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Last Updated: Nov 12th, 2006 - 20:38:00 |
4 June (foodconsumer.org) - The World Health Organization has confirmed that the 15-year-old boy who died last week in Indonesia was suffering from bird flu. This is Indonesia's 37th human victim of avian influenza and the numbers are steadily rising.
The latest victim, from the town of Tasikmalaya died on May 30 in the provincial capital, Bandung. Local tests had confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus. Nyoman Kandun, a senior Health Ministry official in Indonesia said that the boy was in close contact with poultry and hence had gotten infected.
The WHO laboratory in Hong Kong has yet to confirm initial tests that showed a 7-year-old girl from the outskirts of Jakarta, who died last week, was positive for the virus. Her sibling, a 10-year-old boy had died three days later, but no samples were obtained before he was buried.
However, the local lab test has come back negative for an Indonesian nurse who fell ill after treating two siblings infected with bird flu. "Thank God, the result came back negative," said Hariadi Wibisono, another senior Health Ministry official.
The 25-year-old nurse was quarantined after she complained of common bird flu symptoms. She developed the illness about 10 days after treating a 10-year-old girl and her 18-year-old brother from West Java province. Both siblings had succumbed to bird flu last month.
Dr. Hadi Jusuf of Hasan Sadikin Hospital said the nurse was recovering and was being given a full course of the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu. She was likely to be released later this week, he added. Meanwhile, her samples have been sent to the WHO-accredited lab in Hong Kong for confirmation of her recovery from the infection.
The case of the nurse had again sparked fears that the H5N1 virus had mutated to a form easily transmissible between humans, but currently it appears to be seasonal flu, health officials said.
Indonesia is struggling to cope with the explosion in bird flu cases. This year alone around 26 people have died from the deadly disease. The bird flu crisis seems to be poised to explode since the country has averaged one human bird flu death every 2 1/2 days in May.
The country began intensifying its preventive measure such as culling poultry in an effort to contain the deadly bird flu, which has spread to almost all provinces earlier this week. Indonesian officials have been very reluctant to order culling operations, which have shown effective in controlling the spread of the disease in Vietnam and Thailand.
Indonesia is expected to take over from Vietnam as the country with the largest number of human bird flu deaths shortly. Vietnam has officially recorded 42 deaths from the disease, compared to 37 in Indonesia.
The latest incident of a bird flu cluster in a family where seven people died from bird flu sent panic waves through the world. An eighth family member was buried before samples were collected, but the WHO considers her part of the cluster. Health officials feared that human-to-human transmission had taken place here. But the WHO was not able to confirm this.
The H5N1 bird flu is primarily found in birds, but has jumped to humans and has so far caused the death of 127 people since it reemerged in 2003. This year alone the disease has spread like wild fire and has hit many parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
According to The World Health Organization, 127 humans have so far fallen victim to H5N1 bird flu virus. Although most deaths have occurred in Asia, the majority of them reported this year have occurred in Indonesia and Turkey.
The bird flu virus first surfaced in Asia in 1997 and then again resurfaced in 2003. Since then it has spread rapidly across Asia and Europe as well as Africa. Till now the virus has only been transmitted after close contact with infected birds and coming in contact with saliva, nasal secretions, and feces.
The fear is that the virus mutates to an easily transmissible form between humans triggering a pandemic worldwide. The C DC says that some of the common symptoms of bird flu are fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches, eye infections, pneumonia, and severe respiratory diseases. As of now, there has been no evidence suggesting that eating cooked poultry will transfer the infection since the virus is heat labile.
© 2004-2005 by foodconsumer.org unless otherwise specified
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