Bird flu claims five more lives

Bird flu claims five more lives:

THE number of people killed by bird flu in the sprawling archipelago climbed to five, Indonesia said yesterday.

The World Bank also finalised plans to provide up to $677 million to help poor countries fight the deadly disease.

China, which has yet to record any human bird flu cases, mobilised its massive military to try to stamp out the H5N1 virus in poultry after thousands of birds started dropping dead in a village east of Beijing.

A 19-year-old woman from Tangerang, a town outside Indonesia's capital Jakarta, died of bird flu last month and an eight-year-old boy was sickened by the virus, said Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono, citing Hong Kong laboratory test results.

That brought the number of human cases in Indonesia to nine -- five deaths and four infections -- though some health experts say the number is probably higher.

The World Bank is gearing up for an international conference in Geneva next week to discuss managing bird flu outbreaks, as well as plans to cope with a possible human flu pandemic.

Jim Adams, a World Bank vice-president said a funding package of $406 million to $677 million could be used by low-income countries to "supplement government resources, to strengthen the veterinary systems and to put in place culling and vaccine programs for animals".

According to the World Health Organisation, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 62 people -- all of them in South-East Asia -- and resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million birds since 2003.

Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed among humans, possibly sparking a worldwide pandemic.

The latest Chinese outbreak -- the fourth in three weeks -- killed 8940 chickens on October 26 in Badaohao, a village in Liaoning province, prompting authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds in the area.

In Vietnam -- where most of the human deaths have occurred -- more than 3000 poultry died or were culled this week in three villages in Bac Giang province about 60km north-east of Hanoi.

In Japan, 180,000 of 300,000 chickens at a farm in Ibaraki prefecture will be culled after 80 were found to have been exposed to the H5 strain. – AP