A 14-year-old boy has tested positive for bird flu in Indonesia, the country´s first case of the virus in almost two months, a Health Ministry official said on Sunday.

The boy, from Tangerang in West Java, was hospitalized in Jakarta after he suffered from bird-flu-like symptoms on January 1, the director-general of communicable disease control, Nyoman Kandun, told Reuters.

He said the boy had been in contact with ducks but officials were still investigating the case. Sick poultry is the usual mode of transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus.

"The team is still investigating to find out if he only held the duck or slaughtered it," Kandun said.

Indonesia, which has the world´s highest bird flu death toll, has not reported any new human infections of the virus since November 28.

The government has announced plans to ramp up its fight against the virus and hopes to beat it by the end of 2007, but critics say public ignorance, official ineptitude and lack of money are hampering efforts to stamp out the disease that has killed 57 people in Indonesia.

Although bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, experts fear it could mutate into a form that can pass easily among humans, possibly killing millions.

According to the World Health Organization, the virus has killed 157 people since 2003 and has spread from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

No country has suffered more deaths than this huge Asian country of 17,000 islands where millions of chickens roam backyards freely.