Indonesia’s human fatality #47

It was really only a routine surveillance of people with mild flu symptoms, but when they found a positive and confirmed it, it was already too late. The 14-year old girl from Makassar was already dead. What’s sadder about this report was that the girl got infected, and died in June and tests were only confirmed last Wednesday. Reuters AlertNet reports:

“It turned out positive,” Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told reporters, adding chickens had died in the neighbourhood where she lived in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. Makassar is 1,400 km (870 miles) northeast of the capital Jakarta.

“The case should have been included on the list,” he told Reuters, referring to the list of human fatalities from bird flu.

“When we found one of them was positive, we traced it and found that the girl had died,” he said.

Supari was quoted by Independent Online (South Africa) as saying they will stamp out and cull poultry in the Makassar province because they also found dead birds in the area.

Now if that’s not plain sluggish and stupid… three months after the fact is when Indonesia decides they will clean up?! Infection would have spread massively by now, and perhaps not just in birds but in other humans as well. They should begin searching the area for more human cases, interviewing relatives and local people for other possible cases of avian flu, or better yet, test every single person in the area again. AND then, get the labs to confirm these ASAP. This is a public health nightmare…Three months… ?!

Tags: avian influenza, H5N1, Indonesia, surveillance