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JAKARTA : A 32-year-old Indonesian man has died of bird flu, the health ministry said Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 101 in the nation worst hit by the deadly virus.
The man, who died Tuesday, was from the Jakarta satellite district of Tangerang, the ministry's bird flu information centre said in a statement.
He was the seventh confirmed death from bird flu this year.
The victim was said to have first shown symptoms similar to bird flu on January 17, but he was only taken to a village clinic on January 21 before being referred to a hospital in the district town of Tangerang on January 24.
The man was then moved to a bird flu referral hospital in Jakarta on January 26, suffering from fever, breathing difficulties, low blood cell count and pneumonia, the health ministry's bird flu centre has said.
The centre said it was not known whether the victim had contact with infected birds but that several of his neighbours were keeping pigeons.
Humans are typically infected with bird flu by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, sparking a deadly global pandemic.
The concern stems from past influenza pandemics. A pandemic in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20 million people worldwide.
The virus is now endemic in birds across nearly all of Indonesia's 33 provinces. - AFP/ch
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