Bird flu remains a threat despite decrease in cases

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."