by Playfuls Staff |
17th August 2006
Indonesia's human bird-flu death toll rose to 45, the highest in the world, after a 9-year-old girl who died this week, tested positive for bird flu virus, health officials said Thursday. [more]
The 9-year-old girl, Ai Siti Amanah from Garut, West Java, had initially tested negative for bird flu but died soon after in a hospital in West Java province on Tuesday, causing health officials to become suspicious.
"We ran a second test, and the result came positive late last night," Lily Sulistyowati, a spokeswoman from the Indonesian health ministry told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Vietnam is second with 42 deaths but has had none this year, compared with 34 in Indonesia in the first half of 2006.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a speech to parliament on Wednesday promised more funds to fight bird flu, saying new bird flu spending would be part of an overall increase in health care funding in the new state budget.
"To avoid the spread of contagious diseases, especially bird flu, the government will increase active surveillance, the capabilities of provincial laboratories, and stockpile anti-viral drugs," he said.
The Indonesian government has come under fire for its slow response to bird flu, including its reluctance to cull chickens, after the disease was first discovered in the archipelago country in 2004.
Bird flu is endemic in 27 of Indonesia's 33 provinces with millions of chickens and ducks infected. The Jakarta Post reported Tuesday that bird flu had also spread to the remote eastern province of Papua with around 174 chickens dead and 414 others culled due to suspected infections.
International health experts said they fear that H5N1, the strain of the virus that has been deadly in humans, could mutate into a virus that can spread from human to human and spark a pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.
Bird flu in Indonesia grabbed the world's attention in May when seven members of a single family died of the virus - the largest recorded cluster to date. The World Health Organization concluded that limited human-to-human transmission likely occurred, but the virus did not spread beyond the blood family members.
© 2006 DPA
