Siblings deaths may indicate another bird flu cluster in Indonesia

According to an Indonesian health ministry official, a 7-year-old Indonesian girl who died last week has tested positive for bird flu in local tests; the results have yet to be confirmed by a World Health Organisation-accredited laboratory in Hong Kong.

The girl from Pamulang, Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta had been hospitalized for two days at Fatmawati Hospital in South Jakarta for high fever and breathing difficulties before ministry employees took blood samples for testing.

She was later transferred to Sulianti Saroso Hospital for infectious diseases which is the designated bird flu centre in Jakarta.

The girl and her nine-year-old brother were brought to the hospital by their parents suffering from the same symptoms.

The boy died in the intensive care unit only an hour after being admitted, but was buried before the ministry could run blood tests.

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari says the death of the two children could indicate the development of a new bird flu cluster.

The family live near a poultry slaughterhouse and have apparently reported that a number of chickens near their house died before the children became sick.

The children's parents and their two siblings are reportedly taking Tamiflu after suffering similar flu-like symptoms, but have refused to be admitted to a hospital.

Indonesia has seen a steady rise in its number of human infections and deaths since its first known of outbreak of H5N1 in poultry in late 2003.

To date the virus has infected 48 Indonesians killing 36 of them.

Although bird flu remains essentially an animal disease the growing number of human deaths has created a high alert in many countries around the world who fear the virus may mutate into one that could pass easily among people and trigger a pandemic, killing millions.

That fear has been heightened by the cluster of infections seen in Indonesia recently where the virus has killed as many as seven members of a single family in North Sumatra.

Experts believe limited human-to-human transmission may have taken place in that cluster case.

But they do however stress that genetic analyses of the virus shows no traits which would enable it to spread easily among people.

Following the death of a 15-year-old boy from bird flu on May 30, 1,600 chickens have been culled in a village in West Java.

Although the boy tested positive for bird flu in local tests the WHO has yet to confirm the case.

Local sources say that in Bandung, a nurse who treated confirmed bird flu patients has been quarantined after showing symptoms of the disease.

If it is confirmed that she has bird flu it will again raise the spectre that human-to-human transmission of the virus has occurred.

Almost all deaths in Indonesia have been traced to infected poultry.

World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari P. Setiogi said her office had not been informed of the suspected infection of the nurse in Bandung.