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The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed on Tuesday that a 32-year-old Indonesian man died on May 22 from the H5N1 strain of bird flu.
This is now the sixth to die in this worrisome cluster of human cases of H5N1 avian influenza in a remote village in North Sumatra and has many scientists baffled.
“This cluster in Indonesia is a test case for the pandemic,” Maria Cheng, a spokesperson for the WHO, said from Geneva.
“It’s basically testing our capacity to respond as quickly as possible, and how quickly we can detect it, and how willing the community is to respond.”
Robots test birds
Tests are being conducted on birds around the globe. Wild birds from Alaska are now being tested by robots in labs far away. A small robot extracts genetic material from a sample. Another robot injects bits of the sample into narrow, test-tube-like wells. The machine goes through heating and cooling cycles until finally a fiber-optic cable measures the fluorescence of the substance should the H5N1 virus be present. The process takes about one day to complete.
With pandemic cycles running anywhere from 20, 30 to 40 years apart, we are already past due for a pandemic. WHO and others are particularly concerned when they see a cluster show up such as in Indonesia.
Bird flu has spread rapidly since late 2003 from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Indonesia had 34 cases in humans resulting in 26 deaths.
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