Thursday, September 07, 2006
Indonesia reports 47th death from bird flu
A 14-year-old Indonesian girl who died in June was infected with bird flu, health officials said on Thursday.
The case took a long time to identify because it was from blood samples taken during routine surveillance of people with mild influenza symptoms.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said tests on the girl’s blood sample were completed late on Wednesday.
“It turned out positive,” Supari told reporters, adding chickens had died in the neighbourhood where she lived in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. Makassar is 1,400 km (870 miles) northeast of the capital Jakarta.
The fatality takes Indonesia’s confirmed death toll from bird flu to 47, the highest in the world.
I Nyoman Kandun, director for disease control at the health ministry, said tests by two independent laboratories on the blood sample had confirmed the girl had the disease.
“The case should have been included on the list,” he told Reuters, referring to the list of human fatalities from bird flu.
“When we found one of them was positive, we traced it and found that the girl had died,” he said.
Indonesia has been criticised for not doing enough to combat the disease, which is endemic in birds in most of the country’s 33 provinces.