Jakarta bird flu hospital overwhelmed with patients

JAKARTA, Jan 15 (Reuters) One of two hospitals designated to treat bird flu cases in the Indonesian capital has been overwhelmed with patients with symptoms of the disease amid a spike of new cases this year, a doctor today said.

Indonesia has seen four fatalities this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of human deaths from bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world.

Nine people with bird flu symptoms are being treated at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital and its isolation rooms can no longer accept any more patients, said Muchtar Ichsan, the head of the hospital's bird flu ward.

A 5-year old girl was being treated at the intensive care unit, he said.

''If we get more patients, we will send them to Sulianti Saroso,'' Ichsan told Reuters, referring the country's main bird flu treatment centre in North Jakarta.

Seven of the patients at Persahabatan came from Bekasi, a town east of Jakarta, said Muhammad Nadirin, a doctor at the bird flu information centre.

An 18-year-old man being treated in Persahabatan has been confirmed to have bird flu after his mother died of the disease on Thursday.

The man's father, from Serpong in west Java, was also being treated for similar symptoms but two tests found he did not have the deadly virus. More tests will be conducted on the father.

Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the health ministry, said on Saturday the positive test of the son signalled a cluster case but there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus so far.

The largest known cluster of human bird flu cases worldwide occurred in May 2006 in the Karo district of North Sumatra province, where as many as seven people in an extended family died. The cluster triggered fears the virus had mutated into a form that could spread easily between people.

Bird flu is endemic in around half of Indonesia's 33 provinces and the vast, developing country has struggled to contain the disease.

Millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity to humans and health education campaigns have often been patchy and rules difficult to enforce with the country's power structure increasingly devolved to the provinces.

Indonesian officials have, however, said they have made progress in their efforts to fight bird flu.

REUTERS SY HT1152