A local test has confirmed a 32- year-old man, member of the family of the recent cluster death of bird flu in North Sumatra, suffering the disease, Indonesian Health Ministry official said in Jakarta Monday.

The man was father to the ten-year-old boy, one of the six fatalities in the cluster death, said Director of the Animal Disease and Health Control Department Nyoman Kandun.

"Local tests Monday confirmed that a seventh family member having bird flu virus," he said.

Indonesia, assisted by two epidemiologists from the World Health Organization's (WHO) headquarters and an independent laboratory in Atlanta, the United States, has been conducting investigation on the possible human-to-human transmission in this case.

As the disease expands all over the world, experts fear that the virus can mutate into a certain form that easily transmits from human to human.

Some 27 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia have been contracted with bird flu, while human fatality stands at 32 and infections at 43, according to the WHO.

All over the world, the WHO has raised the confirmed human death toll from the H5N1 bird flu strain to 122, while the total number of confirmed human infections since the current outbreak began in 2003 has reached 216.

Source: Xinhua