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Indonesian boy dies of bird flu |
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15:58, July 09, 2007 |
A 6-year-old Indonesian boy died on Sunday of avian influenza, bringing total death from the disease to 81 out of 102 cases in the country, the health ministry said Monday.
The boy from Banten province near Jakarta was first treated at a private hospital in the province last Thursday, and then transfered to a designated bird-flu hospital in the capital Jakarta, said Joko Suyono, an official with the anti-bird-flu center of the ministry.
"We got the result of laboratory test from Eijkman, which showed he was positive," he told Xinhua.
The official said it was not clear how the boy was infected.
Indonesia in cooperation with the U.S. drug maker Baxter has produced over 2 million tablets of vaccine for human use and wants to use it directly to prevent the spread of the highly pathogenic H5N1. But the World Health Organization prefers the country to stockfile the vaccine and to use it when pandemic occurs.
Experts fear millions of people could be killed should the virus mutate to a certain level that is transmittable among human beings.
The disease has killed at least 187 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry in 2003. Of the fatalities, 81 were in Indonesia, making it the worst-hit country globally.
Indonesian health authorities have vaccinated tens of millions of chickens in the vast archipelago country, but the virus still exists.
Source: Xinhua
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