Sunday, February 11, 2007
Indonesia records 64th human bird flu death
A 20-year-old woman from West Java who tested positive for bird flu died yesterday, a health official said.
Her death takes Indonesia’s overall toll to 64 fatalities, the highest of any nation in the world.
I Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the Health Ministry, said that the woman, Elis, had been confirmed to have the H5N1 bird flu virus.
The woman had been taken to a hospital in Garut in West Java on Friday after showing bird flu-like symptoms. Mohammad Nadirin of the Health Ministry’s bird flu centre said the woman was reported to have had contact with a dead chicken but this was still being investigated.
In Ankara the Health Ministry announced yesterday that a fourth child who was hospitalised after a bird flu outbreak in southeastern Turkey has tested negative for the virus.
Health officials, meanwhile, visited villages in the region to inform residents about the disease and detect any suspicious cases.
Two adults and another child from the area who were suffering from flu symptoms remained hospitalised as a precaution, the government-run Anatolia news agency said yesterday.
Source for this avian influenza story: Gulf News (UAE)