Barbecue turns to tragedy for Indonesian family

HONG KONG, June 8: The large Indonesian family in a remote village of north Sumatra spent over a week in April fattening up a pig and some chickens for a barbecue. They had no idea of the tragedy that would follow their joyous gathering.

After the feast, eight relatives of Boni Karo-Karo spent the night in a tiny room where she lay very ill and coughing heavily.

Boni died on May 4, and around the time that she passed away, six of her relatives began displaying the same symptoms that she suffered -- symptoms typical of the H5N1 bird flu.

Details showing how the virus might have spread in the family in Kubu Sembilang village were carried in the World Health Organisation's (WHO) latest update on Indonesia, where H5N1 has infected 48 people, killing 37 of them.

It is this Sumatran infection cluster that has the medical community most worried because it eventually killed as many as seven family members, the largest family cluster to date.

Although Boni was buried before samples could be taken from her for tests, she is regarded as the index case.

Seven of her relatives -- two sons, two brothers, a sister, a niece and a nephew -- were subsequently confirmed infected by the H5N1. Only one of them, a brother, survived.

The case is deeply worrying because it aroused suspicions that there might have been limited person-to-person transmission of the virus, something the WHO has said may have happened.

One of Boni's brothers developed symptoms on May 15, after taking care of his 10-year-old son, who died on May 13. The man died on May 22.

NO GENETIC CHANGES

But the WHO, which has identified 54 surviving family members and close contacts and put them on home quarantine and antiviral drugs, stresses that the virus has not spread beyond the family.

Although H5N1 has been steadily changing everywhere it shows up, the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say their analysis of strains taken from the cluster victims do not show any of the genetic changes known to make a flu virus pass more easily from one person to another.

The H5N1 is still predominantly spread directly from infected chickens to humans, but experts warn that it could trigger a pandemic that can kill millions once it adapts to people and passes efficiently among them.

Tests on about 80 samples taken from chickens, ducks, pigs, soil and fertilisers in and around their village have not detected live H5N1 virus, although chickens in a nearby village were suspected to have died of H5N1 earlier in the year.

WHO experts also believe that 37-year-old Boni, a vegetable seller, might have been directly infected by a non-human source.

Chickens she kept at home died a few days before she fell ill and she used chicken faeces as fertilisers in her garden.

She also sold fruits and chillies in a market, and live chickens were sold about 15 metres from her vegetable stall.

REUTERS