# 2856
Overnight the International press has reported that the head of the Indonesian Bird Flu Commission, Bayu Krisnamurthi, revealed that the death toll in Indonesia from bird flu had increased to 119 cases.
This is an increase of 4 fatalities since the last numbers were provided to the WHO (World Health Organization) on January 22nd.
There are reasons to believe, however, that this latest tally may be several weeks old.
On February 11th and 12th, newshounds on both FluTrackers and the Flu Wiki picked up on local media reports of statements attributed to a couple of local officials that the new tally stood at 145 cases and 119 deaths.
On Flutrackers, posts #96, #97, and #98 (Hat tip Dutchy & Fla1) on this thread have local media reports attributing these new numbers to the local head of UNICEF, Jinung D Kritanto, and to Emil Agustiono, Vice Chairman Executive Committee of Komnas FBPI.
And that was three weeks ago.
The issue was `discussed' on the flu forums, but no follow up ever came from the Health Ministry, and the WHO never updated their numbers.
Today's announcement (Xinhua has it, for some reason, as 117 deaths) of 119 deaths has yet to be reflected in the WHO's numbers. Perhaps later today, assuming that Depkes - The Indonesian Health Ministry - plans to confirm these numbers.
First this, from the Associated Press, then some discussion.
Mar 3, 3:55 AM EST
4 Indonesians die of bird flu; toll climbs to 119
By IRWAN FIRDAUS
Associated Press WriterJAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Four Indonesians have died of bird flu, bringing the death toll in the country hardest hit by the disease to 119, an official said Tuesday.
Bayu Krisnamurthi, chief of the National Bird Flu Commission, said all the victims were believed to have been infected after coming into contact with sick poultry. They were from Java island and died in January and February.
Indonesia, which has been criticized in recent months for refusing to immediately make public news of human deaths and in some cases hushing them up all together, has been worst affected by bird flu since it started ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003.
<snip>
Krisnamurthi had little details about the latest deaths, saying only that two were siblings from the city of Bogor and the others were women from Bekasi and Surabaya.
The `siblings from Bogor' would appear to be Ruslani (30) and his sister Nurul, who both died in mid January. A third sibling, Ridwan (35), was reportedly suffering from a high fever and refused medical treatment.
Details on this incident are here.
We've never heard anything, one way or the other, about the fate of the 3rd sibling.
The `woman from Surabaya' is most likely ST (18) who died at Dr Sutomo hospital in Surabaya in late January.
After her death, we received word (see Indonesia: Health Care Workers Quarantined) that a doctor and 4 paramedics of Dr Sutomo hospital Surabaya were quarantined due to severe flu-like symptoms.
Two tested negative for H5N1, but as of Feb 22nd, 3 were supposedly still in critical condition.
Once again, we've heard no follow up to this report.
Pinpointing the 4th victim, a woman from Bekasi, becomes more difficult. Over the past two months there have been multiple reports of suspected cases from that city.
Hopefully we'll get more details when the WHO updates their information.
Of course, the actual number of human H5N1 infection in Indonesia is unknown.
These are just the `officially recognized' cases.
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