Another Bird Flu Death: Jakarta, Indonesia

Sadly, a three year old Indonesian girl has died of bird flu near Jakarta in the latest case of the virus to hit the country a senior health ministry official said. She died in Cisauk village south-west of Jakarta.

It appears local tests showed she was positively infected with the H5N1and that the girl had reportedly had contact with birds. If confirmed by a World Health Organisation-sanctioned test, Indonesia's death toll from bird flu would rise to 41, trailing only Vietnam, where 42 people have died of the disease.

Indonesia has been criticised for not routinely culling fowl in infected area to stop spreading of the disease but the government says it does not have enough money to compensate farmers.

Bird flu has killed at least 131 people worldwide since it started ravaging Asian poultry farms in late 2003 according to the WHO.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that makes it more easily transmissible among humans.

Animal deaths on the rise

A senior government official said the country's poultry death rate from bird flu is getting worse. The agriculture ministry's director general of livestock production Mathur Riady says one million birds, half of them quail, died of the disease in the first three months of 2006.

He says this compares with 1.2 million bird deaths in the whole of 2005.

Mr Riady says the increase could be the result of low vaccination coverage particularly in small farms and backyard chickens. However he says it could be because the reporting system on poultry deaths is getting better.

The government has so far avoided mass culling, citing lack of funds and impracticality with vaccination a preferred method to prevent the spread of the virus among poultry.