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.