Indonesian Is Positive for Bird Flu

Indonesia on Thursday became the latest Asian nation to record a human case of bird flu, adding to worries about the spread of a virus that the U.N. health agency fears could become a threat to people around the globe.

A poultry worker on the island of Sulawesi tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, although he showed no signs of illness, said Hariadi Wibisono, who oversees the Health Ministry’s efforts to eradicate diseases transmitted by animals.

Bird flu has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of East and Southeast Asia since 2003. Tens of millions of farm birds have either died or been slaughtered. The disease has killed a reported 38 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.

Experts say that all the deaths so far have resulted from an animal transmitting the virus to a human. But the World Health Organization warned in May that there are fears the virus will mutate to enable easy transmission between people, which could cause it to spread around the world within months.

Dr. Georg Petersen, WHO’s representative in Indonesia, said the case was the first reported in this country.

A WHO technical officer, Steven Bjorge, said tests showed the man had a very low concentration of antibodies, meaning he no longer carried the virus.

“It appears he was exposed to the virus some time ago,” he said.

Bjorge said that though most people who tested positive for bird flu showed symptoms of the disease, some did not. During a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong, for example, about 10% of poultry workers tested positive for the virus but were not ill, he said.

Health experts warn that Indonesia could have trouble containing a major outbreak because it allocates only a small proportion of government funding to the health sector. The government already has reported bird flu infections in fowl at dozens of poultry farms.

Adding to the anxieties, a government scientist last month found H5N1 in pigs on the densely populated island of Java. Experts say pigs infected with both bird flu and a human variety could act as a “mixing bowl,” producing a mutant virus that spreads easily from person to person.