Test confirms 25th bird flu death in Indonesia

JAKARTA, May 8 (Reuters) International tests have confirmed a 30-year-old Indonesian man who died last month had bird flu, a Health Ministry official said today, taking the country's death toll from the virus to 25.

Joko Suyono from the ministry's bird flu information centre told Reuters the man had been in contact with sick fowl, the usual mode of transmission of the virus to people.

''A 30-year-old male from west Jakarta who died on April 26 ...

has been confirmed positive of bird flu by a Hong Kong laboratory,'' Suyono said.

Indonesia has the world's second highest bird flu death toll for humans after Vietnam. But the government has resisted mass culling of birds, citing the expense and impracticality in a country where keeping a few chickens or ducks in backyards is common.

Local tests are not considered definitive and blood samples are sent to a World Health Organisation-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation.

Not counting the latest death, the H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 114 people worldwide since 2003, according to the WHO.

The virus has spread in birds at an alarming rate in recent months, sweeping through parts of Europe, down into Africa and across into South Asia.

It is difficult for humans to catch, but experts fear the virus could evolve into a form passed easily from human to human, causing a pandemic that could kill millions.

In Indonesia, the H5N1 virus has been reported in birds in about two-thirds of the country's provinces.

REUTERS DKS PM1607