# 602
After reporting 3 deaths on Wednesday, Indonesian officials on Thursday reported 2 more bird flu fatalities.
Bird flu claims two more Indon lives
March 29, 2007 - 4:24PM
Two more Indonesians have died of bird flu, a Health Ministry official said, taking the country's confirmed human death toll from the H5N1 virus to 71, the highest in the world.
A 14-year-old boy from West Sumatra died on March 24 soon after being admitted to hospital in the city of Padang, Joko Suyono of the ministry's bird flu centre said.
"He was suffering from fever and respiratory problems," the official said.
"Two weeks before, at least 10 of his neighbour's chickens died suddenly."
Suyono said the second victim was a 28-year-old woman from Jakarta who died on Wednesday at a hospital in the capital.
"We are still investigating whether she had had any contact with fowl before."
One can't help but wonder if the sudden reversal by the Health Minister on the issue of releasing virus samples, which came a little more than 48 hours ago, might have had something to do with this sudden rash of deaths.
Obviously authorities in Indonesia have known, or at least strongly suspected, that they have been seeing an upswing in cases for days, perhaps weeks. Two of these recently reported cases died on March 24th. One of the patients, who died on the 25th, entered the hospital on March 16th.
Since the first of February, it has become increasingly more difficult to get timely information out of Indonesia.
At first, we blamed it on the flooding in Jakarta, which no doubt caused massive confusion. The testing laboratory was without power for some time, and hospitals were over run with flood victims. But that crisis was well past by the end of February.
Since that time we've seen a number of media reports of `suspected' bird flu victims that have been treated or died, but very few official confirmations of the H5N1 virus. All the while, the Health Ministry has been negotiating with the WHO for vaccine access, and refusing to send samples out of the country.
Perhaps it is a coincidence that the Health Ministry has reversed its position, and we've seen 5 deaths reported, all within the space of 48 hours. Or perhaps this is an indication that things are getting worse in Indonesia, and they no longer feel they can go it alone.
The next few weeks should tell us if this upsurge in cases is an unfortunate blip, or a growing trend.
