Woman contracts bird flu in SurabayaPublished:

    
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   Woman contracts bird flu in SurabayaPublished: Tuesday, 13 March, 2007, 09:05 AM Doha Time

JAKARTA: A 20-year-old woman in Indonesia is critically ill with bird flu, health officials said yesterday, becoming the 85th human case in the country worst hit by the deadly virus.
The woman was being treated in a hospital in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city, said an official from the Bird Flu Information Centre who declined to be named.
Indonesia has suffered 64 bird flu fatalities since its first human case was detected in the middle of 2005, the world’s highest toll.
The critically ill woman was admitted with bird flu symptoms six days ago and had a history of close contact with poultry, hospital official Teguh Silfaranto said.
Sick birds are so far the main source of infection in Indonesia, whose government has banned people in Jakarta, the capital, from the popular practice of keeping poultry in back yards.
The global spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is being closely tracked.
Egypt said late Saturday that a four-year-old boy had become its 24th human case. Laos announced its first confirmed human death from the strain, a 15-year-old girl, last week.
A total of 168 people have died of bird flu since 2003 out of the 277 infected, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Scientists say multiple strains of the disease originated in southern China and spread elsewhere.
They fear the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily spread among humans, leading to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions — although the WHO said last week there had been no such mutation yet.
The fear stems from the lessons of history, as past influenza pandemics have killed millions. One in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed some 20mn people worldwide.–AFP