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When 10-year-old Toni lay sick with a fever last week, his father Suryoto went to a local shop and bought the same cough syrup and flu medicine that had always worked before.
A roadside livestock vendor waits for customers sitting among his chickens in Jakarta, April 2006. World Health Organisation (WHO) tests have confirmed Indonesia's 37th death from bird flu, a health ministry official has said.[AFP\File] |
But this time was different: The fever refused to break and only burned hotter. Toni's cough worsened until it began choking him, and Suryoto realized he must get his son to a doctor. It's a decision he now wishes he had made sooner.
"His voice kept getting softer and softer until you could not hear anything," Suryoto, recalled. "He kept saying, 'hard to breathe."'
The child died just after arriving at the hospital. Suryoto said he can still remember Toni gasping for air and struggling to whisper, "father, father."
He and his wife, Suryani, later learned that bird flu had likely ravaged their child's lungs, but that will never be known for sure because he was buried in a graveyard near their village on the outskirts of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, before samples could be taken.
There was no time to grieve. Suryoto's 7-year-old daughter was also burning up with fever after being taken to a local hospital. Again, the distraught parents were too late. Their little girl died Thursday evening, three days after her brother. Local tests have found she was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus.
Suryoto, 46, and Suryani, 34, who like many Indonesians use only one name, are left asking how and why? Both had heard a little about bird flu on television, but never dreamed it was in their village or capable of potentially killing two of their children in the same week.
"It's really hit me. I never imagined that this could happen to us" said Suryani, standing with her surviving 4-year-old son on their small concrete porch. "I thought it was only a regular flu."
Specimens taken from the girl have been sent to a World Health Organization-approved laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation. If positive, it will be another case in a spate of recent deaths gripping Indonesia, which is on pace to become the world's hardest-hit country.
There was an average of one bird flu death every 2 1/2 days last month, bringing Indonesia's toll to 37, only six behind worst-hit Vietnam. The World Health Organization confirmed the latest death, a 15-year-old boy, on Sunday, Indonesian health officials said.