Official : Bird Flu Has 80% Human Fatality Rate In Indonesia

We've been writing this fact up on this blog for a few months now, but it's still alarming to see it in print.

From the Jakarta Post :

Around 80 percent of the total 111 bird flu (Avian Influenza) patients in Indonesia, between 2005 and June 2007 have died, an official said.

During the period, some 90 people died of bird flu virus in the country, head of the respiratory disease of the Health Ministry's Community and Environmental Disease Eradication Fonny Silvanus said over the weekend.

The majority of the fatalities were recorded in West Java Province with 29 deaths, and the least fatalities were in South Sulawesi with only one bird flu patient died, Silvanus said when launching a public awareness campaign on animal quarantine.

"At the average, bird flu virus has affected mostly Indonesia's western regions, because the regions are quite humid, which is an ideal condition for bird flu virus to breed well," Silvanus said.

The bird flu patients ranged from one year old babies to 67 year-old adults

It should be noted that the 67 year old victim was the anomaly statistic out of all the human bird flu deaths in Indonesia.

The vast majority of all human deaths in Indonesia have been in people under 40 years old. At least 30 of those deaths have been children under 10 years old.