Bird flu vaccine sufficient: Ministry

Bird flu vaccine sufficient: Ministry

Eva C. Komandjaja and Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The supply of bird flu vaccines for poultry in the country is
sufficient to help prevent a further spread of the highly
pathogenic virus amid the reemergence of new cases, an official
said.

Director General for Animal Husbandry at the Ministry of
Agriculture Mathur Riady told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the
Ministry had distributed around 126 million doses of bird flu
vaccine to animal husbandry offices across the country,
especially in areas with the worst infection case.

"We also have around 52 million doses of vaccines," Mathur
said. He added that those vaccines were left over from last
year's vaccination program, which was launched following the
first bird flu outbreak late in 2003, killing millions of
chickens in the country.

Although the vaccine was considered enough for the chicken
population, estimated at around 4.7 million last year, Mathur
said vaccinations would be combined with a selective cull "since
it will be very expensive and ineffective if we stick to
vaccinations only."

"We recorded that bird flu cases dropped in December last year
but suddenly the number increased rapidly this year," he added.

He blamed traditional farmers who did not use standard
preventive measures at their farms, which caused the virus to
spread rapidly from one place to another place.

On Wednesday, the government ordered a cull of healthy birds
within a radius of three kilometers from any infected area, and
set aside emergency funds to compensate farmers.

Mathur said that the ministry would use its emergency funds to
finance the vaccination program and provide compensation for
farmers whose poultry had to be slaughtered.

"Our emergency funds currently stand at Rp 130 billion
(US$13.6 million) and we're planning to use half for combating
the disease," Mathur said. The Minister was seeking approval from
the House of Representatives, he added.

Concerns over the impact of bird flu disease on humans
reemerged after the government confirmed this week the first
human fatalities in Indonesia, killing a man and his two young
children. But it remains unclear how they contracted the deadly
H5N1 virus, which can only be transmitted to humans via sick
birds.

Separately, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyanto said that
the government would ban swine farms located near infected
poultry farms amid fears that the virus could also be transmitted
from sick birds to pigs, a case which could cause the virus to
mutate into a more deadlier form, possibly one that could be
easily transmitted between humans.