Indonesian officials have confirmed another human death from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu.


They are also investigating whether a nurse at Jakarta's main infectious diseases hospital caught the virus while treating a patient.

The death of a 19-year-old woman from the outskirts of Jakarta takes Indonesia's official count of confirmed H5N1 fatalities to five, although western experts say they believe at least two other people have died from the virus and many more deaths may not have been picked up.

Four other people - including one new case, an eight-year-old relative of the 19-year-old woman - have also been confirmed as being infected with the dangerous H5N1 strain.

The increased toll in Indonesia comes as international donors prepare to meet today in Geneva at a World Health Organisation-led conference designed to plot an accelerating global response to the threat of an H5N1 pandemic.

Indonesia, with its under-resourced health system, tradition of live poultry sales, and an estimated 300m or more chickens living in backyards, is considered one of the weak links in the fight against H5N1. Jakarta has been slow to react to the threat of the virus.

Many immunologists fear H5N1 could mutate into a form more easily transmittable between humans and yield another global flu pandemic such as that in 1918, which claimed the lives of an estimated 50m people.

But the painfully slow - and often opaque - way in which Indonesia is detailing its human toll also raises alarm bells, western health experts say.

The 19-year-old whose death was added to the official tally over the weekend actually died on October 28, a full week before she was deemed a confirmed H5N1 case.

That is partly a function of WHO methodology - positive results on two separate tests are required for it to certify cases of H5N1.

But Indonesian officials have been relying on a Hong Kong-based WHO laboratory, whose results can take a week to come back, to conduct the tests.

Western health experts say there are facilities in Indonesia that can return test results within as little as six hours. However, Indonesian health officials have preferred to use the Hong Kong lab.

This decision has created a waiting game for patients, their families, and experts tracking the virus' progression and possible human-to-human transmissions.

The latest case confronting such a waiting game is that of the nurse at Jakarta's main infectious disease hospital. The Suliati Saroso Hospital told the Agence France- Presse news agency that the nurse who treated the latest confirmed case had been admitted late on November 3 suffering from a high fever and coughing.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/79779e44-4f...0779e2340.html

It's just a conspiracy......until your dead! :thumbsup:
Psycho4Bud Reviewed by Psycho4Bud on . Killing Two Birds With One Tamiflu Stone Killing Two Birds With One Tamiflu Stone Avian Flu: Precedent for Martial Law and Globalist money spinner rolled into one Steve Watson | November 8 2005 As the Government ratchets up the fear over a global outbreak of Bird Flu, and the public scrambles to buy up stocks of antivirals, we have continued to expose how these scare tactics are being used to set dangerous precedents for future government control of our lives. It seems that the Neo-Con Administration is cornering every Rating: 5