A 3-year-old Indonesian girl who died this week has tested positive for bird flu, a Health Ministry official said on Friday, citing a local test.

If confirmed by a World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory, the girl from Jakarta´s western suburbs will be the 41st bird flu death in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago where the virus has killed millions of fowl and which has had more human deaths this year than any other country.

"The child had had contact with sick fowl, the neighbor´s chicken," Runizar Ruesin, head of the health ministry´s Bird Flu Information Center, told Reuters.

Human cases generally stem from contact with infected birds.

"She died on Thursday, nine hours after being admitted in the hospital," he said.

According to the WHO, the H5N1 avian flu has killed 131 people across the globe since 2003. In Indonesia, 40 people are confirmed by WHO tests to have died from the virus, endemic in poultry in nearly all the country´s 33 provinces.

On Thursday a senior Indonesian government official said the country´s poultry death rate from bird flu was worsening, possibly due to poor vaccination coverage.

Mathur Riyadi, director general of livestock production at the agriculture ministry, said one million fowl, half of them quail, died of bird flu in the first three months of 2006.

JAKARTA, July 17 (Xinhua) -- A 3-year-old girl has died of bird flu, according to a laboratory test by the World Health organization, bringing total casualties from the virus to 41 in the country, a report said Friday.

    The girl, a resident of the Jakarta suburb of Tangerang, had been in contact with infected chickens before she died on July 6, said The Jakarta Post online news service.

    Tangerang, just south of Jakarta, was declared Thursday as the "pilot project" for the national campaign against bird flu, to which the government has secured a fund of 44.6 billion rupiah (4.9 million U.S. dollars).

    A bird flu laboratory will be built in Tangerang in addition to the old.

    "Indonesia must get prepared because 41 out of 54 people infected by the avian influenza have died," said Nyoman Kandun, director of disease prevention and environmental issues with the Ministry of Health.