I believe this is Rafael Ginting's father, Dowes Ginting, that they are talking about here. And, he went home and died in the very village that the WHO was prevented from visiting....
Two more Indonesians die of bird flu
Total number of deaths in SEA country reach 34
The Associated Press (apwire)
Two more people have died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Indonesia, one of them belonging to a family on North Sumatra where the largest national cluster of infections has occurred, government health officials said Monday.
Indonesian Health Ministry spokesman I Nyoman Kandun told reporters in the capital, Jakarta, that a 32-year-old man, identified only as D., died in the village of Kabanjahe after refusing to take antiviral drugs and fleeing a hospital in search of alternative treatment.
Kandun said results from new preliminary testing also had uncovered two other infections, one in Jakarta and another on East Java. The victim of the Jakarta infection died May 19, he said.
The H5N1 infections in all three cases still need to be confirmed by laboratory testing in Hong Kong for the World Health Organization.
If confirmed, they would take the total number of fatalities in Indonesia to 34, the second highest in the world after Vietnam.
While Vietnam and Thailand have successfully contained the illness after serious outbreaks, Jakarta has been criticized for failing to act decisively. Infections have been reported in two-thirds of the sprawling archipelago's provinces.
The cluster in the village of Kubu Sembilang on Sumatra, previously believed to be free of the disease, has raised concerns that the virus may have mutated to a form that is easily passed between people. Health experts say such a scenario could lead to a pandemic, killing millions of people worldwide.
I Nyoman Kandun, who heads the ministry's communicable disease control center, said that transmission between humans could not yet be ruled out.
"We cannot confirm that (human-to-human transmission) has occurred but we cannot rule it out," Kandun said.
Two more Indonesians die of bird flu
Total number of deaths in SEA country reach 34
The Associated Press (apwire)
Two more people have died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Indonesia, one of them belonging to a family on North Sumatra where the largest national cluster of infections has occurred, government health officials said Monday.
Indonesian Health Ministry spokesman I Nyoman Kandun told reporters in the capital, Jakarta, that a 32-year-old man, identified only as D., died in the village of Kabanjahe after refusing to take antiviral drugs and fleeing a hospital in search of alternative treatment.
Kandun said results from new preliminary testing also had uncovered two other infections, one in Jakarta and another on East Java. The victim of the Jakarta infection died May 19, he said.
The H5N1 infections in all three cases still need to be confirmed by laboratory testing in Hong Kong for the World Health Organization.
If confirmed, they would take the total number of fatalities in Indonesia to 34, the second highest in the world after Vietnam.
While Vietnam and Thailand have successfully contained the illness after serious outbreaks, Jakarta has been criticized for failing to act decisively. Infections have been reported in two-thirds of the sprawling archipelago's provinces.
The cluster in the village of Kubu Sembilang on Sumatra, previously believed to be free of the disease, has raised concerns that the virus may have mutated to a form that is easily passed between people. Health experts say such a scenario could lead to a pandemic, killing millions of people worldwide.
I Nyoman Kandun, who heads the ministry's communicable disease control center, said that transmission between humans could not yet be ruled out.
"We cannot confirm that (human-to-human transmission) has occurred but we cannot rule it out," Kandun said.
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