UN body to conduct house-to-house search in Java for bird flu
UN body to conduct house-to-house search in Java for bird flu
Arijit Ghosh, Bloomberg/Jakarta
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) plans to conduct house-to-house searches for sick fowl on certain parts of Java island in a bid to stop the spread of the avian influenza virus.
The FAO, which is setting up an emergency team in Indonesia to help the nation's health authorities tackle the spread of the virus, will train animal health workers and veterinarians to conduct the searches, Peter Roeder, an animal health officer who is heading the FAO team in Indonesia, said in an interview.
The UN agency wants the government of Indonesia to adopt a policy to slaughter poultry close to infected birds. Thailand, which has culled more than 40 million chickens since the initial outbreak in 2004 in a bid to limit the spread of the virus, has tried to impose a three-kilometer radius for killing poultry. As of July, Indonesia had slaughtered only 31 pigs and 40 ducks in Tangerang in Banten province.
"This military-like approach against avian influenza has proved very successful in Thailand," Roeder said in a statement on Monday. "We believe that Indonesia can learn a lot from the Thai experience."
Thailand will deploy 900,000 volunteers to perform house checks for signs of bird flu, AFP reported, citing Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul. The checks, and tighter hospital screenings, will be coordinated through more than 9,700 health offices across the country.
The FAO, the Indonesian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development came up with the plan for Indonesia in Bangkok last week, Roeder said. Setting up the disease control unit will take a couple of weeks, he said.
"What we are doing now is to educate the people using advertisements," Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono said in an interview in Jakarta. "The government will help them to understand" the usefulness of culling in infected areas.
Lack of adequate compensation discourages the reporting of bird flu outbreaks, the World Health Organization said in a report on Sept. 2. The virus has killed at least three people in Jakarta and surrounding areas. There are about 30 million village households in Indonesia that have about 200 million chickens in their backyards, the FAO said in a statement on Sept. 22.
"Killing an infected chicken is still a big economic loss for many poor farmers and they are therefore often reluctant to abandon their flocks," said Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary officer of the FAO. "We have to do everything to make farmers our main allies in the battle against bird flu."
The virus has killed 61 people in Asia, including 13 in Thailand, 41 people in Vietnam and four in Cambodia, according to the WHO. More than 150 million birds have been slaughtered to stem the spread of the virus.
"Every new human case gives the virus an opportunity to evolve toward a fully transmissible pandemic strain," the WHO said in a report on Sept. 2. "Since late 2003, the world has moved closer to a pandemic than at any time since 1968, when the last of the previous century's three pandemics occurred."
Vietnam will begin the next phase of a campaign to vaccinate its poultry against avian influenza, the Vietnam News reported, citing Bui Quang Anh, director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's animal health department.
China, Hong Kong and Macau signed a public health emergency agreement in preparation for a possible outbreak of avian flu, the Hong Kong government said in a statement released on Oct. 21. The three areas were hardest hit by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) two years ago.