Indonesian woman dies of bird flu - health ministry

JAKARTA, Feb 4 (Reuters) - A 29-year old Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, bringing the death toll from the virus in the Southeast Asian country to 103, the health ministry said on Monday.

The woman, from Tangerang, west of the Indonesian capital Jakarta, died on Saturday after being treated at the city's Persahabatan hospital for about a week, ministry spokeswoman Lily Sulistyowati said in a statement.

The woman's neighbours kept chickens but the source of the infection remained unclear, she said.

The woman is the eighth person to die of bird flu in Indonesia this year. Some experts say the flare-up is caused by a number factors such as damp weather and poor sanitation during the rainy season.

"Fowl remains the source of bird flu infections," the spokeswoman said.

The ministry also said that a 38-year-old woman from western Jakarta had tested positive for bird flu. She was being treated at Persahabatan and had been put on a ventilator, the statement said.

Her case brought the number of bird flu cases in the country to 126. Of these, 103 people have died, making Indonesia the country with the highest death toll from the disease.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting bird flu, endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia.

Although bird flu remains an animal disease, experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human. Millions of people could die because they would have no immunity to the new strain. (Reporting by Ahmad Pathoni; Editing by Alex Richardson)