Bird flu strikes again in Indonesia - death toll now 76

Bird flu has struck again in Indonesia bringing the death toll there to 76.

This latest fatality was a 26-year-old woman from Sumatra who was four months pregnant.

Health officials say two sets of tests have confirmed the woman died of bird flu, she was hospitalised in Medan, North Sumatra on May 8th with fever and respiratory problems and died four days later.

The woman was the second bird flu fatality at the hospital; last week, a woman from Riau province who tested positive for the virus also died.

Both women are reported to have been seriously ill when they were admitted to the hospital and doctors could do little to save them.

Health officials say the pregnant woman had recently been in contact with dead fowl.

Apparently a few days before becoming ill she had found five of their chickens dead in their yard; concern that the other chickens would die prompted her to kill and cook the remaining chickens which were eaten, while the dead birds were burned.

Investigators are now checking the rest of the family for the virus and are monitoring the residents around the victim's home in Percut Sei Tuan district.

To date Indonesia has the highest human death toll from the disease and the vast archipelago is struggling to control the spread of the bird flu virus which is endemic in birds in many parts of the country.

North Sumatra province had the largest known cluster of human bird flu cases in May last year when as many as seven people from the same extended family died from the virus.

In Indonesia millions of people have chickens or other domesticated birds in their backyards and almost all cases of bird flu worldwide have been as a result of being in close contact with diseased birds.

Health education campaigns in Indonesia have been patchy and safeguards very difficult to enforce.

Avian flu remains a virus which in the main only affects birds, but experts are concerned that the virus will mutate, as they often do, and become a strain easily transmitted from person to person, triggering a pandemic with the potential to kill millions.