U.S. pledges $3.15m to help Indonesia fight bird flu

U.S. pledges $3.15m to help Indonesia fight bird flu

Hera Diani and Muninggar Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The United States pledged US$3.15 million for Indonesia to
strengthen its early warning system and early diagnosis, improve
surveillance, and bolster rapid response teams in containing
avian influenza.

Visiting U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael
O. Leavitt said on Monday that the donation would be a small
portion of the overall assistance and cooperation that exists
between the United States and Asia.

"International cooperation is critical in the efforts we are
all making on avian influenza," he told a media conference in the
afternoon after meeting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
earlier in the morning.

Leavitt said that the world was a biologically dangerous place
right now, and no nation was well-enough prepared for a flu
pandemic.

"(But) we're better prepared today than we were last week, and
we'll be better prepared next week than we are today. There is a
continuum of preparation, and the continuum needs to go well
beyond the concern about H5N1," he said referring to the strain
of avian influenza that has killed more than 60 people in the
region including three in Indonesia in the past two years.

A virus, he said, is a network enemy, and surveillance is very
vital in combating it.

"If one thinks of the world as though it were a vast forest.
If there is a spark in the forest and you are there to see it,
you are able to simply snuff it out.

"However, if it's allowed to burn for an hour or two hours, it
often becomes uncontainable. The only thing possible then is to
try to move people or assets out of its way," he said.

Leavitt was on a two-day visit here, after traveling to
Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in the past week to get
information on the virus.

The United States has pledged $25 million to the Asian region
for training, supplies, laboratory equipment, village-based
surveillance systems and public information campaigns.

Concerns have grown in Europe in recent days as tests
confirmed avian influenza in poultry in Romania and Turkey.
Experts are worried that attention would drift away from Asia
where the virus is endemic.

Leavitt said that he had a productive meeting with President
Susilo and related ministers, about the importance of regional
cooperation and international cooperation, and another area that
the U.S. was willing to help.

He also suggested that culling infected poultry was clearly
part of the tool kit available to countries to deal with the
dilemma, and an important strategy in containing the virus.

"We need anti viral available so that when people actually get
sick, there's a way to respond. But fundamentally, we need to
begin working on vaccine manufacturing capacity, to focus not on
treatment but on prevention," he said.

Earlier after the meeting with the President and Leavitt,
Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said that Indonesia had
been preparing to face a possible Avian flu pandemic, and the
possibility of human to human transmission.

"Therefore, we decided to maintain the alert status," she
said.

So far, Siti said, that three of the five confirmed bird flu
patients in this country had died.