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Indonesia: Bird flu claims 3
20/07/2005 14:41 - (SA)
Jakarta - Indonesia confirmed on Wednesday its first human deaths from bird flu, saying tests had shown a man and his two daughters who died this month had a deadly strain of the disease.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said: "It's confirmed. They died of the conventional bird flu virus which does not transmit from humans to humans."
She said the tests done in Hong Kong were based on specimens from the father and one of the daughters, but it could be concluded that all three had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
She said: "We don't distinguish between the three."
She said it was not known when and where the 38-year-old man, Iwan Siswara Rafei, and his two young daughters - one and nine-years-old - had been infected.
Dad, daughters had pneumonia
But, she added that the authorities believed the three had contracted the disease at about the same time.
She said the family's house in Tangerang district, southwest of Jakarta, was far from areas were there were bird flu outbreaks.
Rafei and his daughters died within days of each other in hospital in the first half of July after suffering from severe pneumonia.
Supari said about 300 people had been under observation for having contact with Rafei, including his wife, another daughter and the family's housemaid and they had shown no signs of sickness.
Bird flu infects pigs
Agriculture Ministry Anton Apriyanto had ordered a cull of poultry and pigs within a radius of three kilometres from a bird flu outbreak.
The ministry had confirmed the infection of bird flu in pigs in Banten province, raising concerns that the virus had taken a step closer to infecting humans in Indonesia.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu had so far been mainly transmitted between animals, but it had also killed more than 50 people in Southeast Asia since 2003.
Experts feared it could mutate into a highly infectious strain that could be easily transmitted from animals to humans or from humans to humans, unleashing a pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.
Supari said that there was no reported case of human-to-human infection so far and called on people to remain calm.
- AFP
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