An Indonesian hospital was on Monday overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand, Reuters reported. A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials. Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world. At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating 9 people with bird flu symptoms, including a 5-year-old girl in intensive care, its isolation wards were overwhelmed. "If we get more patients, we will send them to Sulianti Saroso," Muchtar Ichsan, the head of the bird flu ward, told Reuters, referring the country's main bird flu treatment centre in North Jakarta. The patients included the son and husband of a woman who died of bird flu last week. The 18-year-old son has been confirmed to have the disease, although tests so far on the husband show he does not have the virus. In a bid to stem the spread of the virus, Indonesia plans to prohibit people from keeping backyard fowl in three high-risk provinces. Adding to regional worries, a senior Thai agriculture official said on Monday that 1,900 ducks had been culled in the northern province of Phitsanulok after some of the birds had tested positive for H5N1. The case is Thailand's first in birds since last July. The last human death -- the country's 17th -- occurred in August. Experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that could spread easily between people, but there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus so far in the latest cases. The World Health Organisation says bird flu has infected 267 people and killed 161 of them since 2003.
