No funds, no vets, and no way for RI to be free of bird flu

Rendi A. Witular and Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta/Bandung

For Eman, a veterinarian with the Tangerang administration in Banten, fighting the bird flu outbreak is like being a fireman who is only called to put out fires, rather than prevent them happening in the first place.

With operational funds of Rp 600 million (US$60,000) this year, it is hard for officials at the Tangerang Agriculture and Husbandry Agency to hope that they can detect an outbreak of bird flu early.

"We hope we can detect outbreaks at the earliest opportunity and eradicate all the infected birds. But we can't. We have to wait for a report from the public and then take necessary action to reduce the impact," said Eman.

Lack of operational funds, manpower as well as defiant poultry farmers and poor coordination among related government offices have made Indonesia a prime site for the possible mutation of the bird flu virus into form that could be transferred from human-to- human.

The situation is worsened by the fact that the source of the outbreak could easily come from nearby areas, as many low-income people in cities and villages raise poultry in their backyards.

Eman's colleagues at the West Java Husbandry Agency, based in Bandung, are also experiencing difficulty in demanding that people relocate their poultry to areas outside cities.

In addition, officials find it hard to take away birds owned by poor people.

"With such a situation, there is a greater chance for infected birds to infect humans, and for the virus to eventually mutate into a form that could cause a human pandemic," said Musni Suatmodjo, chief of animal health at the West Java Husbandry Agency.

Musni said the agency had operational funds of some Rp 800 million this year, with no additional financial aid from the government aside from bird flu vaccines and sprayers.

Both Banten and West Java are known to be the most uncooperative provinces in terms of combating bird flu since the government officially admitted the outbreak in birds in early 2003 after a six-month cover up.

Banten is now known to have the highest risk for the development of a human-transmitted form of the virus, with four of the five people killed by bird flu so far being residents of Tangerang.

Since the government declared an "extraordinary situation" over the bird flu outbreak on Sept. 19, no emergency efforts have been taken by the Ministry of Agriculture to actively contain the source of the virus other than to wait for new outbreaks.

While the rest of the world is pouring resources into attempts to prevent the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, the ministry is only allocating some Rp 134 billion, plus an additional of Rp 107 billion this year, to prevent the outbreak.

The allocated funds include provisions to finance mass cullings, which have never been implemented effectively thus far because the ministry has considered such methods to be expensive, preferring instead to provide vaccines for the birds.

The ministry, which should be leading the fight against the source of the bird flu, is now throwing the responsibility back onto local administrations, pointing to the autonomy law that limits the role of the central government.

"We should respect the autonomy law. Relocation of poultry farms from crowded areas and other prevention efforts should be done primarily by the local administrations," said Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono.

Anton claimed the government was on the right track to gradually stamp out bird flu by 2007, as the only problem now was the lack of veterinarians to detect the occurrence of the virus.

However, officials at lower levels like Musni and Eman are pessimistic the bird flu outbreak could be contained in less than the two years targeted by the government given current resources and coordination.

"The outbreak could go on for the next five years. The damage is so widespread because of the lack of resources. I don't think we can be free of the bird flu as targeted. A (human) pandemic could even occur before the virus (in birds) can be totally eliminated," said Musni.