A nine-year-old Indonesian girl who died this week had bird flu according to two local tests and the village where she lived is rife with the disease, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The girl died on Tuesday in a hospital in West Java´s Cikelet village where there are many sick and dead chickens, said Runizar Ruesin, the head of the health ministry´s bird flu information center.

Her death takes Indonesia´s toll from the disease to 45, the highest of any country.

"Bird flu is rife in Cikelet. You can always find dead or sick chickens there," Ruesin told Reuters.

A 17-year-old boy in the same village has also tested positive for bird flu, but has stayed at home and refused to be treated at the main hospital in Bandung, the provincial capital to the south of Jakarta.

The boy´s condition was improving and he was being constantly monitored by health officials, said health ministry spokeswoman Lily Sulistyawati.

"He is a survivor and he is doing very well," she said.

Samples from his relatives and neighbors in Cikelet, 90 km from Bandung, have been taken and the results are awaited.

"We have taken necessary steps in the area. Health and agriculture officials are conducting constant surveillance," she said, adding that people who had contact with the boy had been given the anti-viral drug Tamiflu.  

The boy´s 20-year-old cousin died earlier this month with bird flu-like symptoms but his samples could not be taken.

Contact with sick fowl is the usual mode of transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus that is endemic in poultry in nearly all of Indonesia´s provinces.

Most of the human cases in Indonesia have occurred this year and the country has been criticised for not doing enough to stamp out H5N1. The virus remains essentially an animal disease but experts fear it could spark a pandemic if it mutates into a form that can pass easily among people.