WHO urges govt to improve measures to fight bird flu

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While generally satisfied with the way the Indonesian government is handling the first human deaths from the bird flu in the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the government needed to improve its efforts in dealing with the possibility of an influenza outbreak.

The representative of the United Nations' health body here, Georg Petersen, said the government needed a more comprehensive working plan.

"The Indonesian government followed all the WHO recommendations. We are pleased to see how they followed the issue (of the bird flu case), taking care of the case and following procedure in investigating the case," Petersen told The Jakarta Post by phone on Tuesday.

However, he added that every country needed to improve its efforts in facing a possible outbreak.

"WHO continues to work with the government to look out for it," Petersen said, but did not elaborate.

With the country confirming its first human bird flu case, and with more birds dying elsewhere in the world, including in Russia, WHO warned last Friday that there were signs that a long- dreaded global influenza pandemic may be approaching.

Health officials fear that the bird flu virus will mutate and mix with human influenza, creating a deadly pandemic strain that becomes easily transmissible and could kill millions of people.

The strain has killed hundreds of thousands of birds and killed 58 people in Asia since resurfacing in 2003.

Indonesia confirmed its first deaths from the HN51 strain of bird flu last week, Iwan Siswara, an official at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), and his two young daughters. The three resided in Tangerang.

After the confirmation, the government vowed to cull both sick and healthy birds and pigs within a three-kilometer radius of any infected farm as suggested by WHO to help curb the disease from spreading to other areas.

But realizing that a mass cull and vaccination program would require around Rp 800 billion (including funds needed to compensate farmers), the government later decided on a selective cull of sick birds and pigs. The Ministry of Agriculture only has Rp 50 billion to fight bird flu and is seeking House of Representatives approval to be allocated another Rp 88 billion from the state coffers.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari confirmed the discovery of bird feces containing the bird flu virus around Iwan's neighborhood -- some 15 meters from Iwan's residence in Legok, Tangerang, Banten.

However, Siti said that it had not been determined whether the feces were the source of the virus that killed Iwan and his two daughters.

"If that was so, why isn't the rest of the neighborhood infected?" said Siti as quoted by detik.com news portal.

She said the results of the blood tests done on a number of people connected with Iwan all came back negative.

The Ministry of Health is investigating whether the virus found in the feces match the one found in Iwan's blood. The Indonesian government is not alone in being unable to determine the source of the virus, as WHO noted that out of 108 cases of avian flu, the source of infection remains unclear.

Siti denied that the government had been too slow in addressing the problem of avian flu.