Jakarta - A 31-year-old Indonesian man has died of bird flu, raising the country's death toll from the H5N1 avian influenza virus to 91 - the world's highest, a Health Ministry official said Saturday. The man, identified by his initials MN, originally from Bengkalis district of Riau province in Sumatra island, died Tuesday just as he was admitted to Pekanbaru's Arifin Achmad Hospital, said Dasir Nurdin, an official at the Health Ministry's bird-flu information centre.
Nurdin said that the man fell sick on October 31 and sought medical treatment at a health clinic nearby on November 3 before being admitted three days later to the provincial designated hospital for bird flu.
"The man died on his arrival in the hospital," Dasir Nurdin said.
The Health Ministry's provincial team is still investigating the history of the man's illness.
His death was Indonesia's 91st out of 113 diagnosed cases of bird flu in humans. Both figures are the highest in the world. Not counting Indonesia's latest fatality, at least 204 people have died in 12 countries in Asia and Africa of the disease, according to World Health Organization statistics.
The most common way to contract the H5N1 avian influenza virus is through contact with sick fowl. Although bird flu remains mainly an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate and spread from human to human, turning it into a pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide.
