JAKARTA - A 15-year-old boy from Indonesia' s West Java province died just after he was admitted to the Hasan Sadikin Hospital to receive intensive medical treatment for alleged bird flu symptoms, local press said Friday.
Hadi Jusuf, head of the hospital's bird flu mitigation team, said the condition of the patient was very poor upon arrival at the hospital on Wednesday evening.
"He had breathing difficulties and was unconscious. Moreover he had acute lung wounds," Hadi was quoted by national newspaper The Jakarta Post as saying.
The boy from the town of Subang, identified with initials AY, had been treated at a smaller hospital four days earlier with doctors diagnosing him of dengue fever.
A week earlier, his younger brother died because, according to the same hospital doctors, of dengue fever.
AY's blood samples had been sent to a laboratory of the Ministry of Health in Jakarta to ascertain whether AY was infected with the H5N1 virus or not, Hadi said.
Bird flu has infected 129 Indonesians so far, killing 105 of them, which is the highest death toll in the world.