Another bird-flu death in Indonesia

A three-year-old Indonesian boy whose sister died from bird flu last week has also died from the disease as the country grapples with a steady climb in cases, authorities said today.

Local laboratory tests showed the boy contracted the virus, said Dr Runizar Roesin from Indonesia’s Bird Flu Information Centre. He died on Tuesday in the west Javanese city of Bandung, he said.

The boy’s sister died from bird flu over the weekend, according to local tests.

Another sibling is also suffering from bird flu-like symptoms, including fever and respiratory problems, officials say.

Blood and swab samples from all three children have been sent to a World Health Organisation-laboratory based in Hong Kong for confirmation.

So far, Indonesia has confirmed 12 deaths but if tests for the two dead siblings come back positive from the WHO lab, the toll would climb to 14.

Bird flu has killed hundreds of millions of chickens and ducks since it started ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003, and has jumped to humans. Most of the human bird-flu deaths have been in Vietnam and Thailand

Meanwhile, in Turkey, a five-year-old boy, one of 21 people infected with bird flu, has emerged from critical condition and was slightly better today, said a doctor as laboratories tested samples from dozens more patients across Turkey to detect the virus.

An 11-year-old Turkish girl, suffering from pneumonia and suspected of having bird flu, died yesterday while being transferred from the south-eastern city of Mus to a better-equipped hospital in the eastern city of Erzurum, said head physician Akin Aktas.

Samples from her body were sent to Ankara for tests to see if she was infected with bird flu.

The bird-flu crisis has hit the country’s poultry industry particularly hard, with authorities saying sales have plunged by 70%.

In Beijing, donors at a bird-flu conference pledged more than $1.9bn (€1.6bn) to fight the virus and prepare for a possible human flu pandemic.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions. The World Health Organisation has stressed it has no evidence of person-to-person infection in Turkey, where bird flu has killed four children so far.