Indonesian health officials say two teenagers have died of bird flu over the past two days, bringing the country's total number of victims to 44, the highest in the world.
Local laboratory tests this week showed both 16-year-olds, a boy and a girl, had bird flu when they died. It is not clear whether their deaths were linked.
If the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms the latest two deaths, Indonesia will surpass Vietnam with the highest human death toll from the virus.
Meanwhile, China's government has confirmed that a man died of bird flu in 2003, two years before the country reported its first human case of the illness. China's health ministry announced that news Tuesday after it was first reported in June by Chinese researchers describing the case in a U.S. medical journal.