Indonesia called for international cooperation Friday to combat the bird flu virus that has killed six people in the sprawling archipelago, warning that the disease can easily spread to neighboring countries, AP reported. «We know that bird flu is a very dangerous disease,» said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin. «The virus mutates easily ... and moves very quickly across national boundaries.» The H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, jumping to humans and killing at least 65 people _ more than 40 of them in Vietnam _ and resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds. Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. But the World Health Organization has warned that the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, possibly triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions. Agricultural officials in Indonesia _ where six people have died since July and dozens more been hospitalized with the symptoms of the disease _ have complained of a lack of money for vaccinating poultry and carrying out mass culls in bird flu-infected areas.
