Indonesia: six year-old girl dies of bird flu
submited by kickingbird at Jan, 26, 2007 8:44 AM from Reuters
Indonesia, which has the world´s highest number of human fatalities from bird flu, has been trying to step up efforts to stamp out the disease after a flare up in cases this year following a brief lull.
"There has been another H5N1 fatality case, a six-year old girl from central Java. According to information, her neighbors had dead chickens," said Ahmad Priyatna of the ministry´s bird flu information center.
He said the victim died in a hospital in Yogyakarta last Friday.
Six people have died of the disease this year in Indonesia, where the virus is endemic in poultry in many provinces.
In South Sulawesi province, five people with bird flu symptoms have been hospitalized for testings, a doctor said.
Their health was improving, said Khalid Saleh, a doctor in charge of the bird flu ward at Wahidin Sudirohusodo hospital in the provincial capital, Makassar.
"They come from the same neighborhood. It was said chickens have died in the area," he told Reuters.
Indonesia, the world´s fourth-most-populous country that stretches across 17,000 islands, faces an uphill task in fighting the virus.
Millions of backyard fowl live in close proximity to humans and keeping backyard chickens is ingrained in Indonesia´s culture. Health education campaigns have often been patchy and rules difficult to enforce.
Contact with sick fowl is the most common way people are infected.
Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease. With the latest case, 270 people worldwide have been infected by it since late 2003, killing 164 of them.
- GISAID: H5N1 Bird Flu Circulating in Dairy Cows in the United States 3 days ago
- USCDC: A(H5N1) Bird Flu Response Update 3 days ago
- USCDC: Avian Influenza A(H5N1) U.S. Situation Update and CDC Activities 10 days ago
- USCDC: Urgent field correction notice 10 days ago
- Joint FAO/WHO/WOAH preliminary assessment of recent influenza A(H5N1) viruses 11 days ago
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