Govt puzzled over bird flu, cats probed

Govt puzzled over bird flu, cats probed

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Agence France-Presse/Jakarta

Indonesia's human bird flu outbreak is puzzling experts because several victims do not work or live around poultry, prompting an investigation into whether other animal hosts, perhaps cats, are to blame for the disease's spread.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu that has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia since late 2003 is mostly transmitted to humans through direct contact with infected birds or their droppings.

But Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari has said there is so far no evidence of most of the country's victims catching the virus through close contact with, or eating the meat of, infected birds.

"We can only suspect that those infected, contracted the virus through the droppings or contact with the saliva of infected birds or fowl," said Suyono, from the health ministry's bird flu department.

Only the latest confirmed bird flu death, a young man from nearby Bogor who died in hospital in September but was only confirmed as a bird flu death this week, had been staying in a house where several chickens had died of suspected bird flu.

Suyono says it is a mystery how several other people confirmed to have bird flu in Indonesia -- three of whom have also died -- contracted H5N1 when they lived in and around urban Jakarta, far from a chicken or poultry farm.

Indonesia has recorded seven confirmed cases of bird flu, with 28 others being investigated, including nine suspicious deaths, since July, according to the WHO.

"Worldwide, more than 80 percent of infections can be traced back to contact with poultry," said Indonesia's WHO representative Georg Petersen, adding that the body was not yet concerned that animals such as cats may be spreading the disease.

"In some countries, there have been reports of animals such as tigers and cats being infected just as with pigs, but so far we have no report of anyone contracting the virus from animals other than poultry,"

"There is so far no indication that animals other than poultry or pig are sources of infections for humans.

"Studies are welcome, we certainly need to know more but I think it is not something that is important at this point in time."

I Wayan Teguh Wibawan, from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said the data on human infection in Indonesia was "puzzling".

"We have suspected cases in isolated areas, far from any potential sources of contamination such as poultry or pig farms, and on the other hand, we have almost no suspected human infection cases among workers in the poultry industries, including those hit by the bird flu."

The obvious exception was the first Indonesian to test positive for bird flu in June. The poultry farmer from South Sulawesi province has remained healthy and since showed no symptoms of the disease.

Chaerul Nidom, a bird flu expert from Airlangga University in Surabaya, East Java, suspects that other animals might be carrying the virus and transmitting it to humans while showing no ill effects from infection themselves.

"I believe that there is the factor of another animal as a source of infection," Nidom said, pointing his finger at cats, dogs, hamsters, rats and even mice as possible vectors.

"The most likely candidates are cats," he said, citing research in Thailand where infections were last year found in domestic cats, though with no evidence it was in turn being passed on to humans.

IPB's Wibawan also said cats could be a possible source of secondary infection, but cautioned that studies of felines and their possible role in the spread of avian flu were only beginning in Indonesia.

Other experts suggested the reason bird flu infections in Indonesia could not be linked clearly to close contact with infected poultry because monitoring the poultry industry in the vast archipelago is problematic.

"Chickens continue to die of the disease here and there, but farmers are reluctant to report them and the government certainly does not have the capabilities to monitor everything," said Marthen Malole, a retired lecturer in veterinary sciences from IPB.

Experts fear a pandemic that could kill millions across the globe if H5N1 acquires genetic material from a human influenza virus and becomes easily transmittable from human to human.