Bird flu remains a threat despite decrease in cases

Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Cases of poultry deaths due to the avian influenza outbreak have decreased, but the threat may not end until later this year, an official says.

Ministry of Agriculture's Secretary General Memet Gunawan said on Tuesday that "just because the bird flu cases have decreased, it doesn't mean that we will stop taking measures to prevent the outbreak from spreading."

Data from the Ministry of Agriculture's Directorate General of Livestock Services report that the total number of poultry deaths in January and February this year was around 1.5 million. Of this number, 400,000 were due to a selective cull.

The data also showed that the death toll from September to December 2003 reached 4.7 million.

This means that the death toll has now decreased by 54 percent to 550,000 per month from 1.2 million per month in the 2003 period.

The data also recorded that the outbreak has spread to 80 districts in 11 provinces throughout the country -- Banten, Jakarta, West, Central and East Java, Yogyakarta, Bali, Lampung, Central, South and West Kalimantan.

In an effort to control the outbreak, the government has cooperated with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to establish a Technical Cooperation Program (TCP), under which Indonesia receives a US$390,000 grant.

The grant comes in many forms, including supplies of materials, such as masks and gloves, laboratory and farm equipment and computers, as well as transportation fees for experts.

FAO Representative in Indonesia Tsukasa Kimoto was optimistic that the grant would help Indonesia curb the outbreak within the next six months.

"We're hoping to control the disease within six months (with) the emergency assistance," Kimoto told the media.

He added that there would be a meeting later to discuss the possibility of getting more aid money from other countries such as the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Japan, Germany and the European Union.

"(The planned meeting) has not been finalized...however, there's some indication that the amount (of the assistance) will probably be around US$ 2 million," he said.

As another measure to control the outbreak, the government also provides vaccines made by three local producers: Center for Biological Products (Pusvetma) in Surabaya, PT Vaksindo Satwa Nusantara in Bogor, West Java, and PT Medion in Bandung.

Ministry of Agriculture's Director General of Livestocks Services Sofyan Sudrajat said that the government had distributed five million doses of the local vaccine to 10 provinces at no cost.

However, considering that 120 million doses per month had to be available during the next six months, and that the local producers did not have the capacity to meet the requirement, the government allowed last month the importation of vaccines for bird flu, also known as avian influenza, from China and appointed state-owned pharmaceutical firm PT Biofarma as the importer.

Sofyan said that the vaccines had already been tested and proven safe by the Directorate General of Livestock Services.

"They have been released and are ready to be put on the market," he said.

The government has allocated Rp 215 billion (US$25.6 million) in compensation for small farmers whose poultry has been destroyed as part of a mass-culling program.

However, none of that amount has been distributed to the farmers yet as the government "is still in the process of determining who is going to receive the money and how much they will receive."