Indonesia confirms bird flu deaths

Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari confirmed the three died of H5N1

Test results have confirmed that three people in Indonesia have died from bird flu, Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari has said.

The victims - a man and his two young daughters - are the country's first human fatalities from the disease.

Because they had no known contact with poultry, their cases have raised fears of human-to-human transmission.

But the WHO downplayed the concerns, stressing that more investigation was needed.

Since January 2004, more than 50 people are known to have died of the bird flu virus in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Millions of birds have died across Asia in the last few years, many of them culled in an effort to stem the disease.

The Indonesian health minister announced on Friday that scientists suspected a deadly strain of bird flu had led to the deaths of a 38-year-old man and his two daughters, aged one and nine.

Principally an avian disease, first seen in humans in Hong Kong, 1997

Almost all human cases thought to be contracted from birds

Isolated cases of human-to-human transmission in Hong Kong and Vietnam, but none confirmed

On Wednesday she confirmed this. "Test results from a Hong Kong laboratory which I received this morning confirmed they were positive for the H5N1 virus," she told reporters.

Ms Supari has said that she is concerned the victims could have contracted the disease via human-to-human transmission, because they are not known to have been in contact with poultry.

But World Health Organization representative Georg Petersen said he was not too concerned yet that the three victims had no known contact with sick birds.

He said a more in-depth investigation was needed, adding that in other countries the source of infection was often not known straight away.

The three victims had lived in Tangerang on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

More than 300 people who had been in close contact with the family have been placed under medical surveillance.

Indonesia has reported cases of bird flu in poultry in several provinces this year and recently confirmed that a farm worker had tested positive for the virus.

But until now there have been no human fatalities from bird flu in the country.

So far humans have only contracted bird flu after coming into contact with infected animals.

But the real fear is that the virus might develop into a form which can be transmitted from person to person, raising the possibility of a global pandemic.