Deadly avian flu continues to spread as new Jakarta case confirmed
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The deadly bird flu continues to spread in the capital, with a health official in Jakarta announcing on Friday a 25-year-old woman had tested positive for avian influenza.
"A Ministry of Health lab ran tests and she came back positive. Her samples are now on their way to the WHO laboratory in Hong Kong. We should know the results in about five days," the spokesman and head of the avian influenza surveillance unit at Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Ilham Patu, told The Jakarta Post.
He said the woman was treated at Tangerang Hospital before being transferred to Sulianti Saroso on Thursday. The woman had difficulty breathing and a breathing tube had to be inserted.
The World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong has so far confirmed 13 bird flu cases in humans in Indonesia, with eight people dying from the virus since July.
Separately, Minister of Health Siti Fadila Supari said Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche had given Indonesia approval to produce its antiviral drug Tamiflu to fight bird flu in humans.
She said the government was still in discussions with South Korea on the purchase of raw materials for the drug, but that state-controlled pharmaceutical company Kimia Farma was ready to begin production on the drug.
Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab said earlier the government would draw up a presidential regulation on the production and access of influenza vaccines for birds and Tamiflu for humans.
So far the government has relied on donors such as Singapore, Japan and Australia for its supply of Tamiflu.
The government also said it would launch a yearlong operation against bird flu, involving the military, house-to-house checks and mass culls of birds across the country.
"The President has said that until 2006, for one year, we will intensively eradicate bird flu virus," Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono was quoted by AFP as saying during a mass cull of birds in Utan Kayu, East Jakarta, on Friday.
He said the yearlong program would include weekly checks of backyard farms and larger farms in Greater Jakarta for infected birds.
"The important thing is surveillance. Should infected birds be found, we will immediately cull them using this (burning) method," Anton said, adding that the culls would continue until all areas were deemed safe.
The Jakarta Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Agency destroyed on Friday some 500 chickens and pet birds in Utan Kayu, where a number of infected birds have been found. The owners did not receive any compensation for the destroyed birds.
From about 2,000 tests conducted by the agency in 30 of the capital's 267 subdistricts, dozens of infected birds were found in the subdistricts of Ceger, Utan Kayu, Pondok Kelapa, Duren Sawit and Cipinang Melayu, all in East Jakarta, as well as in Sunter Jaya and Cilincing in North Jakarta, Kapuk in West Jakarta, and Petojo in Central Jakarta.