She had the beautiful name of Istiqomah. Ten days before her death, her brother Ahmad Rizki died with similar symptoms, and when she died her older brother Alamsyah was under treatment for flu-like symptoms. (The outcome of his case is still unknown.) Istiqomah was at least the 109th Indonesian to die of bird flu. Normally, the World Health Organization would have officially confirmed her death. But Indonesia’s health minister is a woman named Siti Fadilah Supari, who has been playing politics with bird flu for over a year. Sometime in May, Dr. Supari stopped cooperating with WHO. In effect, she clamped down on news of a disease that has killed four out of every five Indonesians it’s infected.
Dr. Supari has been a problem for a long time. Last year she refused to share H5N1 virus samples with the rest of the world, claiming that foreign drug companies would use them to create flu vaccines that Indonesia couldn’t afford. WHO tried to negotiate with her, to no effect. More recently, she led a campaign to eject a U.S. Navy medical lab, NAMRU-2, from Indonesia. The lab is one of the most advanced in Southeast Asia, and has helped Indonesia track the advance of H5N1, but Dr. Supari wanted it out. More
Go here for more info on H5N1 Bird Flu