Bird Flu Kills One More in Indonesia

Remember Indonesia? You know, the country whose bird flu preperation plan was to completely ignore it? Well, not only do they have the highest fatality rate, it appears more are still dying. From Bloomberg:


"Bird flu killed an 11-year-old boy in Indonesia, a Ministry of Health official said, pushing the country's death toll to 50.

Tests confirmed the child from East Java was infected with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza when he died on Sept. 18, said I Nyoman Kandun, the health ministry's director general of disease control and environment.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous country, has recorded at least two new H5N1 cases every month since September last year. Its 65 reported cases account for more than a quarter of human infections worldwide.

The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 247 people in 10 countries, killing 144, since 2003, the World Health Organization said on Sept. 19. Millions could die if the virus mutates to become easily transmissible between people, sparking a lethal pandemic.

Indonesia, with 238 million people, is struggling to control H5N1 in poultry, which are spreading the virus to humans. In the past three years, infected birds have been found in at least 80 percent of the country's 33 provinces."

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Riiiight, if by struggling they mean refusing to start culling programs or control outbreaks then I suppose they are struggling -- and they are succeeding -- in doing nothing.

Vietnam has had the least deaths and least outbreaks because they got their shit together and basically turned off the poultry industry (communist countries can do that you know). Meanwhile, the de-facto Theocracy of Indonesia's response is to "trust in Allah."

Now, don't think I hate Indonesia. Personally, I don't have big problem with backwater Islamist shitholes. I'm just saying they have no one to blame for this but themselves, cause Vietnam is just as poor and they kick serious ass.