Boy hospitalized with bird flu, health official says (Indonesia)
JAKARTA (AP): Local tests confirm that a 14-year-old boy hospitalized in the Indonesian capital has been infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, a senior Health Ministry official said Sunday.
The results of tests conducted by the Health Ministry showed Saturday that the boy, identified only as Randy from Kalideres, West Jakarta, contracted H5N1 after coming into contact with adead duck, said I Nyoman Kandun, the ministry’s Director General of Communicable Disease Control.
The boy was last week admitted to a hospital in the city of Tangerang, on the western outskirts of Jakarta, suffering from a fever and labored breathing, and was transferred Friday to the Persahabatan hospital in Jakarta, Kandun said.
“His condition is deteriorating,” Kandun said, adding that the boy had been hooked up to a ventilator.
A day before falling sick, Randy had come into contact with dead ducks, burying by hand scores of his birds that had suddenly died, he said.
There was no confirmation of the infection from the World Health Organization. The UN health agency has, since the middle of last year, acknowledged the accuracy of the Indonesian labs working with a Jakarta-based U.S. Navy lab affiliated with Centerfor Disease Control in Atlanta.
Randy’s infection has yet to be confirmed by the World Health Organization, which has recorded 74 human H5N1 infections in Indonesia since late 2003, of whom 57 have died. The UN agency says 157 people have died of the virus around the world since theoutbreak began.