A 32-year old woman who had caught the deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu in her home town near Jakarta died last Thursday, bringing to 95 the total number of people who have died from the virus in Indonesia, the highest so far of any country.
A health ministry official confirmed the death was due to bird flu today, Monday 14th January, said a Reuters news report from the capital, Jakarta. Two independent laboratory tests confirmed the woman was infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
According to Suharda Ningrum, from the Indonesian Health Ministry’s bird flu centre, the woman was taken away from hospital by her family, back to her home town in Tangerang, Banten, about 20 km west of Jakarta.
Health officials said the woman kept live chickens in her backyard, and just before getting sick she had bought a live chicken and some eggs from a market and cooked them.
A 16-year old girl from West Java province was admitted to hospital in Jakarta on the 4th of January, also with H5N1 bird flu. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), she became symptomatic on 30th December, and investigations by health officials found chickens had been dying near her home in the two weeks before her symptoms began.
According to Xinhua news agency, the girl is said to be stable, although she is on a ventilator to help her breathe. A hospital official told the agency that she had 90 per cent lung function.
Indonesia has had the highest number of cases and deaths from bird flu, since the H5N1 outbreaks started in 2003. The global total number of reported cases is 349, and deaths is 216, according to WHO figures published on 11th January 2008.
Public health bodies worldwide are watching the bird flu situation very closely. At present the only way a human can catch it is by handling dead or sick birds, such as infected domestic chickens, ducks and geese. But if the virus mutates into a form where it passes easily from human to human, the death toll worldwide could be devastating, with some estimates putting it as high as 90 million or more.
Many experts believe it is just a matter of time before this happens, since the virus is adapting all the time, and the larger the number of humans that are infected, the greater the opportunities for it to learn how to take that genetic leap.
A number of studies published in the last 12 months have suggested that if the virus were to evolve so that it could survive in the upper respiratory tract of humans, then it could pass from human to human through coughs and sneezes.
The current forms of the virus only survive in the lower respirator tract, where it is warmer and easier to replicate because of the types of protein it is made from. Also, a recent study suggested that the virus does not have the ability to gain entry to cells in the upper respiratory tract because it can bind only to glycans in the lower tract. Glycans are sugars found on surfaces of cells that act like gatekeepers.
Sources: Reuters, Xinhua, WHO, Medical News Today archives.
Written by: Catharine Paddock