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JAKARTA - A 32-YEAR-OLD Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, the health ministry said in a statement on Monday, bringing the toll to 95 in the nation worst hit by the H5N1 virus.
'The patient died at home on January 10,' the ministry's bird flu information centre said, adding that two laboratory tests had since confirmed that she was infected with the bird flu virus.
Two such positive tests are required before Indonesia officially reports a death from H5N1, which has become endemic in the archipelago nation.
The woman, identified only by her initials TM, came from Tangerang, a satellite city of Jakarta, the centre said. She is the city's sixth bird flu victim since October.
She had been taken to hospital on January 9 with a fever, difficulty breathing and pneumonia, but her family 'ignored the advice of the hospital doctor to continue hospitalisation,' the centre said.
The woman's family kept chickens in their backyard, it added.
Humans are typically infected with bird flu by direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans.
Scientists fear that such a development would likely spark a global pandemic with a potential death toll of millions, and the World Bank has said such a scenario could cost up to two trillion dollars.
The concern stems from past influenza pandemics. A flu pandemic in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20 million people worldwide.
The head of the world's top agency for animal health said last week however in Paris that the virus had so far proved remarkably stable, which minimised the risk of mutation. -- AFP
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