Indonesia says bird flu killed woman

JAKARTA - A dead Indonesian woman has tested positive for bird flu but there was no evidence two brothers who died were also victims of the virus, the Health Ministry said.

The 25-year-old woman who died on Tuesday had been treated at Jakarta's main hospital for bird flu patients, said Endang Mamahit, a senior ministry researcher.

"We have conducted the test and the results show positive," Mamahit told Reuters, adding that the presence of the deadly H5N1 virus had to be confirmed by a laboratory in Hong Kong affiliated with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

If confirmed, it would be Indonesia's eighth death and take the death toll in Asia to at least 69.

Many scientists fear H5N1 could kill millions of people if it mutates into a form that passes easily among humans. But so far, there is no sign the virus has changed in this way.

There has been concern over the case of two brothers from Bandung in West Java who died this month just days before their 16-year-old sibling was admitted to hospital infected with H5N1.

They were diagnosed with typhoid fever, but were never tested for bird flu.

Indonesia ruled out any firm link to bird flu in the deaths of the two, aged 7 and 20. Their brother has survived.

"So far there is no concrete evidence the two brothers are linked to the (bird flu) case," said Hariadi Wibisono, the Health Ministry's director for stamping out animal-borne diseases.

The WHO played down concerns that the brothers' case could be a sign that the virus was passing more easily from person to person.

"There is nothing about this particular circumstance that raises a red flag for us. It would be of concern if there appeared to be wider respiratory illness in the community," a WHO spokeswoman told Reuters.

Bird flu remains hard for people to catch and most cases in people have been blamed on direct or indirect contact with infected poultry.

China, which is the world's top poultry producer, has struggled to control outbreaks in birds.

Since October, it has reported 24 outbreaks in poultry and culled more than 20 million birds. Two poultry workers who died in recent weeks are confirmed bird flu cases.

China's health minister defended the government against accusations of a cover-up of bird flu infections, saying official figures were "transparent, comprehensive and accurate".

But he said doctors in rural areas might be too ill-equipped and ill-trained even to detect cases in people, raising questions about China's ability to detect some cases quickly.

"I am not worried about governments at various levels covering up an epidemic," Gao Qiang told a news conference.

"But I am worried about the inability of our medical and quarantine personnel at the local level to diagnose and discover epidemics in a timely fashion due to their low abilities and relatively backward equipment."

However, a leading international influenza expert said China remained reluctant to share information.

"The surveillance of birds in China is really quite good. It is just how much do we learn about what is going on? Clearly the information that we get is less than we would like," said Alan Hay, director of the WHO's Influenza Reference Centre.

Hay also told a British parliamentary committee that there was considerable concern that the disease could be more widespread than believed in Vietnam, which has 42 confirmed deaths from bird flu.

- REUTERS