More tests planned for farm workers

More tests planned for farm workers

The government plans to carry out more blood tests on poultry
farm workers from areas considered to be at high risk for the
deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The secretary at the Directorate General for Communicable
Diseases at the health ministry, Syafii Ahmad, said the
additional tests followed laboratory exams of 222 blood and 14
nasal liquid samples taken from poultry farm employees in the
provinces of Banten and Bali.

"The ministry will send sero-survey teams to take blood
samples from poultry farm workers in Riau, West Java, Central
Java, East Java and Yogyakarta," he said.

The government has announced bird flu outbreaks in 51
regencies in 10 provinces across the country. The outbreaks have
killed 4.7 million chickens and cost the industry some Rp 7.7
trillion (US$911 million).

Bird flu, which has spread throughout much of Asia, has killed
13 people in Vietnam and seven in Thailand.

The laboratory tests performed on poultry farm workers in
Banten and Bali all came back negative for the virus. The tests
were conducted at the laboratory of the Bogor Institute of
Agriculture School of Veterinary Studies in West Java.

"With the results, we can conclude that so far no bird flu
cases in humans have been found in Indonesia," Syafii said.

The samples included blood taken from Kadek Heri Dharmaputra,
a three-year-old boy suspected of having been infected with the
virus.

In Bali, of the 102 blood samples, 28 sera control specimens
and eight nasal fluid samples taken from poultry farm workers in
Tabanan and Karangasem regencies, none tested positive for bird
flu.

Separately, the spokesman for the East Nusa Tenggara
administration, Umbu Saga Anakaka, said the provincial government
had imposed a ban on incoming poultry products from other areas
of the country.

He said the local administration had set up a team to oversee
the poultry trade across the province.

The head of animal quarantine in the provincial capital of
Kupang, Umbu Nggiku, said the local administration had seized one
ton of chicken eggs from East Java since the new regulation was
announced. -- JP