Jakarta (AsiaNews) – A spokesman for the Arifin Ahmad Hospital in Pekanbaru (Sumatra) announced yesterday that a farm worker, Gerhat Saragih, was the 85th bird flu victim in Indonesia. The 33-year-old man is the second patient to die in the same hospital since the start of the year. And Indonesia holds the unenviable record for the highest death toll from the disease in the world..
The health ministry in Jakarta confirmed the patient had been infected with the H5N1 virus, which is the most dangerous strain, one that can make an inter-species move and is lethal to both animals and humans.
Azizman Saad, head of Arifin Ahmad hospital's bird flu mitigation team, said it was not clear how the man had come into contact with infected chickens. What is known is that he bought two live chickens at a local market before showing symptoms of the disease.
The bird flu is endemic in birds in most parts of the country, and the authorities have so far failed to stop it from spreading.
For the time being there have been no human-to-human transmission, but experts don’t exclude that possibility in case the virus mutates.
