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Latest Death Shows Bird Flu is Out of Control in Indonesia
January 30, 2008 at 5:25 PM
Bird Flu News
A quarter of Indonesia's bird flu deaths have occurred in Jakarta, with another 45 percent striking in Banten and the nearby province of West Java, according to health ministry figures.
Both provinces abut the massive capital and receive the overflow of its urban sprawl.
A lack of coordination between government agencies means authorities are not sharing disease samples, raising the possibility of missing detecting strains of the virus that have adapted to humans, Mahardika said.
"The people working in this field never come to the table to talk about it and analyse it together," he said.
Devolution of power over the last 10 years since the fall of authoritarian president Suharto has also hindered coordination efforts, Australian National University Indonesia expert James Fox said.
"You have an area that will try to contain the bird flu epidemic, but there's no guarantee the neighbouring area will do the same. So (bird flu) will always just come back," Fox said.
Unlike other Asian nations which have managed to contain the bird flu virus, Indonesia's gross oversight was to not begin exterminating poultry three or four years ago when the disease first began spreading, he said.
"Most of the other nations decided they would not vaccinate, they would exterminate. The problem is on a veterinary level, (Indonesian authorities) were in denial," Fox said.
"(Exterminating poultry) is not possible anymore, you can only do that when there's a small outbreak, when it first begins. It is now endemic," Fox said.
Muchtar Ihsan, the doctor at the head of the avian influenza team at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital -- one of two bird flu referral hospitals in the capital -- said Indonesia's long practice of families living close to their poultry has proved hard to break.
"This is the habit of the people since hundreds of years ago, it's hard to convince people that it's dangerous," he said.
Source-AFP
LIN/K
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