Indonesia reports another bird flu fatality

Since I have lived in Indonesia my health has been quite good. The worst thing for me was the amount of pollen in the air due to the trees in my garden. A saw fixed all that. I hear stories of people getting dengue and various people getting typhoid once in a while. Bacteria grow fast in a tropical climate and people often get fever, which lasts a month.

Anyway avian bird flu is the latest thing in the news and with a population of 210 million people, its not surprising Indonesia has had a few casualities. Today a 22 year old in Jakarta, who worked with chicken at a market, died of the H5N1 strain. THis could bring Indonesia’s total deaths from H5N1 to 15.
Visitors to Bali need not worry about eating chicken satay. The cooked meat is not the problem, and the disease is transfered from the live birds to the person handling them.