The investigation conducted by a team of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the world's largest cluster death of bird flu in Indonesia's North Sumatra province found that the virus was transmitted from animal to human, Indonesian health minister said here Wednesday.

"It was spread from animal to human," Minister Siti Sufari Fadillah told Xinhua after a cabinet meeting at the State Palace.

But she added that "We are still wary, because of the cluster as large as that, and also the finding of other clusters."

The WHO's team has completed its one-month investigation on the cluster death in the remote farming area in Sumatra island recently, but rejected to publish its conclusion.

Seven people linked by blood were killed by the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus last month, then followed by the death of two sibling by the virus in Jakarta, whom the minister said as a cluster.

Indonesia has recorded 39 deaths out of 53 contracted people caused by the virus.

The country has said that it did not ruled out the possibility of the human transmission in the country.

Minister Sufari expressed her disappointment over the report of the team about the refusal of the residence around the cluster to stamp out their poultry.

"They said that they do not want to be stamped out, the communities do not want," she said.

The minister said that the government had well prepared a plan to fight the outbreak, but she admitted the weak of implementation.

Many people in the country have refused to stamp out their animals, which are suspected of being infected by the avian influenza.

The biggest cluster death has raised international concern on possible human transmission in Indonesia.

"When this is occurred in Karo regency, North Sumatra province, there was a lot of international concern about what is happening in Indonesia, and there was a very distinct lack of flow of information," Regional Manager of the Emergency Center for Trans- boundary Animal Disease of the FAO Laurence J Gleeson told Xinhua.

However, WHO Technical Officer Steven Bjorge said that it was not the human to human transmission now, but the sustainability and the spread of the virus.

Source: Xinhua