Indonesia reports its 49th human victim, late discovery
September 14th, 2006
Indonesia’s bird flu death toll rose to 49 yesterday, as the country declared a 5 year old boy that had died six months ago was a victim of the H5N1 virus. The case was included in the statistics as the United Nations Health agency has revised its definition for human cases of avian influenza, as Sari Setiogi, a World Health Organization spokeswoman in Jakarta, declared yesterday. The boy lived in Bekasi, in the province of West Java and tests and samples collected from him were analyzed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The H5N1 infection was confirmed and so Indonesia is now easily leading the world’ worst affected countries by bird flu list. The child died on March 19th and in that period poultry deaths were also recorded in the area where he lived. Most of the bird flu human cases have been linked with previous contact of the victims with sick or dead birds. The fear is that a mutation of the virus could cause it to be passed on from person to person and cause a world epidemic.