Local tests have confirmed that a 14-year-old boy hospitalized in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, has been infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, a senior Health Ministry official said yesterday.
The results of tests conducted by the Health Ministry showed on Saturday that the boy, identified only as Randy from the west Jakarta suburb of Kalideres, contracted H5N1 after coming into contact with a dead duck, said I Nyoman Kandun, the ministry's Director-General of Communicable Disease Control.
DETERIORATING
The boy was admitted to a hospital last week in the city of Tangerang, on the western outskirts of Jakarta, suffering from a fever and labored breathing, and was transferred on Friday to the Persahabatan hospital in Jakarta, Kandun said.
"His condition is deteriorating," Kandun said.
He added that the boy had been hooked up to a ventilator.
There was no confirmation of the tests from the WHO.
HANDLING DUCKS
A day before falling sick, Randy had come into contact with dead ducks, burying by hand scores of his birds that had suddenly died, he said.
Randy's infection has yet to be confirmed by the WHO, which has recorded 74 human H5N1 infections in Indonesia since late 2003, of whom 57 have died.
EDUCATION CAMPAIGN
International experts have accused Indonesia of not doing enough to tackle the virus.
But Indonesia's Health Ministry has said Indonesia's human deaths from the virus have slowed markedly over the last three months -- a drop local officials attributed to an aggressive education campaign.
Of 46 fatalities in Indonesia last year, five were reported after October and none last month, according to the WHO.
US NAVY LAB
The UN health agency has, since the middle of last year, acknowledged the accuracy of the Indonesian labs working with a Jakarta-based US Navy lab affiliated with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The WHO says has recorded 157 cases of people dying from the virus around the world since the outbreak began.
Experts fear that the bird flu virus may mutate into a form that could spread easily from person to person. That could potentially cause an epidemic, killing millions globally.
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