# 4692
During 2009 the Indonesian Ministry of Health (MOH) went nearly a year without confirming any human cases of H5N1 infection, waiting until the last week of December to release (scant) information on 19 cases.
In what is hopefully sign of better communications, this year we received an update in February (2 cases), one in early May (2 more cases), and today a third announcement of another fatal case from early June.
Given the vagaries of testing, surveillance, and reporting there obviously remains some doubt as to the completeness of these numbers.
Admittedly, the same could be said about any country with endemic H5N1. Some unknown (but probably small) number of cases likely occur `under the radar’ every year.
Still, the MOH appears to be more forthcoming in recent months than it has been in the past couple of years, even if reporting on cases is still being delayed by weeks.
It should also be noted that today’s report has more detail than we usually see on Indonesian cases, as well.
This report, and translation, comes via Ida at the Bird Flu Information Corner. Dutchy at FluTrackers has another translation on this forum thread.
Jakarta ::: Government announces a H5N1 positive case during May to June 2010
Posted by Ida on July 2, 2010
Jakarta – Ministry of Health reported an additional bird flu (H5N1) positive during May to June 2010. Victim is a 34 years old female with initial TFA, a resident of Jakarta.
“Victim is stated positively contracting H5N1 by Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research Center, Ministry of Health, on June 4th 2010,” announced General Director of Disease Control and Environmental Health (Dirjen Pengendalian Penyakit dan Penyehatan Lingkungan/P2PL), Ministry of Health, Tjandra Yoga Aditama in Jakarta, Thursday (1/7).
Victim started to feel sick on 25 May 2010 with signs fever, coughing, breathing difficulty, nausea and muscle pain. She came to a private clinic on 27 May, and then continued to get medical care to a private hospital in Tangerang on the next day.
“During hospitalization, she was worsening with severe pneumonia. On June 1 she was referred to Tangerang regional hospital and died within the same day,” said Tjandra.
Before the illness, victim was having hobby of growing ornament plants in her yard, which is said as one of risk factor of infection. She was also reported to have had visited her parents in-law in Tangerang city, a bird flu endemic area.
There is no influenza like illness symptom reported on victim’s contacts within household, neighborhood or health workers.
The case has added total cumulative of bird flu cases in Indonesia since 2005 to June 2010 to 166 cases with 137 deaths.
This case has been reported to WHO by its representative, Dirjen P2PL.
Source: Indonesia Ministry of Communication and Information.
This latest fatality boosts the CFR (Case Fatality Ratio) in Indonesia to 82.5%, an absolutely abysmal number and roughly 2.5 times higher than the reported CFR in Egypt.
