The appearance of sporadic human cases of bird flu in the Indonesia capital Jakarta could become an epidemic, the Indonesian health minister has warned.
Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the emergence of sporadic human cases of bird flu in recent months in and around different parts of Jakarta, home to 12 million people, might become an epidemic if the number of cases continued to increase.
Indonesian officials from the agriculture ministry take a blood sample from an exotic bird in Jakarta today
She was speaking after announcing that an initial local test on a five-year-old girl who died on Wednesday after suffering from bird flu symptoms was negative for the virus.
"It's not an epidemic yet, but sporadic cases in parts of Jakarta ... if (cases) are increasing it is possible that an epidemic may occur," the minister told Reuters when contacted by telephone.
She had earlier told reporters the situation had reached the epidemic stage, but later retracted the comments in phone calls to some news agencies.
Four Indonesians are already confirmed to have died since July from the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed 64 people in four Asian countries since late 2003 and has been found in birds in Russia and Europe.
Six other patients are still in a government-designated hospital in Jakarta suspected of having avian flu.
The UN World Health Organization last week warned bird flu was moving toward a form that could be passed between humans and the world had no time to waste to prevent a pandemic.
Supari said the girl who died had been suspected of suffering from the virus. She said more local testing needed to be done, while blood samples would also be sent to a laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation.
Georg Petersen, the WHO representative in Jakarta, said many foreign experts were helping Indonesia, including a high-level delegation from the United States.
"Definitely the whole international community is very much present," Petersen told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The WHO was also working with the government to source new stocks of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu from India to bolster local stocks, he said.
"It's not very much, it's rather puny. They definitely need some more," Petersen said, adding that stocks being rushed from India were less than 1,000 doses.
Tamiflu is an anti-viral tablet that can help against infection. Several companies are working on a vaccine, but tests are not expected to begin until later this year.
Supari said Indonesia had 10,000 Tamiflu tablets.