JAKARTA - Three Indonesians died of bird flu, the country's health minister said today, raising the country's death toll to 69.
"Local tests for three patients came back positive,'' Health Minister Siti Fadiliah Supari said.
A 22-year-old woman died Saturday in the Southern Sumatra city Palembang, followed by a 15-year-old boy Sunday in the West Java town Bandung and a 40-year-old man early today in East Java's capital Surabaya, said Nyoman Kandun, a senior health ministry official.
Bird flu has killed at least 169 people since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003, hitting Indonesia the hardest, the World Health Organization said.
It remains hard for people to catch and most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. But experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.
