Mayo
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 Posted: 05/27/06 - 08:12 Post subject: Indonesian siblings killed by bird flu |
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Preliminary tests have identified two new fatal cases of bird flu in Indonesia. World Health Organization officials so far have confirmed 33 human deaths from bird flu in Indonesia, out of 124 worldwide.
Indonesia's latest victims, an 18-year-old and his 10-year-old sister from West Java, died Tuesday in the state-run Hasan Sidikin hospital in Bandung, the capital city. They died within hours of each other, less than a day after arriving at the hospital.
Local tests, will be sent to a WHO laboratory for confirmation, found they were infected by the H5N1 virus.
The 192-nation World Health Assembly agreed to speed up preparations for a possible bird flu pandemic by allowing member nations to establish a global warning system a year early. The bird flu warning system had been scheduled to start on June 15, 2007. But the resolution said countries could formally introduce it immediately because there is a "serious risk to human health, including the possible emergence of a pandemic virus, arising from ongoing outbreaks in poultry of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
WHO officials have not been able to link the family members to contact with infected birds, and have said it's possible that limited human-to-human transmission may have occurred.
Experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus will eventually mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, possibly sparking a pandemic. So far, the virus remains hard for people to catch, with most human cases linked to contact with infected birds.
About 30 people in the village of Kubu Simbelang have been asked to stay inside their homes and avoid close contact with others as a precautionary measure. |
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