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Indonesia tests seven from same village for bird flu
Seven Indonesians from the same village in North Sumatra have been hospitalised and are being tested for bird flu, an official said yesterday, raising fears of new cluster cases in the country.
- Agencies
- Published: 23:34 May 3, 2009
Medan, Indonesia: Seven Indonesians from the same village in North Sumatra have been hospitalised and are being tested for bird flu, an official said yesterday, raising fears of new cluster cases in the country.
The group comes from Karo district in North Sumatra province where bird flu killed as many as seven people in an extended family in May, triggering fears the H5N1 bird flu virus had mutated into a form that could spread easily between people.
"Whether it is a new cluster or not, that must be scientifically proved," said Runizar Ruesin, head of the bird flu information centre at Indonesia's health ministry. He said the seven were admitted to the local Kaban Jahe hospital, with three referred to a state-run hospital.
The latter three are children two siblings aged 10 and six and their 18-month-old neighbour.
"I am still waiting for the result of the tests," Ruesin said.
Another official said chickens in the area where they lived had died and tested positive for bird flu. Sick poultry is the usual mode of transmission of the disease, endemic in birds in about two-thirds of the country's provinces. Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono and Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie travelled to Karo yesterday to assess the situation, but were jostled by villagers angry about a planned bird culling.
Chinese recovery
A man in southern China who contracted the H5N1 strain of bird flu has recovered after a month and a half, and was discharged from hospital yesterday, state media said.
The 31-year-old truck driver from Shenzhen in Guangdong province "had recovered sufficiently" to be discharged after being treated for 50 days, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the city's municipal health department.
The department said health workers will continue to monitor his condition, Xinhua reported.
On June 15, Chinese authorities confirmed that the man had been infected by the virus and was in a critical condition.
When the man was first admitted, many of his internal organs had "showed signs of failure", and his lungs were severely infected, Xinhua quoted Donghu Hospital chief Zhou Boping as saying. The report did not elaborate.
Xinhua said the man had visited a local market several times where live poultry was sold before developing a fever and pneumonia on June 3.
Dutch cull chickens
Dutch authorities culled 25,000 chickens at a farm infected with a low-pathogenic H7 bird flu strain yesterday and sealed off another 130 farms to prevent a major outbreak in one of the world's top poultry exporter.
The virus was reported on Tuesday in the central region of Gelderse Vallei, reviving bitter memories of the devastating outbreak of an H7N7 avian flu strain in 2003.
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