Indonesia woman dies of bird flu - hospital
UPDATE TO: ( Original bird flu story )
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) - A 37-year-old Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, taking the country’s human death toll to 59, a hospital official said on Friday.
The woman, from Serpong town in western Java, had been diagnosed as positive for the virus earlier this week.
“The woman died yesterday at 7.35 p.m. (1235 GMT) because of organs malfunction which is caused by (bird flu) virus H5N1,” Dr. Muchtar Ichsan, chief of bird flu management at Persahabatan Hospital in Jakarta, told Reuters.
Four others are receiving treatment for bird flu symptoms at the hospital, although the virus has yet to be confirmed, he added.
Ichsan said on Thursday afternoon the woman’s husband and son, who had also developed bird flu symptoms, had been hospitalised at Persahabatan.
Two other women have been treated since yesterday for the same symptoms and their conditions are not good, he said.
“Their test results will be out within two (or) three more days,” Ichsan said.
Indonesia leads the world in bird flu deaths, and has had 76 confirmed cases.
Officials say efforts to contain the virus are having some success and the number of provinces where it is present in fowl, the usual source of human infection, has fallen sharply.
Health ministry official Joko Suyono told Reuters earlier in the week that the woman who has since died had bought a live chicken and slaughtered it at her house, but it was unclear whether this was the cause of the infection.
Source: Reuters