Indonesia - 43 dead from bird flu

According to health officials in Indonesia a 16-year-old boy who died on Monday has tested positive for bird flu.

If the tests are confirmed by the World Health Organization this will take Indonesia's death toll from the deadly virus to 43 and the top of the league with the highest world death toll, and just one ahead of Vietnam.

As a rule local tests are accurate; the latest victim was from Bekasi on the outskirts of Jakarta and his death means that Indonesia has now registered more bird flu deaths this year than any other nation.

Although Vietnam was badly affected with 42 deaths reported, the outbreak there now appears to be under control and no one has died from the disease in Vietnam since the beginning of 2006.

The teenager was admitted to the city's designated bird flu centre, Sulianti Saroso hospital, on Saturday, but his condition rapidly deteriorated.

Once again the victim had apparently been in contact with sick chickens before he contracted the disease.

This particular H5N1 strain of bird flu nevertheless remains a disease of birds and some other animals and almost all who have contracted it have been in close contact with some aspect of either sick or dead poultry.

However experts have all along worried that the virus could mutate into a form which could be easily passed from human to human, triggering a pandemic and potentially putting millions of lives at risk.

Indonesia came under the spotlight in May when at least seven members of one family died from the virus.

But experts say the incident did not signal a major change in the spread of the disease as it appeared to be confined to close family members.

Despite the disease being endemic in poultry across most of the country, Indonesia has been reluctant to cull large numbers of fowl, a practice which has been effective in curbing the spread of the virus in other countries.

The government says it is not practical to initiate such a widespread cull and also lacks the funds to compensate farmers, but experts believe Indonesians will continue to die until the nation stops the spread of infection among its hundreds of millions of backyard poultry.

Indonesia has asked for U.S. $900m over the next three years to tackle the virus.

Since late 2003 more than 130 people have died of bird flu around the world and the majority of the deaths have been in East Asia.

The virus has also spread to Europe, Africa and South and Central Asia.