Indonesian teenager tests positive for bird flu
AKARTA, Aug 12 - An Indonesian teenager has tested positive for bird flu according to local tests and is being treated in hospital, a senior health ministry official said on Saturday.
It was not clear if the 17-year-old youth from West Java had contact with sick fowl, the usual mode of transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus that is endemic in poultry in nearly all of Indonesia's provinces.
The teenager had a fever and breathlessness, some of the symptoms of avian influenza that has killed 44 people in Indonesia since last year. Most of the human cases have occurred this year and Indonesia now has the world's highest death toll.
"We have one more positive case of avian influenza. This is the result from a health ministry laboratory and NAMRU," said another official, Nyoman Kandun, the health ministry's director-general of disease control, referring to the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit based in Jakarta. ( from Reuters)
