Quarantine in Indonesian bird flu village

The WHO has not ruled out contact with infected birds as the source of the outbreak. Picture / Reuters.

Health experts in an Indonesian village hit by an outbreak of bird flu have asked more than 30 people to quarantine themselves to contain any potential further spread.

World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Dick Thompson said people who had close contact with any of seven relatives who have died since last month in the village of Kubu Sembilang were being monitored for signs of illness.

Mr Thompson added that contact with an infected bird was now considered the likely cause of the H5N1 avian flu outbreak.

His comments came a day after another WHO spokesman, Peter Cordingly, said the UN body was "stumped" about the original source of the infection.

Mr Thompson stressed there was evidence the virus had not mutated into a form that could be more easily spread from humans to humans.

He said samples of the virus taken from the cluster of victims had been sequenced in a Hong Kong laboratory and had not shown any signs of mutation into a more contagious form.

Since late 2003, outbreaks of bird flu have killed 124 people in nine countries worldwide, 33 of them in Indonesia.

- RADIO AUSTRALIA