Experts probe high bird flu mortality rate in Indonesia
By Tan Ee Lyn
BANGKOK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Medical experts are worried about how death rates for H5N1 bird flu have shot up in places like Indonesia, and studies are being carried out to see if victims require higher dosages of drugs.
Although the H5N1 has only infected 352 people since 2003, it has killed 219 of them, with mortality rates rising to more than 80 percent in places like Indonesia in the past two years.
"It could be they are treated later, or the virus is different, more virulent. There are many maybes, including differences in susceptibility of the virus," Menno de Jong, a doctor who has treated bird flu victims in Vietnam, told Reuters on the sidelines of a bird flu conference in Bangkok.
He said a major concern was the H5N1 variant in Indonesia appeared to be less susceptible to oseltamivir, the antiviral used to combat the disease.
"It's not a (drug) resistant virus, it's just that a bit more drug (may be) needed to inhibit these (H5N1) clade 2 viruses," he said, referring to the sub-category that Indonesia's H5N1 virus has been classified under.
Studies are being conducted in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to see if H5N1 patients need to be given higher dosages of oseltamivir.
Indonesia is the worst hit of the 14 countries where H5N1 has infected people since 2003. On Thursday, a 30-year-old man became 98th Indonesian fatality from the disease, the health ministry said.
Although bird flu remains an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human and kill millions.
But details emerged on Thursday on how the virus had been passed from mother to foetus in the case of a pregnant 24-year-old Chinese woman who died of the disease in 2005.
Jiang Gu, a leading scientist at Beijing University, said the virus was detected in most organs of the foetus, including the brain.
"It is capable of penetrating the placental barrier and infecting the foetus. (This is the) first evidence of such human-to-human transmission," Gu said. (Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
