Indonesia's Official Bird Flu Death Toll Hits 80

Man Dies After Eating Infected Chickens

While some quarters of the mega-billion dollar global poultry industry will shout from the rooftops that you cannot catch bird flu and die from eating chickens, people still catch bird flu and die from eating chickens. Chickens infected with the bird flu virus.

But now we know that a strain of the bird flu has mutated and chickens can carry the virus without showing any outward signs of infection, how are Indonesians in particular supposed to avoid eating H5N1 infected chicken meat?

From the Jakarta Post :

An Indonesian man died of bird flu after eating sick chickens, a leading health official said Thursday, raising the national death toll to 80.

Multiple blood tests confirmed the 28-year-old had the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus...

The symptoms were the standard : cough, headaches, high fever. He died three days after being hospitalised, and presumably despite being treated with antivirals like Tamiflu, which are now standard issue for any bird flu patients in Indonesian hospitals.

Perhaps Vietnam had the right idea back in early 2006 when they distributed large posters through the cities showing chicken meat that had been boiled for more than half an hour until it was yellow.

Go here for that story, and to see the 'Boil It Safe' poster