Two more human cases of H5N1 infection—one of which was fatal—have been confirmed in Indonesia, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today.

A 19-year-old woman in Tangerang, near Jakarta, fell ill on Oct 19, was hospitalized on Oct 26, and died two days later, WHO said in a news release.

The woman´s 8-year-old brother fell sick Oct 25. He is still in the hospital but is in good condition, WHO said.

Sick and dying chickens were found in the boy´s neighborhood. His sister was also known to have visited the area, field investigators found. The Indonesian agriculture ministry is investigating, WHO added.

These cases bring the number of confirmed human H5N1 infections in Indonesia to nine. Five of those cases were fatal. The latest cases raise the WHO´s tally of confirmed cases to 124, of which 63 were fatal.

Indonesian authorities are warning that the country´s response to avian flu is hampered on several fronts: lack of funding, lack of veterinary help, and poor coordination of efforts among different levels of government, according to a Jakarta Post story online today.

"The damage is so widespread because of the lack of resources," said Musni Suatmodjo, chief of animal health at the West Java Husbandry Agency. "I don’t think we can be free of the bird flu as targeted."

United Nations officials echoed some of those concerns in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) story today. Peter Roeder, an animal health officer responsible for viral disease work in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said response efforts need to get a jump-start because flu season is closing in.

"This is extremely urgent. The reason is, we´re in November, which is the start of the epidemic season for avian and human influenza," Roeder told AFP. "This could provide the conditions for the emergence of a pandemic strain, so reducing any risk is very much an emergency issue which needs to be done quickly."

Roeder also said the FAO is creating four disease-control centers on Java Island and enlisting the help of up to several thousand people for disease surveillance. Disease-control center directors will train trainers, who will then go into communities and educate residents about spotting avian flu.

If the model works on Java, FAO would likely employ it elsewhere, Roeder added.

That plan has similarities to Thailand´s community health workers program, in which people are trained to ask a set of questions pertaining to avian and human health and report problems.