JAKARTA (AFP) - A 45-year-old man has died from bird flu in Indonesia, taking the death toll in the nation worst hit by the virus to 78, a health ministry official said Thursday.

The man died on Monday at the general hospital in the city of Solo on the country´s main island of Java, said Wibisono from the ministry´s bird flu information centre.

The victim had fallen ill after the chickens he was raising at his home in a town in Central Java had also become sick and started dying, said Wibisono.

Contact with infected birds is the most common form of transmission of the deadly virus to humans, experts say.

"The man, from Grobogan, has a history of contact with infected fowl," Wibisono said.

"His death now brings the number of confirmed human bird flu infection cases to 98, with 78 of them fatal," he said.

The government had hoped to eradicate bird flu deaths in 2007 in Indonesia, the nation worst hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

Instead 21 people have perished this year after contracting the virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the virus has killed more than 185 people worldwide since the end of 2003, mostly in Southeast Asia.

The latest death in Indonesia comes after Vietnam this week reported the virus among poultry has reached 12 provinces, raising concerns about its spread across the nation. It also recently reported its first human case in 18 months, a 30-year-old man who is undergoing treatment in hospital.

The death also follows Indonesia´s decision this month to resume sending virus samples to a WHO laboratory in Tokyo, ending a five-month freeze.

Indonesia halted the sharing of samples last December because of fears that multinational drug companies would use them to develop costly vaccines that would be unaffordable for those in poorer countries.

Indonesia agreed at the WHO´s annual assembly in Geneva to resume sending samples, but stressed that the global flu surveillance system needed to be changed to ensure developing countries got a fair deal.

Sample sharing is regarded as an essential component for research on new vaccines.

Clinical trials of a bird flu vaccine using strains of the virus found in Indonesia are expected to start in July, a health ministry official said here earlier this week.

US company Baxter Healthcare will start the trials in Singapore and Hong Kong, the official said, although the company has not yet confirmed the move.

Scientists worry the bird flu virus could mutate into a form easily spread among humans, leading to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions.

The fear stems from the lessons of past influenza pandemics. A flu pandemic in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20 million people worldwide.