Hospital in Bandung treats more patients suspected of having bird flu

BANDUNG (Antara): Hasan Sadikin Hospital in the West Java capital of Bandung is now treating three patients suspected of having contracted bird flu, after another villager of Cikelet in Garut regency was admitted to the hospital late Friday. Two patients, who are also from Cikelet village, were admitted to the hospital Wednesday and Thursday. "The latest patient, who is 14 weeks pregnant, was admitted to the hospital at 7:30 p.m. Friday," hospital president director Hadi Yusuf was quoted by Antara news agency as saying Saturday. He said that the house of the latest patient was close to another bird flu patient who died recently. A woman died Thursday night - three hours after being admitted to a hospital in Garut. The hospital is awaiting laboratory test results to see if she had contracted the virus. Cikelet is a village, some 150 kilometers southeast of Jakarta, where at least one person died of the disease and another fell ill. Four other people died before tests could be taken to see if they had bird flu. The H5N1 virus has killed at least 140 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 - 46 of them in Indonesia, the world's worst affected country, according to the World Health Organization. http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060819162156&irec=0