Local tests show Indonesian teenager died of bird flu

JAKARTA, Aug 8 (Reuters) A 16-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu according to results from local tests, a health ministry official said today.

If confirmed by a World Health Organisation-referred laboratory, he will be Indonesia's 43rd human bird flu death, the highest in the world.

''According to information I received from the hospital, he died at last night,'' an official at the health ministry's bird flu crisis centre, Runizar Ruesin, told Reuters.

The teenager, from Bekasi on the outskirts of Jakarta, had been treated at the designated bird flu centre in Jakarta, Sulianti Saroso Hospital.

He had been in contact with sick chicken, the usual mode of transmission of the disease that is endemic in poultry in nearly all the country's provinces.

Nasal samples from the patient have been sent to the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Local tests are not considered definitive.

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

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

Indonesia drew international attention in May when the virus killed as many as seven members from a single family in a north Sumatra village. Experts said there could have been limited human-to-human transmission in this cluster case.

But they stressed genetic analyses of the virus had not shown all of the traits that are known so far to allow it to spread easily among people.

Last week seven Indonesians from the same village in North Sumatra were tested for the virus, but preliminary tests cleared them of suspected bird flu.

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 DH BS0757