Chickens in Aceh province test positive for bird flu

Chickens in Aceh province test positive for bird flu

Febry Oryda, Associated Press/Banda Aceh

Indonesia has detected its first outbreak of bird flu in tsunami- ravaged Aceh province, where hundreds of chickens have died from the disease, officials said on Thursday.

Relief workers are believed to have inadvertently brought birds infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus to Aceh, said Sjamsul Bahri, the Agriculture Ministry's director of animal health.

Hundreds of chickens have died in the provincial capital Banda Aceh and two other districts in recent weeks, he said, adding that he was confident authorities had contained the virus.

"Infected areas have been isolated and all birds - healthy and sick - killed," he said.

Bird flu has now been found in 23 of Indonesia's 30 provinces.

Its emergence in Aceh - where tens of thousands of people still live in crowded refugee camps following the Dec. 26 tsunami - could add to people's hardships.

But there is no reason to believe the province is more vulnerable to the deadly disease than other parts of the sprawling archipelago, said Georg Petersen, the World Health Organization representative in Indonesia.

Bird flu has killed or forced the culling of hundreds of millions of birds in Asia since 2003 and has jumped to humans, resulting in the deaths of at least 67 people, seven of them in Indonesia.

Experts have warned that the virus may mutate into a form that's easily passed between people and trigger a pandemic that could kill millions globally.

Thousands of international aid workers poured into Aceh following last year's tsunami, which killed a staggering 130,000 people in the province and left another half-million homeless.

Relief workers continue to deliver food and other supplies to Aceh, mostly through the city of Medan on Sumatra island.

"We can't be sure how the virus got to Aceh," said Syam Fudin Ali, chief of poultry affairs for the province. "But we think it may have come on one of the many vehicles carrying supplies from Medan."