Oct 15, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – A 12-year-old Indonesian boy who was identified earlier as having H5N1 avian influenza died Oct 13, raising the country's avian flu death toll to 88, according to news services.
An official at Indonesia's avian flu information center said the boy died suddenly, though he had previously been improving, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday.
"Medical doctors at the hospital were meeting to discuss his case, since he showed great improvement in his health condition, with his white-blood-cell count rising, but the boy suddenly died at 7:30 a.m. this morning," the official, named Nir Wan, told AFP.
Indonesian officials had reported the boy's case on Oct 11, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized it a day later. He had fallen ill Sep 30 and was hospitalized in Tangerang, a western suburb of Jakarta, Oct 8. The next day he was transferred to Persahabatan Hospital in Jakarta, according to AFP.
The WHO said investigators found that the boy had had contact with a dead infected chicken near his school in the days before his illness.
Indonesia leads the world with 109 H5N1 cases and 88 deaths, on the basis of WHO and news reports (WHO figures include the boy's case but do not yet reflect his death). Indonesia has had 34 cases, 30 of them fatal, this year. The global count has reached 331 cases with 203 deaths.
See also:
Oct 12 WHO announcement of the boy's case
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2007_10_12/en/index.html
Oct 11 CIDRAP News story "Indonesia has another avian flu case"
