INDONESIA CONFIRMS 24TH DEATH

Indonesia confirms 24th death

Agencies


Beijing & Jakarta: Indonesia's 24th bird flu death has been confirmed by World Health Organisation tests, a hospital spokesman said on Wednesday.

"The latest results from the WHO were received yesterday [Tuesday] concerning a man who died at [Sulianti Saroso hospital] on April 8 or 9," said hospital spokesman and spokesman for the national bird flu team, Ilham Patu.

He said the results were positive and the victim was aged 24.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, has witnessed more bird flu deaths than any other country this year and has the second highest number of fatalities reported in the world since 2003, after Vietnam.

The sprawling archipelago nation has become a bird flu "time-bomb" because of its failure to eradicate the deadly H5N1 strain from numerous areas, the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health warned last week. Besides the fatalities, Indonesia has confirmed 10 other infection cases where the sufferer has survived.

Meanwhile, China has reported its 17th human case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu since November in a 21-year-old security guard from the central city of Wuhan, according to the World Health Organisation.

The man was confirmed on Tuesday to have the virus, but the source of his exposure is still under investigation, said Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, a spokeswoman for the WHO's Beijing office.

He became sick on April 1 and was hospitalised in critical condition with a high fever, she said.

Eleven people in China have died from the disease.

The H5N1 flu strain has killed more than 100 people in nine countries, mostly in Asia, according to WHO, and has killed or prompted authorities to destroy 200 million birds.

Also on Tuesday, a local official in the eastern province of Shandong denied a Hong Kong newspaper report of a mass culling of chickens after a bird flu outbreak in his area. China has been criticised in the past for being slow to release details of disease epidemics, especially during its outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Bhatiasevi said WHO had asked the Heath Ministry for more information about the newspaper report.

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