Nov 12, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – A 31-year-old Indonesian man recently died of H5N1 avian influenza, pushing the country's death toll from the disease to 91, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.
The man, from Riau province on Sumatra, got sick on Oct 31 and was hospitalized 3 days later, the WHO report said. He died at an avian flu referral hospital on Nov 6. His death raises the number of H5N1 cases in Indonesia to 113. The country has had 38 cases this year, 33 of them fatal.
The source of the man's infection is under investigation, and authorities are looking into the possibility of a link with a large swallow farm near his house, the WHO reported.
Azizman Daad, an official from the state general hospital in Riau, said teams from Indonesia's agriculture ministry who visited the area after the man's death did not find any sick or dead chickens, according to an Agence France-Presse report.
The man was a hospital administrator at Permata Hati Hospital in Riau province's Duri district and was treated at the hospital before he was transferred, according to a Nov 8 report in the Jakarta Post that was published before the man's avian flu results were known. The article did not say if the hospital where the man worked had recently treated any H5N1 case-patients.
The case raises the WHO's global H5N1 count to 335 cases with 206 deaths.
See also:
Nov 12 WHO statement
