# 6793
A hat tip to Treyfish at FluTrackers for picking up a couple of reports this morning regarding a suspected H5N1 case hospitalized at St Elisabeth Hospital, in Semarang.
The Jakarta Post has an English language report which provides us with a few details. The patient is a 54 year old man suffering from a cough, cold, and high fever with (according to another article in Bahasan) exposure to poultry that recently died suddenly.
Tests are underway, and so at this time this is just a `suspected case’.
Suspected bird flu victim in Semarang
Ainur Rohmah, The Jakarta Post, Semarang | Archipelago | Wed, December 19 2012, 7:55 PM
The Central Java Health Agency says it has received a report of a suspected case of bird flu in the province.
The 54-year-old man, a resident of the Sambiroto subdistrict, was currently under treatment at St. Elisabeth Hospital in Semarang, officials said.
In recent weeks tens of thousands of poultry (primarily ducks) have died across the Indonesian island of Java, and we’ve learned recently of the detection of a `new’ clade of the H5N1 virus (2.3.2) in that country (see Dr. Alan Hampson Interview On Indonesia’s New Bird Flu Clade).
All of which serves to put authorities on heightened alert for human infections with the virus.
Last week the Indonesian Ministry of Health reported on the death of a 4 year-old boy from the virus, bringing their total number of cases reported for the year to 9 – all of which have proved fatal.
There are many other illnesses that can cause `bird-flu-like symptoms’, and so we will have to wait for more definitive test results before we can know if this case is due to the H5N1 virus.
