Japan provides US$200,000 grant to fight bird flu
Japan provides US$200,000 grant to fight bird flu
Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Japanese government has provided a grant of US$200,000 for
the government of Indonesia to help fund the latter's efforts in
combating bird flu.
The grant, which is the first of its kind, was officially
handed over during a signing and exchange of letters ceremony
here on Friday between Minister of Agriculture Bungaran Saragih
and Japanese Ambassador Yutaka Iimura, on behalf of their
respective governments.
"Learning from the previous severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) outbreak, mutual cooperation and help is essential in
coping with the current bird flu pandemic," said Iimura, who also
mentioned that Japan itself was still struggling against the
disease, which has caused severe economic losses to the poultry
industry and raised widespread public concern.
As further explained by the Japanese Embassy's secretary for
economic affairs, Hitoshi Oikawa, the grant will be used to fund
three projects for the prevention and eradication of bird flu in
Indonesia.
Out of the total grant, some $78,906 will be used to reduce
the risk of human infection by providing protective clothes,
masks, boots, gloves and goggles for high-risk workers, such as
field veterinarians, medical workers and laboratory officers
during vaccination and eradication activities in infected areas.
Another $111,161 will be used for a public awareness campaign
on bird flu, through the provision and distribution of booklets,
flyers, posters, video compact discs (CD) and radio spots.
The other $9,709, meanwhile, has already been used to fund an
in-country workshop on the prevention and eradication of bird
flu, held jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) last Wednesday.
Previously, Indonesia also received a $390,000 grant from the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) under a technical
cooperation program (TCP) to combat bird flu. The Asian
Development Bank (ADB) had also allocated $800,000 for countries
affected by bird flu in the region, including Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Bungaran said that the government itself had
provided an emergency fund of Rp 215 billion ($25.6 million) for
small farmers whose poultry had been destroyed under the mass-
culling program.
Bungaran also said that the government had distributed about
50 million doses of bird flu vaccine -- 11 million of them for
free -- throughout the country.
Data from the Ministry of Agriculture shows that the total
number of poultry deaths from September 2003, when the outbreak
first occurred, to February 2004 reached 6.2 million -- 400,000
of them as the result of mass culling.
No less than 84 districts in 11 provinces had been affected by
an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus strain as of March 2004.
"Although we are now seeing a decrease in poultry deaths,
there are still new outbreaks like the recent one in West
Kalimantan," said Bungaran, adding that the disease had created
great difficulties for small farmers.
"What we therefore need now is to encourage the public to
consume poultry again, and recover the 20 percent drop in poultry
prices to prevent the farmers from going out of business," he
said.