Possible Cluster Report from IndonesiaNews.net

Bird Flu Strikes Indonesian Family Again


May 14, 2006 : 1:50 pm ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A fifth member of an Indonesian family has died of bird flu, according to local tests, a senior medical official said Sunday.

The other four died from the disease early last week, said Nyoman Kandun, head of the Health Ministry's office of communicable disease control. In all, eight members of the family in Tanah Karo village on Sumatra are suspected of having contracted the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus.

Indonesia's official human death toll from the virus is now 25, the world's second-highest after Vietnam, which recorded about four dozen deaths but where international health experts said earlier this year that outbreaks of H5N1 infections in people and poultry had been largely stamped out.

Officials pay particular attention to cases of multiple related deaths such as those in Indonesia. The virus now is almost always transmitted from birds to humans, and experts study "cluster" cases looking for signs that H5N1 may have mutated into a form easily passed between humans -- a scenario that many fear could trigger a global human pandemic.

Kandun said samples from the patients had been sent to a World Health Organization-accredited lab in Hong Kong for confirmation that they died of bird flu.

He also revealed that a sixth family member died previously, but samples from the body had not been taken for laboratory investigation. "The person died earlier and has been buried," he said.

Asked whether doctors would obtain samples from the body, Kandun declined to comment.

"We are continuing to investigate this case," he said. "We are trying to find the source of the virus."

He said investigators were checking poultry near the family's village, since veterinarians had found no signs of bird flu among chickens and other animals in the village itself.

International experts hope Vietnam's campaign to vaccinate its poultry against H5N1 will serve as an example for other countries in dealing with the virus, which has killed more than 100 people in all.

Once the epicenter for bird flu, Vietnam hasn't had seen any people infected since November and there haven't been any poultry outbreaks since December.

"We are actually disease-free in Vietnam for the moment," Hans Troedsson, the World Health Organization representative in Vietnam, said in late March. "We're probably not virus-free, but what the mass vaccination has done is reduce the virus load in the environment -- we have less virus circulating."

Vietnam started its nationwide eradication campaign in August 2005. Officials in the poor communist nation say they vaccinated millions of chickens and ducks, slaughtered millions more and educated citizens about the disease.

Outside experts, however, caution that immunization is not a simple solution.

It is so expensive that "you just can't keep it up," said Peter Roeder, an animal health expert with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization who advises Asian countries on bird flu.




Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
:: privacy statement : © 2006 The Durham Herald Company : terms of use ::