According to the information released on Thursday by the country’s health ministry, there is a great likelihood that bird flu has claimed the lives of another two people in Indonesia. The two victims died after each of them had positive results of the tests for bird flu in a first test. Follow-up tests are being performed in order to confirm these results.
If has already been verified that the two individuals - one on the island of Sumatra and one in the capital city of Jakarta - died of bird flu, that would bring Indonesia’s death toll to 71 persons, the greatest number in the world, Agence France Presse informed.
Before these latest cases, Indonesia had officially informed that there had been three confirmed bird flu deaths since last Saturday, which accounted for the death toll of 69 out of 89 cases of bird flu in people. Indonesia had hoped to stamp out human infections this year.
Contact with ill birds
The vast majority of human cases of bird flu in Indonesia have resulted from contact with infected birds. According to the report of the Associated Press, as one of the various methods of preventing human infections, Indonesian officials have outlawed the common practice of keeping chickens in backyards in Jakarta.
Since the end of 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected 284 individuals and killed 169 all over the world. The majority of the cases have taken place in Southeast Asia. However, these figures do not include the latest two cases in Indonesia, or the death of a Chinese teenager revealed on Thursday.
Specialists are worried that the H5N1 virus can mutate into a form that is effortlessly transmitted between people and may lead to a global pandemic.
