Indonesian bird flu death toll now up to 37

Confirmation by the World Health Organization that a 15-year-old boy who died in West Java, Indonesia last week, was the latest bird flu victim, takes Indonesia's confirmed deaths from the virus to 37.

According to local health ministry officials the boy from the town of Tasikmalaya in West Java province had been in contact with poultry.

Meanwhile local tests have come back negative for a 25-year-old Indonesian nurse who developed a fever and other flu-like symptoms after treating treating a 10-year-old girl and her 18-year-old brother from West Java province, who died last month of bird flu.

The nurse was immediately isolated and given the antiviral drug Tamiflu and specimens have been sent to the Hong Kong lab for confirmation.

She is reportedly now recovering.

The Hong Kong laboratory is also testing samples from a seven-year-old girl who died last week on the outskirts of Jakarta for the virus; her 10-year-old brother died three days later but was not tested for the virus.

This year Indonesia has had more bird flu fatalities than any other nation and now is second only to Vietnam where 42 people have died; cases were being reported last month at the rate of three a week.

Since the H5N1 avian virus re-emerged in late 2003 more than 120 people have died and millions of birds have also died or have been slaughtered.

The World Organisation for Animal Health says the disease now appears to be permanently infecting poultry in Indonesia.

The H5N1 virus remains essentially a disease of animals and does not as yet pass easily from one person to another.

However there is the constant fear that the virus may mutate and become transferable amongst humans which could trigger a flu pandemic with the potential of putting millions of lives at risk.

The cluster of 7 deaths in one family in Sumatra last month fuelled that fear but experts have yet to find the source of the infection or any link between the relatives and infected birds.

They suspect limited human-to-human transmission occurred, but as no one outside the group of blood relatives has been stricken with the virus experts say the virus has not mutated.