JAKARTA, July 14 (Reuters) - An Indonesian child who died of bird flu last weekend appears to have caught the virus from dead or sick chickens in the area carrying the disease, a health ministry official said on Saturday.

Contact with infected fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus, but medical experts had initially struggled to pinpoint the source of the infection in this case.

It is always a concern when the cause of a human infection cannot be traced as it makes infection control more difficult.

"She had indirect contact with dead chickens near her school," Joko Suyono, an official at the ministry's bird flu centre, said by telephone.

The victim, from the city of Cilegon in Banten province, had initially been identified as a six-year-old boy, but Suyono said this was due to a mix up between the hospital where she was treated and a laboratory.

The official said that tests on dead chickens found near the girl's school showed they were infected with bird flu.

"We cannot know whether she touched sick chickens or not because she died. But we know surrounding her school the virus is endemic (in fowl)," he added.

Suyono said tests for the virus on people who may have had contact with the girl had proved negative and also said the findings in this case ruled out the possibility of the virus being transmitted between humans.

"So far, there have been no human-to-human cases in Indonesia," he said.

Bird flu is endemic in bird populations in most parts of Indonesia, where millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity with humans.

Indonesia has had 81 confirmed human deaths from bird flu, the most of any country in the world.

According to World Health Organisation data, globally there have been 192 human deaths out of 318 cases of the disease.

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