An eight-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, the Health Ministry said on Friday, bringing the toll to 97 in the nation worst hit by the H5N1 virus.
The boy was the seventh person from the Jakarta satellite city of Tangerang to die of the disease since October.
He died at 4am local time in a Jakarta hospital, the ministry’s bird-flu centre said.
His father, Untung Nurchayo, said the child had suffered a fever and was initially diagnosed with dengue by doctors at a local hospital.
After the doctors revised their diagnosis he was sent to the Sulianti Saroso Hospital in Jakarta, where he died a few hours later.
“Chickens had died suddenly near the boy’s house. However, we have not received reports from the survey team whether they are infected with the virus. There is also a chicken slaughter near where he lived,” said Suharda Ningrum of the bird-flu centre.
The bird-flu centre said in a press release there had now been 119 Avian influenza cases in Indonesia, 97 of them fatal.
Humans are typically infected with bird flu by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans.
Scientists fear such a development would spark a global pandemic with a potential death toll of millions and the World Bank has said such a scenario could cost up to $2-trillion.
The concern stems from past influenza pandemics. A flu pandemic in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20-million people worldwide.
Authorities were criticised in 2005 for being slow to act when bird flu first broke out in humans in the archipelago nation.
The virus is now endemic in birds across nearly all of its 33 provinces. — AFP