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.