(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-06 16:15

Meanwhile, Japan was mulling a plan to give 300 million yen (US$2.6 million) to the WHO to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing unnamed government sources.

Tokyo, which gave around 160 million yen (US$1.36 million) to the global health agency for 2005, said the money would be used to improve surveillance of infection routes of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the report said.

The government was also planning to invite influenza experts from Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries early next year for training at the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Tokyo, Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

Officials at the Health and Agricultural Ministries were not available for comment Sunday.

The response comes a day after Indonesian officials confirmed that a 19-year-old woman died of bird flu, bringing the number of people killed by the disease in Indonesia to five.

The woman, from the town of Tangerang on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, was believed to have contracted the virus from infected dead chickens in her neighborhood, Ministry of Health official Hariadi Wibisono said Saturday.

An 8-year-old boy from her family was hospitalized with the virus, but it was not immediately clear how the young boy contracted the disease.

Since late 2003, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks and killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia.

Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed among humans, and possibly trigger a worldwide pandemic.

   1 2   

   1 2