A nine-year-old girl who died this week has been confirmed as Indonesia's 45th bird flu death and may have been part of a cluster of human cases, health authorities said Thursday.
Test results for Ai Siti Aminah from both a national health ministry laboratory and a US-run laboratory confirmed she had died from the H5N1 virus, said an official.
"The tests were positive. She died of bird flu," Nurdin, a scientist from the bird flu information centre, told AFP.
Indonesia has reported the world's highest number of avian influenza fatalities.
Aminah came from the same area as another confirmed case, West Java's Garut district, and health officials are worried that her case may be one of a cluster, said Nurdin.
He said a team of experts from the health ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) would investigate the remote area where the deaths occurred.
"A team left this morning to check if there is a cluster or not," said Nurdin.
Cluster cases heighten the chance of the virus mutating to become easily transmissible from human-to-human. Scientists fear this could spark a global flu pandemic with the potential to kill millions. Both Aminah and a 17-year-old confirmed as Indonesia's 57th bird flu case, who remains alive, are from the same subdistrict.
A cousin of the teenager died showing symptoms of the virus and was buried before samples could be taken from him. The pair had been in contact with sick chickens.
The world's first lab-confirmed human-to-human transmission of bird flu occurred in Indonesia three months ago in a cluster of seven deaths, sparking serious concern among scientists. But the slight mutation that took place in that case was determined to be insignificant.