# 1988
This is, sadly, not an uncommon story from Indonesia. Late in April, a 15 year old boy died of a respiratory illness after being seen at a hospital near Jakarta. He was never tested for bird flu.
Ten days later his 16 year old sister also died after 4 days of hospitalization with the same symptoms. She tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
Now, a week after her death, we are finally hearing about these cases.
Despite last month's much heralded bird flu exercise on Bali, the Indonesians apparently are still allowing bird flu cases to slip through the cracks. We'd not have known about the 15 year old, had his sister not died from the disease.
Of course, this opens up questions about H2H transmission. The trail, though, may be cold after several weeks. H2H (human-to-human) transmission is exceeding difficult to prove even under the best of circumstances.
There are always other `plausible' explanations for concurrent infections.
And of course, any of them are far more palatable to the Indonesian government.
Two siblings die of suspected bird flu in Jakarta
www.chinaview.cn
2008-05-14 18:45:59
JAKARTA, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Two teenagers from the same family have died within 10 days because of suspected bird flu in Jakarta, prompting health officials to take blood test of the rest family members, local press said Wednesday.
Istiqomah, 16, died four days after being admitted to the Persahabatan Hospital in the Indonesian capital on May 8 with laboratory test later confirming she had the avian flu virus.
She had been treated at the isolated room exclusively for bird flu patients but doctors failed to save her life, reported leading news website Detikcom.
Ten days before her death, brother Ahmad Rizki, 15, died after a brief treatment at another hospital with symptoms similar to bird flu.
"The symptoms were just the same: high fever, cough and faint. We thought it was the common flu so he didn't stay at the hospital, but then he died," Mahfud, the father of the ill-fated teenagers, said of Rizki.
But it cannot be confirmed that bird flu had caused Rizki's death as he didn't take a blood test.
The family live in a densely populated neighborhood where a nearby house grows chickens.
Apart from the two cases, Indonesia has so far confirmed 133 bird flu cases in human with 107 deaths since the virus was first reported in 2003.
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