Photo Credit – FAO
# 6202
Although a notice has yet to appear on the Indonesian Ministry of Health’s website, numerous media outlets overnight are reporting on the death of a 24-year old woman from the H5N1 virus in Sumatra.
We’ve very few details at this time other than a probable exposure to poultry (hard to escape in rural Indonesia) and the date of her death, March 1st.
This report from NewsChannel Asia.
Bird flu claims 5th victim this year in Indonesia
Posted: 07 March 2012 1142 hrs
JAKARTA: A 24-year-old woman has died of bird flu on Indonesia's Sumatra island, the fifth human death from the virus this year, a health ministry official said Wednesday.
"She tested positive for the H5N1 virus by the health ministry's laboratory. It's the fifth death here this year," the ministry's head of animal-borne infectious diseases, Rita Kusriastuti, told AFP.
FluTrackers maintains a thread on this case, and there are unconfirmed reports that a toddler from the same region is being tested for the virus.
Human infections with the H5N1 virus remain, thankfully, rare. The virus is far better adapted to avian physiology than it is to human physiology.
The concern of course, is that with practice, the virus may learn how to infect humans more readily.
So we monitor human cases carefully, looking for any signs that the virus is changing.
