Three Indonesians in hospital, bird flu suspected

JAKARTA, Aug 2 (Reuters) Three Indonesian children have been hospitalised with suspected bird flu in a North Sumatran district where seven members of an extended family died from the disease in May, officials said today.

The three -- two siblings aged 10 and six and their 18-month-old neighbour -- were admitted to the state-run Adam Malik hospital yesterday after showing symptoms of bird flu, said hospital director Luhur Suroso.

''We are testing samples taken from them,'' Suroso told Reuters.

He declined to give further details.

Hariadi Wibisono, the health ministry's director-general of control of animal-borne diseases, said the patients lived in Karo district in North Sumatra province where bird flu killed as many as seven people in an extended family in May.

The deaths in Karo were the biggest cluster of the disease the country has recorded and sparked fears of a global pandemic of bird flu infections in humans.

The World Health Organisation said in May that two members of the cluster, an Indonesian man and his son, might have caught the virus in a case of direct human-to-human transmission, but the virus did not spread very far if this did happen.

''They are from the same district but a different village,'' Wibisono said, referring to the three new suspected cases.

Indonesia has recorded 42 deaths from the H5N1 bird flu virus, equalling Vietnam, where no one is known to have died of the disease this year.

Human cases of bird flu have been rising steadily in Indonesia since its first known outbreak in poultry in late 2003.

Worldwide, the disease has killed at least 134 people since it re-emerged in east Asia in 2003.

Indonesia has been criticised for not doing enough to stamp out H5N1, which still remains essentially an animal disease but experts fear could spark a pandemic if it mutates into a form that can pass easily among people.

The government has so far shied away from mass culling of poultry, citing lack of funds and impracticality in a country with millions of backyard fowl.

REUTERS DKB PM1028