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Deadly strain of avian influenza spreads to Indonesia

A strain of bird flu that has already killed a dozen people has spread to Indonesia, the government said yesterday, as experts from around the world began an urgent, three-day meeting in Rome about the health emergency.

In China, authorities set up telephone hot lines for suspected cases and put 3,200 farmers under observation.

Indonesia said it had detected the H5N1 strain in poultry. The strain is the only form of the avian influenza virus known to have killed humans.

"The identification process indicates the virus H5N1 in poultry ... but so far there is no case among humans," Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, director of animal health at the Agriculture Ministry, told a news conference.

It was not clear where in Indonesia the strain was found, but government officials have said Java and Bali were the worst hit by bird flu.

In Germany, a spokeswoman for the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg said tests showed two women examined for possible bird flu infection had not caught the disease, but probably had a human strain of flu instead.

To stave off the threat to Asian tourism, officials meeting in Vientiane, Laos, weighed strategies such as joint marketing campaigns, fewer curbs on travel and discounts on air travel and hotel stays.

"I'm expecting that maybe bird flu will cause the number of tourists coming to Asia to decline a bit," said Shin Hyun Taek, South Korean vice minister for tourism.

Pham Tu, vice minister for tourism in Vietnam, which has had the most deaths from bird flu, said he regretted 1,000 Japanese tourists had cancelled their trips but said visitor arrivals last month had jumped 17 percent from last year.

"We would like to send a message to Japanese tourists that there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission in Vietnam," Pham said.

A hospital said on Monday an 18-year-old boy who died of bird flu had eaten chicken killed by the H5N1 virus.

Spokesman Robert Dietz said the WHO had yet to confirm the boy was killed by bird flu, which has claimed the lives of eight others in Vietnam.

Thailand, the world's fourth biggest exporter of chicken, has had four confirmed cases, three of whom have died and the fourth, a seven-year-old boy, has only a 30 percent chance of survival.

Chief government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said a four-year-old boy from northeastern Khon Kaen province had died yesterday of suspected bird flu, taking the number of suspected human infections to 18, of whom 11 have died.

In Rome, health, food and animal experts began a three-day meeting yesterday about the bird flu emergency and raised concern about whether the virus is mutating into a form that would facilitate its transmission.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is hosting the meeting at its Rome headquarters. Also participating are the WHO and the World Animal Health Organization.

The experts are aiming to "to develop shared strategies for helping affected countries respond to the existing emergency and prevent future outbreaks of the disease,'' an FAO statement said.

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