Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Bird Flu Kills 14-Year-Old Indonesian Boy
A 14-year-year-old boy died of bird flu, officials said Tuesday, raising the country’s death toll to at least 39 people.
The boy from Jakarta died last week, and tests sent to a World Health Organization-approved laboratory in Hong Kong came back positive, said senior Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono. The teen had been around dead birds.
The results were announced a day before some of the world’s top bird flu experts were set to meet with Indonesian officials to try to map out a plan to get a handle on the H5N1 virus.
The meeting — which brings together scientists from WHO, the U.N. Food and Animal Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disese Control and Prevention, among others — comes a month after Indonesia grappled with the world’s largest reported family cluster of bird flu cases.
Six of seven family members from a remote farming village on Sumatra island died after testing positive for the virus. An eighth relative was buried before samples could be taken, but WHO considers her part of the cluster.