15th bird flu death in Indonesia
An Indonesian teenager died of bird flu after he came into contact with dead chickens, health officials said today, citing local test results.
Blood and swab samples for the 15-year-old boy have been sent to a World Health Organisation-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation, said Runizar Roesin, of the bird flu information centre.
If the tests come back positive, the boy – who died yesterday in the city of Bandung – will be Indonesia’s 15th confirmed human bird flu death.
Health officials are also awaiting WHO confirmation for a market vendor who died last week after coming into contact with sick poultry.
Hundreds of millions of chickens and ducks have died or been culled since the H5N1 strain of bird flu started ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. It has also jumped to humans, killing at least 85 people in Asia and in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong officials have isolated three people in a hospital and closed aviaries and a nature reserve after discovering the H5N1 virus in a wild bird and a chicken smuggled from mainland China.
The dead crested myna was found in a playground and had the H5N1 bird flu virus, according to preliminary tests yesterday, said Thomas Sit, acting assistant director of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.
Hong Kong has found bird flu in dead wild birds in recent weeks, but it’s the first time the disease has been detected in chicken – a staple in local Chinese cuisine.
It was not immediately known where in mainland China the chickens came from, or how they were smuggled into Hong Kong, Tsang said.
He said it was not clear whether the sick chicken was infected in Hong Kong or China, but it was only in Hong Kong for a few days before becoming ill and dying.
The villager with the infected chicken lived near the border with mainland China where two dead oriental magpie robins infected with bird flu were found earlier.
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