Indonesia says 14-year-old boy died of bird flu

Indonesia moved a step closer to becoming the world's hardest-hit bird flu country yesterday after tests confirmed a 14-year-old boy died from the disease, bringing its human toll to 39.

The boy from Jakarta died last week, and tests sent to a WHO-approved laboratory in Hong Kong came back positive, senior Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono said.

The teen had a history of contact with dead birds.

The results were announced a day before some of the world's top bird flu experts were set to meet with Indonesian officials to try to map out a plan to get a handle on the H5N1 virus.

The meeting -- which brings together scientists from WHO, the UN Food and Animal Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others -- comes a month after Indonesia grappled with the world's largest reported family cluster.

Six of seven family members from a remote farming village on Sumatra island died after testing positive for the bird flu virus. An eighth relative was buried before samples could be taken, but the WHO considers her part of the cluster.

Scientists have not been able to link the infected relatives to contact with sick birds and believe limited human-to-human transmission may have occurred. However, the virus has not mutated and no one outside the family has fallen ill.

Experts fear the current bird flu virus will mutate into a form that is highly contagious among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic.

So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. At least 129 people have died worldwide since the virus began ravaging Asian poultry in late 2003.

Indonesia, which logged an average of one death every two-and-a-half days last month, is on the fast track to becoming the world's hardest hit, trailing only Vietnam where 42 people have died.

The Asian Development Bank's latest outlook report released in April said Indonesia's budget for this year allocates just US$14 million to combat the disease, despite the government's own estimate that at least 30 times that amount is needed.