24th Indonesian H5N1 Death Confirmed

Indonesia has been getting especially hard, accounting for almost a full 1/4th of total H5N1 deaths worldwide. The BBC Asia-Pacific has more:

"Indonesian health officials say an eight-year-old girl who died last July had the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

A spokesman for the Indonesian health ministry, Runizar Ruesin, said the virus was confirmed in tests by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The result brings to 24 the number of deaths from bird flu in Indonesia.

The girl's father and sister were confirmed last year to have died from the H5N1 strain of the virus, but further tests had been delayed.

The government had problems getting adequate specimens of the girl's blood, which delayed shipment to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong, Mr Ruesin told Reuters news agency."

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That's at least one entire family wiped out by avian influenza. Of course the news media is very bad about reporting the particular details involved in the patients who are dying - but a whole family contracting it reeks of H2H transmission.