Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Five Indonesians who succumbed to bird flu infection have gone under the the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) spotlight, a statement from UN News Center said on Friday.
WHO confirmed that the five Indonesian living in the west of Java, the most populous island in the Asian archipelago, had become the latest human fatalities from avian influenza.
The statement issued by WHO said the five Indonesians - two men, two women and a nine-year old boy - had all succumbed in the past eight days since contracting the H5N1 virus, responsible for outbreaks of bird flu around the world in recent years.
It said 102 of the 124 confirmed bird flu cases in Indonesia have been fatal.
"The South-East Asian nation is one of a handful of countries where the virus is enzootic, which means it is continuously present and being passed among poultry," WHO said.
There have been 357 laboratory-confirmed human cases and 225 deaths worldwide since the H5N1 outbreak began in 2003, with Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, China and Thailand reporting the greatest number of cases.
The most recent death occurred on Thursday, when a 31-year-old woman from East Jakarta died, nine days after being hospitalized. The woman was believed to have visited a wet market where live poultry were sold three days before she started experiencing bird flu symptoms.
In the other cases, a 32-year-old man from Banten province on Java`s western tip died on Tuesday, a 23-year-old woman from East Jakarta died on Sunday, the same day as a nine-year-old boy from West Java, and a 30-year-old man from Banten province also died on 24 January.
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