Indonesia yesterday confirmed its fourth human death from the bird flu virus, taking the death toll in Asia to 63, and said it was investigating whether a neighbor of the victim was also sickened by the disease.
Tests from a Hong Kong laboratory showed that a 37-year-old woman who died last week had contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus, said I Nyoman Kandun, the health ministry's director general for illness control and environmental health.
The health ministry also said that a neighbor of the woman had been hospitalized with symptoms consistent with bird flu. But authorities said they were still awaiting lab results before confirming she had been sickened by the virus.
PHOTO: EPA
Kandun warned that Indonesia would continue to report cases because the virus was rife in poultry farms across the country.
"It will be like in Vietnam and Thailand," he told reporters.
The virus has swept through poultry populations in large swathes of Asia since 2003, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds -- and 63 people, most of them in Vietnam and Thailand.
Indonesia recorded its first human fatalities from bird flu in July when a father and his two daughters died after contracting the virus. Officials have linked those deaths to droppings from an infected bird.
Kandun said the source of the latest infection was not yet known.
He said surveillance of poultry needed to be stepped up, but urged the country's 210 million people not to panic.
"Be alert, but do not be alarmed," he said.
Officials have carried out limited vaccinations of some of the estimated 2 billion birds in the country, but say they lack funds to carry out culls of flocks in areas where the virus is prevalent.
The virus has been recorded in 22 of Indonesia's 32 provinces since 2003.
Most of the human deaths from bird flu have been linked to contact with sick birds. But the World Health Organization has warned that the virus could mutate into a form which is more easily transmitted from human to human, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions worldwide.
Indonesia confirmed its fourth human death from bird flu on Friday and said another person was suspected of having the virus as global alarm grew that the disease would mutate and become a pandemic.
Speaking in New York on Thursday, World Health Organization chief Lee Jong-wook said the virus was moving toward becoming transmissible by humans and that the international community had no time to waste to prevent a pandemic.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus has killed 64 people in four Asian countries since late 2003 and also spread to Russia and Europe.
Indonesian health officials said tests had shown bird flu killed a woman who died last week in a Jakarta hospital after she was admitted suffering from pneumonia and flu-like respiratory problems.
"It's positive for H5N1," I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of disease control at the Health Ministry, told reporters.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image