RI not seek financial aid to fight bird flu: VP

Rendi A. Witular The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The government has been reluctant to ask for financial aid from overseas to fight the deadly bird flu virus, although the United States, Australia and the European Union have pledged financial aid to help Indonesia contain the virus.

With local administrations only allocated between Rp 300 million (US$29,732) and Rp 800 million to fight bird flu this year, and about Rp 2 billion next year, it will be impossible for the administrations to prevent the spread of the virus.

However, Vice President Jusuf Kalla downplayed the threat facing the country from bird flu, saying the government would not seek financial assistance to deal with the problem.

"Instead of financial aid, we are asking for cooperation from the international community because the bird flu virus does not originate here," he said.

The U.S. has pledged $3.15 million to help Indonesia strengthen its early warning system and early diagnosis capabilities, improve surveillance and bolster rapid-response teams to contain avian influenza. Australia has also pledged A$10 million (about US$7.5 million) to help Indonesia fight bird flu.

The European Union will provide $35.7 million to help all Asian countries fight the disease that had killed over 60 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia since late 2003.

Kalla expressed optimism that Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono and State Minister for National Development Planning Sri Mulyani Indrawati -- who are currently attending a conference on bird flu in Geneva -- would be able to draw up a cooperation scheme to help the country battle the virus.

The world has seen six flu pandemics in the past three centuries, with three in the last century alone: the 1918 Spanish flu that killed between 20 million and 50 million people, the Asian flu in the 1950s that killed five million people and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 that killed one million people.

Currently, Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, has only allocated Rp 134 billion, plus an additional Rp 107 billion, this year to deal with bird flu.

Minister of Agriculture Anton said earlier the only way to effectively combat the spread of bird flu was with mass culls within a radius of three kilometers of the point of an outbreak.

But his ministry says it does not have the funds to compensate poultry farmers whose birds are culled, or to perform the mass culls themselves.

The 2005 state budget has an allocation of some Rp 10 trillion for routine expenditures, and it is very unlikely all of this money will be spent.

About half of the money is expected to be carried over into next year's state budget, while the remaining will be allocated as an emergency fund for government agencies.

"I think it is far more important for the government to get serious about combating the virus. If there is a strong will, financial problems can be easily solved," said Chairul Anwar Nidom, a virologist at Airlangga University's tropical disease center.

Chairul said if there were financial constraints, the government should immediately seek overseas aid so it could perform mass culls and entirely root out the source of the outbreak.

"Infected birds that are not eliminated can become reservoirs for a human pandemic. Unless all of the infected birds are culled, I am afraid a pandemic could start in Indonesia that would severely affect other countries," he said.