Two more Indonesian women die of bird flu
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with new death reported by World Health Organisation) JAKARTA, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Indonesia has confirmed the deaths of another two women from bird flu, taking the number of fatalities in the country to 55 from 72 cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. The Geneva-based WHO said it had been told by the Indonesian Health Ministry that a 27-year-old woman from Central Java province had died on Oct. 13 just 24 hours after being taken to hospital. She had developed symptoms on Oct. 8. The source of her infection was still being investigated and the WHO said that it had no further information. In Jakarta, two health ministry officials told Reuters that they had no knowledge of the case. Earlier, a health ministry official had announced the death of a 67-year-old woman in West Java province. "The virus in her was highly pathogenic, very vicious. She is the 54th casualty out of 71 cases," said Runizar Ruesin, the head of the health ministry's bird flu information centre. The woman from the West Java city of Bandung died on Sunday night, the official said. Hadi Yusuf, the doctor who treated her, told Reuters the disease also affected the woman's kidneys. Tests last week found she had the H5N1 virus. Indonesia has become one of the frontlines in the battle against the disease. No country has suffered from more deaths than this huge Asian country of 17,000 islands where millions of chickens roam backyards freely. Despite the rise in the human death toll, the Indonesian government has resisted mass culling of birds, citing the expense and impracticality in a sprawling, populous country where many people are still unperturbed by the bird flu threat. Diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and tuberculosis kill thousands of Indonesians annually. Bird flu has now killed 151 people in nine countries since 2003, according to figures from the WHO. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that can be passed easily between people, leading to a possible human pandemic which could kill millions. (Additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva)
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