plus a 45-year-old man from central Java, who was infected last November but later recovered, had been recently confirmed as bird flu cases.

“Tthe retrospectively confirmed cases bring the total in Indonesia to 63. Of these cases, 48 had been fatal”, said the WHO press release issued from Geneva.

The dead girl was the daughter of a 38-year-old man who was Indonesia’s first laboratory confirmed human fatality of avian influenza, said the WHO.

The girl’s one-year-old sister, who died of severe pneumonia, was suspected of contracting the virus.

However at the time health authorities had limited blood samples taken from the two sisters, said the WHO.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, is grappling with ongoing outbreaks of the H5N1 virus and has the world’s highest human toll from the disease.

While the virus does not spread easily among people, the chance of a mutation that would allow it to do so is heightened as more humans catch it from infected birds.

Scientists fear that if this occurs, a global flu pandemic with a massive death toll could result. --- AFP.