People raise poultry in their homes in the region where the boys fell ill. In Azerbaijan, the virus has struck a breeding farm for the first time.
Surakarta (AsiaNews) - Hanif Cahya Putri, a 12-year-old boy and his 10-year-old brother, Nandya Kurniawan, are Indonesia's latest bird flu victims. The two boys died within a day of each other the younger died on 28 February and the elder on 1 March at the General Hospital of Surakarta, where they had been admitted.
The boys lived in the village of Karangkidul Boyolali regency in the heart of central Java province where poultry, despite pleas from the health authorities, are still bred in the homes of the local population.
The zone has been declared as a "potentially high-risk area" by the provincial health authorities, who said there could be "thousands of infections" among the poultry and announced a "massive slaughter campaign" notwithstanding residents' protests.
Even Azerbaijan is in the throes of a contagion of poultry by the H5N1 virus, which has penetrated a breeding farm for the first time. The presence of the virus was detected by laboratory tests on birds from a poultry farm in Gilyazi, some 60km north of the capital Baku. The Agriculture Minister, Ismet Abbassov, announced the decision to quarantine the stricken farm where half a million birds have already been culled to avoid the spread of the disease.
In Europe, bird flu is suspected in the death of birds in Switzerland and Romania.