Ninth death from bird flu in Indonesia

Top health officials in Indonesia have confirmed a ninth human death in the country from bird flu.

This latest death, confirmed by a Hong Kong laboratory affiliated to the World Health Organization takes the global death toll from the disease to 71.

Scientists are concerned that the virus will mutate into an easily spread human virus and spark a pandemic in which millions could die.

According to a senior health ministry official the 35-year-old man who died last month lived in West Jakarta, and had been in contact with live chickens that carried the H5N1 virus.

Director general of disease control at the health ministry, I Nyoman Kandun, said the man's house was surrounded by many chickens and birds which had tested positive to the virus.

The man apparently died in a local hospital before he could be treated at the government-designated hospital for bird flu patients.

The death raises the number of deaths from the H5N1 avian influenza globally to 71, all in Asia.

To date 138 people are known to have been infected.

Five other people confirmed to have contracted the virus in Indonesia have survived.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, and has affected birds in two-thirds of the provinces in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of some 17,000 islands and 220 million people.

The country has millions of chickens and ducks, many in the backyards of rural or urban homes.

Jakarta is preparing an early bird flu warning system, a "village preparedness policy", aimed at reaching remote areas to accelerate the reporting of any outbreaks.

This will involve local governments setting up health posts in all villages, where personnel including doctors would be alert to flu cases in birds and humans, particularly in infected areas.