Indonesia reports another H5N1 death

Aug 16, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – For the second time in 4 days, Indonesia's health ministry today announced a fatal human case of H5N1 avian influenza, this one in a 17-year-old girl from a town just west of Jakarta who died Aug 14.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in a statement confirming the case, reported the girl got sick on Aug 9, was hospitalized Aug 13, and died a day later. She was from Tangerang, 12 miles west of Jakarta, in Banten province.

Investigators are working to determine how the girl was exposed to the virus, the WHO said. Her death pushes Indonesia's H5N1 case count to 104 and its death toll to 83.

Joko Suyono, a health ministry spokesman, said tests from two local laboratories confirmed the girl was infected with the H5N1 virus, the Associated Press reported today.

The last previous H5N1 victim in Indonesia was a 29-year-old woman from the resort island of Bali who died Aug 12 after she had contact with sick and dead chickens. The WHO reported that the woman's 3-year-old daughter had died of a respiratory illness before her mother fell ill, but health officials did not suspect she had an H5N1 infection.

The WHO's global H5N1 case count now stands at 321 cases and 194 deaths, including 58 cases and 36 deaths this year.

See also:

Aug 16 WHO statement
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2007_08_16/en/index.html