WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION WARNS OF POSSIBLE ARRIVAL OF HUMAN-TO-HUMAN BIRD FLU IN INDONESIA

BUT NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS BIRD FLU IS ON THE WANE IN SOUTH EAST ASIA

Ireland OnLine: "Indonesian and World Health Organisation officials today were investigating eight suspected human bird flu cases, four of them fatal, in a district on Sumatra island.

"WHO spokeswoman Sari Setiogi in Indonesia said tests on villagers’ blood samples in northern Sumatra’s Tanah Karo district had yet to be completed.

"Nyoman Kandun, head of the Health Ministry’s office of communicable disease control, said the samples have been passed on to a WHO lab in Hong Kong for confirmation.

"He said the possibility of human-to-human infection 'could not be ruled out.'

Kandun said all of the suspected victims were part of a large family, with most living near each other in the same village.

“'We have found negative signs of bird flu in all the livestock near where the families live, and now investigators are trying to further check livestock such as chicken, ducks and pigs there,' he said."

From the New York Times : "Even as it crops up in the far corners of Europe and Africa, the virulent bird flu that raised fears of a human pandemic has been largely snuffed out in the parts of Southeast Asia where it claimed its first and most numerous victims.

"Vietnam, which has had almost half of the human cases of A(H5N1) flu in the world, has not seen a single case in humans or a single outbreak in poultry this year. Thailand, the second-hardest-hit nation until Indonesia recently passed it, has not had a human case in nearly a year or one in poultry in six months.

"Encouraging signs have also come from China, though they are harder to interpret.

"These are the second positive signals that officials have seen recently in their struggle to prevent avian flu from igniting a human pandemic. Confounding expectations, birds making the spring migration north from Africa have not carried the virus into Europe."

"According to the World Health Organization, China said it had outbreaks in 16 provinces in 2004. In 2005, it reported outbreaks in only 12 provinces, but one in November was so large that 2.5 million birds were culled to contain it.

"After that, the Agriculture Ministry announced that it would vaccinate every domestic bird in China, which raises and consumes 14 billion chickens, ducks and geese each year. The official news agency reported about the same time that a fake flu vaccine, possibly with live virus in it, might have spread the disease."