Bird flu back in West Java

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Bird flu has resurfaced in Indonesia, killing at least 21,000 chickens on farms in West Java over the last two months, an official says.

The head of farm animal health at the West Java Animal Husbandry Office, Musni Suatmodjo, said on Wednesday avian influenza, or bird flu, had spread to five regencies and municipalities in the province.

He identified them as Cirebon regency and municipality, Subang regency, Indramayu regency and Sukabumi regency.

Musni said Cirebon municipality had the most reported cases of bird flu, with about 12,000 chickens killed by the H5n1 and H7n1 viruses.

"The affected area is smaller than last year. In early 2004, (the bird flu) spread to 10 areas. We hope to reduce the number of cases this year," he said in Bandung.

According to the World Health Organization, avian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza virus. The disease, which was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago, occurs worldwide.

Fifteen subtypes of influenza virus are known to infect birds, but to date all outbreaks of the highly pathogenic form have been caused by influenza A viruses of subtypes H5 and H7.

Musni said that last year bird flu was reported in 10 areas in West Java and killed about 1.6 million of six million farmed chickens in the province, or 25.3 percent.

He said he was confident this year's bird flu outbreak would be less severe, maybe killing just 10 percent of farmed chickens in the province.

"We have prepared 50 million doses of vaccine to stop the spread of the virus in 2005," he said.

The government only went public with last year's bird flu outbreak after remaining silent for five months.

Until it came out and publicly acknowledged the outbreak, the government was insisting the country was free of the disease, which was first spotted on Aug. 29, 2003, in Pekalongan, Central Java. The government had been blaming the deaths of thousands of chickens across East Java and Bali on Newcastle disease, which is caused by a virus that is harmless to humans.

According to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which were announced during a recent 28-nation conference on bird flu in Vietnam, bird flu cost Asian farmers and agricultural industries US$10 billion in 2004.

Vietnam has been hit hardest by this year's outbreak of the virus, which erupted across much of Asia at the end of 2003 and has killed 46 people -- 33 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and a Cambodian. Almost every person who has fallen ill with bird flu is known to have caught the virus from contact with sick birds.

But according to the FAO, while Vietnam has borne the brunt of the recent outbreak, the H5N1 virus is now also endemic in Thailand, Indonesia and China.