A local test has confirmed a 32-year-old man, member
of the family of the recent cluster death of bird flu in North Sumatra,
suffering the disease, Indonesian Health Ministry official said in Jakata
yesterday.
The man was father to the ten-year-old boy, one of the six fatalities in the
cluster death, said Director of the Animal Disease and Health Control Department
Nyoman Kandun.
"Local tests Monday confirmed that a seventh family member having bird flu
virus," he said.
Indonesia, assisted by two epidemiologists from the World Health
Organization's (WHO) headquarters and an independent laboratory in Atlanta, the
United States, has been conducting investigation on the possible human-to-human
transmission in this case.
As the disease expands all over the world, experts fear that the virus can
mutate into a certain form that easily transmits from human to human.
Some 27 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia have been contracted with bird flu,
while human fatality stands at 32 and infections at 43, according to the WHO.
All over the world, the WHO has raised the confirmed human death toll from
the H5N1 bird flu strain to 122, while the total number of confirmed human
infections since the current outbreak began in 2003 has reached
216.
