Indonesia confirms Bali's first bird flu death

A 29-year-old woman and her five-year-old daughter, who died last week on the Resort Island of Bali, have been confirmed to have contracted the H5N1 strain of bird flu, becoming the first human victims on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Health officials in Bali said the tests have confirmed that the two victims were infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu when they died, taking Indonesia’s human death toll from the disease to 83 out of 103 cases.

"Both people are positive, from (tests at) the Eikman Institute and the health ministry's lab," said Bayu Krisnamurti, head of Indonesia's National Bird Flu Commission.

The woman, identified as Ni Luh Putu Sri Windani, died yesterday at Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar, Bali, while her daughter, Dian, died on August 3, according to Krisnamurti.

The victims were residents of Tukadaya village, Jembrana regency. Windani was brought to the hospital with breathing difficulties and a high fever last Saturday, three days after she had contact with chickens that reportedly died of bird flu. Her daughter also experienced the same bird flu symptoms as her mother before she died.

"She lived about 300 meters from the location of the dead chickens, which the husbandry agency said had all been infected by the avian influenza virus," said Ketut Subrata, the head of the Bali Health Agency's contagious diseases division.

A sick two-year-old girl from the same village, who was admitted to hospital on Sunday, has also been confirmed as being infected with the virus.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous country and one that stretches across 17,000 islands in an archipelago as wide as the continental United States, is the worst affected by the Asian bird flu pandemic with the 83 fatalities (including two latest deaths).

Including the recent fatalities, the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus has so far engulfed 193 human lives out of 313 cases since it surfaced in 2003.

Most human infections have occurred after contact with birds infected with H5N1 virus, which according to the Geneva-based WHO is generally not harmful to humans, but scientists now fear the deadly H5N1 strain could mutate and become easily transmissible among people, leaving millions more to die and triggering a devastating human pandemic.

H5N1, also known as A(H5N1), is a subtype of the Influenza A virus that is capable of causing illness in many animal species, including humans, while a bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of subtype H5N1", is the causative agent of H5N1 flu, commonly known as "avian influenza" or simply "bird flu", and is endemic in many bird populations, especially in Southeast Asia.

The H5N1 virus though remains primarily a virus of birds, but experts fright that once it starts transmitting from person to person, it would sweep the world, leaving millions more to die and triggering a devastating human pandemic.