Bird flu case not human-to-human spread -Indonesia

JAKARTA, May 17 (Reuters) An outbreak of H5N1 bird flu involving up to eight members of a family in Indonesia's North Sumatra province is not a case of human-to-human transmission, a Health Ministry official said today.

Concern has been growing about the case in which six of the eight have already died. Local tests showed five members of the cluster were positive for the bird flu virus and tests were being carried out on the remaining three.

''The spread was through risk factors from poultry or ther animals. There is no proof of human to human,'' Nyoman Kandun, director-general of disease control, told Reuters.

''The world is watching us. We are not being hasty,'' he added.

He said authorities were still trying to identify the source of the virus in the cluster case in Kubu Simbelang village in Karo regency, about 50 km south of the North Sumatran city of Medan.

Some reports have suggested chicken manure used as fertiliser might be the link, but there has been no confirmation of this.

Infected birds can excrete large amounts of the H5N1 virus and this can be one way it can spread to birds, and people.

The World Health Organisation has sent a team to the area. The agency said it is on alert for signs that the virus is mutating into one that can be easily transmitted between people, a development that could signal the start of a pandemic in which millions could die.

Such a mutation could occur anywhere there is bird flu, the WHO says.

Experts have said in the past that possible bird flu cluster cases among family members do not mean the virus is necessarily mutating. It could be caused by the close contact normal in families.

There have been a number of such examples in Vietnam and Thailand, a WHO spokeswoman said in Geneva earlier this week.

The Indonesian Health Ministry has said blood samples of the five family members who had tested positive locally had been sent to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation. Local tests are not considered definitive.

Bird flu has killed 115 people worldwide, the majority in east Asia, since reappearing in 2003. Virtually all the victims caught the disease from poultry.

The WHO has confirmed 25 deaths in Indonesia from the H5N1 virus, the second highest number after Vietnam, which has confirmed 42 deaths.

The virus is endemic in much of Indonesia, and yesterday a senior Agriculture Ministry official said H5N1 had been detected for the first time in poultry in remote eastern Papua province.

REUTERS SRS BST1055