# 1839
Confirmation this morning of the story I reported yesterday - the death of a 15-year-old boy last week was due to the H5N1 virus. Plus another bird flu death announced; that of an 11-year-old girl from Bekasi.
Lastly, the 22 month old child mentioned as a suspect in yesterday's report has tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
Here is how Reuters is reporting the story.
Two Indonesian youths die of bird flu
JAKARTA - TWO Indonesian youths have died from bird flu, a health ministry official said on Monday, taking the confirmed death toll in the country worst affected by the virus to 107.
A 15-year-old boy from Subang, in West Java, died on Wednesday in an area where chickens had died, said Mr Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the ministry.
An 11-year-old girl from Bekasi, east of Jakarta, who died on Friday also tested positive for the virus, the official said.
'There were dead chickens in the boy's neighbourhood, but in the girl's case it is still unclear,' Mr Kandun said via a mobile phone text message.
Mr Kandun dismissed the possibility of more bird flu cases in the same family after the boy's brother died recently.
Confirmed cluster cases raise concerns over human-to-human transmission.
'It is not correct that there is a cluster in Subang,' Mr Kandun said, adding that the brother has died of dengue fever.
Earlier on Monday, a 22-month-old girl from Sumatra's Bukit Tinggi tested positive for bird flu and the health ministry was checking her neighbourhood for possible backyard farming.
'Her condition is improving, and she is being treated at a Padang hospital,' Ms Lily Sulistyowati, a health ministry spokesman, said by telephone.
Including the latest deaths, Indonesia has had 132 confirmed cases of the virus.
The denial of a possible cluster in the case of the 15-year-old, whose brother died a week early, is not entirely unexpected. Officials are loathe to describe any patient as having the bird flu virus until they have tested positive twice, a test that was probably never run on the boy.
The brother could have died of Dengue, as originally diagnosed. But we'll never know. The coincidence, that both brothers should die a week apart from different infectious diseases, however, is a bit hard to swallow.
A similar situation exists in Padang, where a 22-month old has just tested positive for the virus. A 21 year old sibling died less than 2 weeks ago of `inflammation of the lung'.
The last case mentioned yesterday, that of a 29 year-old nurse in isolation, wasn't updated in this report.
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