Indonesian health official vaccinates pet bird in Jakarta. (Reuters)

JAKARTA, November 17, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has had two more deaths from the H5N1 strain of bird flu confirmed by a laboratory in Hong Kong, bringing the total to seven in the country, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, November 17.

Hariadi Wibisono, a senior official from the ministry, said the tests were from a 20-year-old woman who died last weekend and a 16-year-old girl who died last week, Reuters reported.

Both victims, who died in Jakarta, had contact with dead chickens, he said.

"We received the test results this morning and both victims were positive for bird flu," Wibisono told Reuters.

China on Wednesday, November 16, said a 24-year-old female poultry worker from the eastern province of Anhui, Zhou Maoya, died of bird flu on November 10 after falling ill on November 1.

Other cases of H5N1 crossing from birds into humans in China were also being investigated on Thursday.

The China Daily newspaper said a 36-year-old teacher, surnamed Song, from the He family's village was still in hospital with pneumonia after cutting his hand while handling a chicken.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, where it is known to have killed more than 60 people.

But experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, just like human influenza. If it does, millions could die because they would have no immunity.

They fear that the more humans it infects, the more chance it has of mutating to a more lethal form that can be transmitted from humans to humans.

But the hopes of finding an effective drug for the killer disease are fading as the World Health Organization's top official in China said Thursday vaccines being developed to protect people against bird flu might be useless in a pandemic among humans.

"We're very encouraged that a number of countries including China are working on vaccines," said Henk Bekedam.

"(But) we are very much aware that perhaps this vaccine might not work."

He warned that if the current virus mutated into a human form, the vaccine leading pharmaceutical companies are working on would not work.

"On the other hand it might work... We hope it might work," he told a news conference.

Various companies around the world are trying to develop a vaccine against H5N1 not the feared mutated virus.

China this week said Chinese scientists had developed a human vaccine for bird flu and clinical trials would be carried out within days.

The vaccines have proven safe and effective on mice, the Xinhua news agency quoted an official in charge of vaccine research as saying.

An effective H5N1 vaccine would be useful for protecting people who are in close proximity to infected poultry, such as farmers, slaughterers and veterinarians.

WHO experts have repeatedly warned that there is insufficient flu vaccine research and production capacity worldwide.

The WHO called on vaccine makers to step up research after human cases of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza were reported in Hong Kong for the first time in 1997.