# 978
For a week, officials have been scurrying around Banten Province trying to figure out how a 6-year-old, with no apparent contact with sick poultry, died of the H5N1 virus. Today they announced a link to sick chickens.
Sort of.
It is a tenuous link at best. After a week of investigation they turned up sick chickens near her school.
No, they have no evidence that she actually touched one, or was even within spitting distance of one. But that, apparently, is enough to assume she contracted it from sick birds.
The same official who made this announcement also added that, "So far, there have been no human-to-human cases in Indonesia", which conflicts with what is known about the Karo Cluster last year, where the WHO believes we saw H-2-H-2-H transmission.
But hey, if you can't control the virus, might as well control the message. Right?
Did this victim contract the virus from birds? I've no idea. It's possible. Indonesia is rife with infected birds.
It is also possible this child petted an infected dog or cat, or ate after an infected fly landed on her food, or just possibly, came in contact with an asymptomatic carrier. We'll never know.
They really aren't looking very hard for those sorts of vectors.
Of course, admitting this little girl contracted the disease from Indirect contact with poultry opens a new can of worms. Generally, the official line is you needed direct contact (despite evidence to the contrary).
No word as to what constitutes risky indirect contact with birds.
Frankly, we are left with more questions than answers. But at least this pronouncement sounds reassuring.
And that is what really matters.
Indonesia links human H5N1 death to sick chickens
Sat 14 Jul 2007 7:04:52 BST
JAKARTA, July 14 (Reuters) - An Indonesian child who died of bird flu last weekend appears to have caught the virus from dead or sick chickens in the area carrying the disease, a health ministry official said on Saturday.
Contact with infected fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus, but medical experts had initially struggled to pinpoint the source of the infection in this case.
It is always a concern when the cause of a human infection cannot be traced as it makes infection control more difficult.
"She had indirect contact with dead chickens near her school," Joko Suyono, an official at the ministry's bird flu centre, said by telephone.
The victim, from the city of Cilegon in Banten province, had initially been identified as a six-year-old boy, but Suyono said this was due to a mix up between the hospital where she was treated and a laboratory.
The official said that tests on dead chickens found near the girl's school showed they were infected with bird flu.
"We cannot know whether she touched sick chickens or not because she died. But we know surrounding her school the virus is endemic (in fowl)," he added.
Suyono said tests for the virus on people who may have had contact with the girl had proved negative and also said the findings in this case ruled out the possibility of the virus being transmitted between humans.
"So far, there have been no human-to-human cases in Indonesia," he said.
Bird flu is endemic in bird populations in most parts of Indonesia, where millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity with humans.
