Health authorities yesterday reported Indonesia's first human case of bird flu, saying a farm worker had tested positive for the disease that has killed 54 people in Southeast Asia.
Tests in Hong Kong found the worker, from South Sulawesi province, had been infected with the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of the virus although he is healthy and showed no symptoms, said health ministry official Wilfried Purba.
The government took blood samples from farm workers after thousands of birds died of bird flu in South Sulawesi and Java island earlier this year.
"He's positive but is not sick. He's been apparently exposed to a low pathogenic strain of the virus," Purba told reporters, adding that a concentration of antibodies was found in his body.
Millions of poultry died in a bird flu outbreak in Indonesia early last year, prompting the government to launch a massive vaccination drive.
In March it banned trade in chicken from West Java and South Sulawesi provinces after bird flu killed thousands of fowls there.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is confirmed to have killed 38 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and four Cambodians since the start of an epidemic in late 2003.
Steven Bjorge, a WHO expert in Jakarta, said Indonesia's first human case was not a cause for major concern.
"Technically we're not calling it a case. We found someone with serum positive, meaning he has an antibody," Bjorge told reporters.
"There's a full range of reactions to exposure to the virus, so it's not surprising to find someone infected with the virus with so many birds infected with the virus," he said.
The virus has been identified as a possible new strain of flu that could be devastating to humans if it genetically mutates and develops the capacity to be transmitted from human to human. The WHO has warned that if this happens it could trigger a new human flu pandemic, potentially killing up to 50 million people worldwide.
Last October the Indonesian agriculture ministry announced that the bird lu virus found in Indonesia was a non-lethal strain. The claim was later challenged by a WHO expert, who said that the ministry had misinterpreted test results.
During the Indonesian outbreak early last year, a senior agriculture ministry official admitted the government had been involved in only one cull. Farmers were destroying stocks on their own initiative.
Officials said the virus resurfaced despite massive vaccination because some farmers had neglected procedures by using illegal vaccines and restocking their poultry too early.
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