# 2218
Nearly 48 hours since the first stories broke from North Sumatra and we still don't know if any of the 13 hospitalized patients from the Air Batu village are suffering from the H5N1 `bird flu'.
Tests are pending, and we are reliant on an increasingly recalcitrant Indonesian government to relay the results to the press. One can only hope that the vigorous attention being paid by the local and international media will help convince authorities to release this data quickly.
As far as the three fatalities in the Air Batu village, their bodies were quickly buried and no samples were taken for testing. We will probably never know what they died of.
While test results for the remaining patients are awaited, culling of birds and disinfecting of backyard coops is underway in the affected village.
For now, while bird flu is suspected, we don't know the cause of this outbreak.
This from The Australian.
Birds slaughtered as flu breaks out
From correspondents in Jakarta | August 08, 2008
HUNDREDS of chickens and ducks have been slaughtered to contain a suspected bird flu outbreak in Indonesia as 13 people with flu-like symptoms await laboratory results.
Thirteen people were hospitalised earlier this week with fevers and respiratory problems after a large number of chickens died suddenly in their village in North Sumatra province.
Two of them, a baby boy and a seven-year-old girl, have been put in a bird flu isolation unit at a hospital in the provincial capital Medan.
"We have taken measures since Tuesday when we found strong indications of bird flu virus in some 100 chickens and ducks in several places in Air Batu village," said local husbandary office chief Oktoni Eryanto.
At least 400 birds have been slaughtered and burned, and officials were continuing to spray backyard coops with disinfectant, he said.
"We don't need to send samples from the poultry to a laboratory because it's pretty clear that the cause is the bird flu virus," he said.
"Preventive action is more important to control it.
