More tests planned for poultry farm workers

The Jakarta Post Jakarta

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.