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.
