Ilham Patu, spokesman for Jakarta’s Sulianti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital, said the boy died Monday night after being treated for two days.

Indonesia now has one more bird-flu death than Vietnam; however, Indonesia has had 32 deaths alone this year while Vietnam has had none.

“Indonesia is now tops in the world,” Patu told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Prior to the boy’s death, Health Ministry officials said they would test a second sample to confirm his bird-flu diagnosis, but no previous secondary test in Indonesia has ever contradicted the original one.

The boy, who was not identified, was admitted to hospital early Saturday with flu-like symptoms. He had come into contact with sick chickens at his home in West Java province on the eastern outskirts of Jakarta, health officials said.

The Indonesian government has come under fire for its slow response to bird flu, including its reluctance to cull chickens, after the disease was first discovered in the archipelago country in 2004.

Bird flu is endemic in 27 of Indonesia’s 33 provinces with millions of chickens and ducks infected. The Jakarta Post reported Tuesday that bird flu had also spread to the remote eastern province of Papua with around 174 chickens dead and 414 others culled due to suspected infections.

International health experts said they fear that H5N1, the strain of the virus that has been deadly in humans, could mutate into a virus that can spread from human to human and spark a pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.