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Indonesia
raises its bird flu toll to 49
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JAKARTA (AP) - Indonesia's tally of people killed by bird flu climbed to 49 after a 5-year-old boy who died in March was added to the list, a senior health ministry official said Wednesday. The child, who died in Sulianti Saroso hospital in the capital Jakarta, was added retroactively following a recent change in the testing standards the World Health Organization sets for H5N1 virus cases, said Nyoman Kandun. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia confirmed the results, he said, though |
the WHO has not yet added the boy's death to its Web site Kandun said two other patients had fallen ill with bird flu, a 27-year-old woman from West Sumatra - whose sister earlier tested positive for H5N1 - and a 14-year-old girl from South Sulawesi. Both were receiving the anti-viral drug Tamiflu and under close observation, he said. The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 143 people worldwide since it started ravaging poultry stocks in Asia three years ago, the WHO said. |
Most human deaths have been traced to contact with sick birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a more transmissible form, potentially causing a deadly global pandemic. For Another perspective from the Jakarta Post, a partner of Asia News Network, click here
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