Five Indonesians in hospital with suspected bird flu

JAKARTA, Jan 25 (Reuters) Five people with bird flu symptoms have been hospitalised in Indonesia's South Sulawesi province, a doctor said today.

Tests were being conducted to determine if the five, including three children, were infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Their health was improving, said Khalid Saleh, a doctor in charge of the bird flu ward at Wahidin Sudirohusodo hospital in the provincial capital Makassar.

''They come from the same neighbourhood. It was said chickens have died in the area,'' he told Reuters.

Indonesia, which has the world's highest human death toll from bird flu, stepped up efforts to stamp out H5N1 after the disease flared again this year following a brief lull.

Five people have died of the disease this year, taking the number of human deaths in the country to 62. The virus is endemic in poultry in most provinces.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous country that stretches across 17,000 islands, faces an uphill task in fighting the virus.

Millions of backyard fowl live in close proximity to humans and keeping backyard chickens is ingrained in Indonesia's culture while health education campaigns have often been patchy and rules difficult to enforce.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way people are infected.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, but it known to have infected 269 people worldwide since late 2003, killing 163 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a strain that spreads easily among people, triggering a pandemic that would sweep the globe.

Reuters MS GC1717