Bird flu death confirmed in Bali

An AAP report says that health experts have converged on a Balinese village after a woman died from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is also being blamed for her daughter’s death.

A second young girl aged two and a neighbour of the dead woman, is in hospital, suspected of having contracted the virus.

Indonesian officials said woman, who died in a Denpasar hospital on Sunday, was the first confirmed human case of H5N1 on the resort island and they said everything possible was being done to prevent further infections in Bali, where hundreds of thousands of Australian and other foreign tourists go to holiday each year.

Australian authorities are closely monitoring the situation.

The head of Indonesia’s bird flu commission, Bayu Krisnamurti, said two tests on samples taken from the 29-year-old victim confirmed she had H5N1.  “Both (tests) are positive, from the Eikman Institute and the health ministry’s lab,” Krisnamurti told reporters.

He said officials from the UN’s World Health Organisation and Food and Agriculture Organisation as well as national health and agriculture ministries were at the woman’s village.

The village, Dauh Tukad Aya, in the northwest, is far from Bali’s tourism centres, but Krisnamurti said authorities were not taking any chances.

“We’ll do intensive monitoring.”  “The central government will help the Balinese government get Bali free of bird flu,” Krisnamurti said.

“We will do the most intensive measures in Bali as it is a tourism and international destination.”

Ningrum (who uses one name) – a doctor from the Bird Flu Information Centre – said the dead woman’s five-year-old daughter died on August 3, likely from H5N1.

She was “diagnosed as suffering from pneumonia, and chickens which died at the house were positively infected with bird flu,” she said.

“From the symptoms and the dead birds, we can assume that the child also had bird flu,” she told AFP. However no samples were taken for testing.

Siadi Purniti, who is treating the sick two-year-old, said her condition had improved.  “There are no signs that it will worsen again.”  “We are keeping her closely supervised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Australia’s Department of Health and Ageing said the “situation is being closely monitored”.

Australia’s travel advice already warns there have been human deaths from bird flu in Indonesia, with the death of the woman taking Indonesia’s overall death toll from the virus to 82, with contact with sick fowl the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus.

Scientists worry it could mutate into a form easily spread among humans, leading to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions.

Indonesia reported its first human bird flu case in July 2005 and at 82, it has suffered the highest number of deaths of any nation.

Globally there have been 193 deaths, and more than 100 other infections.

H5N1 was first detected in poultry in Bali more than a year ago, with hundreds of birds culled in the northwest but no human infections were found.

The flu outbreak is yet another blow for island, which has been trying to shake off the impact of several deadly bombings by Islamic militants in recent years.

Report by The Mole