Indonesian security guard dies of bird flu

A MAN died of bird flu in one of the affluent neighbourhoods of Indonesia’s capital, while a self-employed vendor in a remote Chinese village was sickened by the disease, authorities said yesterday.

The Philippines, which is so far free of the H5N1 strain of the virus, started stockpiling tens of thousands of capsules of the only drug known to be effective against the disease in humans.

Bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia since 2003 and jumped to humans killing at least 71, almost all of them in Vietnam and Thailand.