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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Indonesian MOH Announces Bird Flu Fatality

From Mike Coston at Avian Flu Diary, along with his excellent comments, excerpt please go to his site for all the links :

" Ten days ago we learned of the death of a 23 year-old man living in north Jakarta from the H5N1 virus, presumably contracted from pigeons he was raising (see Bird Flu Suspect Dies In Indonesia).

At the time, there were media reports that this man’s sibling (ASR, age 5) was also ill and hospitalized, but it was reported on January 9th that he/she tested negative for the H5N1 virus.

We know that testing for the H5N1 virus has always been difficult, particularly once a patient is placed on antivirals, and we’ve seen some cases where patients tested negative repeatedly up until their demise, and bird flu infection was only established post-mortem.

Which is why many observers of the bird flu situation in Indonesia take negative test results with a grain of salt.

Today, via a statement released from the Indonesian Ministry of Health (h/t Gert van der Hoek on FluTrackers), we now learn that a 5 year old girl from the same neighborhood (with exposure to pigeons) has died after testing positive for the virus on January 13th."

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