Indonesia’s Bird Flu Death toll Up to 22

11/03/2006| IslamWeb

Indonesia yesterday said two more children were confirmed to have died from bird flu, taking the country's death toll from the illness to 22.

A three-year-old boy died on February 28 and a 12-year-old girl the day after, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said, adding that both victims were from Central Java province and had apparently come into contact with sick chickens.

The ministry spokesman said: "Now we have 22 deaths out of 30 confirmed victims."

Ninety-seven people have now died across Asia, two-thirds of them in Indonesia and Vietnam, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Word of the latest deaths came as a doctor from the main hospital treating bird flu patients in capital Jakarta warned that the situation was worsening in the country.

Indonesia, which has faced criticism for doing too little, too late to stamp out the virus, promised yesterday to do more to protect humans.

"We will carry out intensive rapid diagnosis of patients suspected of having the disease," Supari said at a late-night seminar.

She also vowed to provide health centres across the sprawling archipelago with more Tamiflu, one of the few drugs believed effective in treating bird flu.

Taiwan, meanwhile, protested a WHO infections map that lumped the island in with its rival, China, officially identifying it as a place that has suffered human infections of H5N1.

"Taiwan is not an area affected by bird flu and is certainly not part of the People's Republic of China," Foreign Minister James Huang said yesterday. In Geneva, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl defended the move, saying "the United Nations policy is that there is one China".

China announced its 10th human fatality from the disease on Wednesday. Researchers in Hong Kong and China found that up to one per cent of apparently healthy chickens, ducks and geese in wet markets in southern China are infected with H5N1. The finding shows people may be far more exposed to the virus than previously thought.

In Sri Lanka, however, poultry farmers launched a campaign yesterday to encourage people to eat chicken, sales of which have fallen 20pc since February when bird flu was detected in neighbouring India.

PHOTO CAPTION

A chicken sticks its head out of a cage at a slaughter house in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, March 10, 2006. (AP)