UN praises RI's $10m effort to combat bird flu
UN praises RI's $10m effort to combat bird flu
Associated Press, Jakarta
Indonesia has allocated US$10 million to finance a culling and
vaccination campaign that should effectively contain its latest
outbreak of the deadly bird flu virus, a U.N. agency said Friday.
Bird flu resurfaced last week on Indonesia's heavily populated
Java island, killing 350 chickens. Tests showed the birds had the
lethal H5N1 strain of the virus, which has killed 31 people this
year in Thailand and Vietnam.
Authorities have urged farmers to vaccinate their flocks, and
are also planning to step up surveillance of affected areas,
contain live birds and animal waste, and launch a public
education campaign, said the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture
Organization, or FAO.
Carolyn Benigno, an FAO official who visited Indonesia earlier
this week, said Indonesian authorities will also conduct more
culls and vaccinations under a $10 million program.
"The plan is very comprehensive and it covers all the issues
of avian flu," Benigno said told The Associated Press by
telephone from Bangkok.
"They are in the control of the situation," she added. "They
realize they have to move quickly."
During an earlier outbreak in February, Jakarta came under
heavy criticism for failing to alert the public of the threat of
bird flu, and for being slow to respond with measures aimed at
containing it.
The government eventually ordered a mass cull during that
outbreak, but it isn't known how many birds were slaughtered or
how many died from the disease. No people in Indonesia are
reported to have contracted the virus.
A second outbreak in July prompted officials to launch a
massive campaign to vaccinate chickens.
Officials from Indonesia's Agriculture Ministry said the
recent string of cases was isolated and that the overall number
of bird flu cases was decreasing. The latest outbreak coincided
with a second round of vaccinations across the country.
The disease spread through a wide swath of Asia in the first
few months of this year, killing or prompting the cull of more
than 100 million chickens and other farm birds.
Another wave of outbreaks since July has struck countries
including Thailand, Vietnam, China, Malaysia and Indonesia.