Bali Bird Flu Update

(8/20/2007)

As reported on balidiscovery.com [See: Bali Records First Bird Flu Fatality], a 29-year-old Balinese woman, Ni Putu Sri Windiani, from Jembrana has been formally confirmed as Indonesia's 82nd fatality attributed to the H5NI virus. The woman, who died on August 12, 2007, was preceded in death by her 5-year-old daughter on August 5, 2007, who suffered flu-like symptoms for two weeks prior to her death.

While the Mother's death has been definitely link to the H5N1 virus, a lack of tissue samples from the child make it impossible to declare her a Bird Flu victim. Another hospitalization, a 3-year-old child from the same village in Bali's West has been eliminated as a suspect case of Bird Flu following laboratory tests and the gradual improvement in that child's health condition.

Since the confirmation of the Bird Flu case in Jembrana, authorities have taken a number of precautionary steps:

• Special teams have been dispatched to the scene to improve local hygiene practices, particularly in the proper disposal of the carcasses of dead poultry being culled by local authorities.

• As a precautionary measure, samples of blood from family members and their neighbor have been sent to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, to confirm that the West Bali case represents poultry-to-human infections and that the disease has not mutated into an infectious human-to-human variant.

• Over 5,200 chickens have been culled within a one-kilometer radius of the home of the dead woman's home at Banjar Dangin Tukar Aya in Jembrana.

• Sanitary spraying has been undertaken throughout the district to kill any traces of the virus.

• The entire area has been placed under an order of "temporary isolation" with an absolute ban on poultry movements in and out of the affected area.

With the death of a teenager this week in West Java, Indonesia has recorded 104 confirmed bird flu cases and 83 deaths.