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Indonesia
sends SOS to fight bird flu threat
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JAKARTA: Poultry and pigs tested positive for bird flu in a district where the H5N1 virus killed four family members and infected another, Indonesia said Thursday, pleading for international help fighting the disease. The multiple infections among people living in Tanah Karo - an area on Sumatra island previously believed to be free of the disease - raised concerns that the virus had mutated into a form easily passed between humans. But international and local officials said that, while further investigations were needed, it appeared unlikely that had happened. Agricultural Minister Anton Apriantono told reporters initial tests on dozens of chickens, ducks and pigs living in Tanah Karo came back positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The findings still needed to be reconfirmed, he said. World Health Organization |
spokeswoman Sari Setiogi, meanwhile, said there was “no evidence that the virus has spread beyond this family, this cluster.” “Other family members, neighbors and health workers tested negative,” she said, adding that the probe was not yet complete. Bird flu started sweeping through poultry populations across Asia in 2003 and has since jumped to humans, killing at least 115 people, more than half of them in Vietnam, with 42, and Indonesia, which is closing in with 30. But while other Southeast Asian nations have been praised for successfully stemming the spread of the virus, Indonesia has come under fire in recent months for doing too little too late. The disease has been found in chickens and ducks in two-thirds of the country’s 33 provinces, but the government says it cannot afford to carry out mass culls in infected areas, one of the most basic containment guidelines. |
It is also struggling to implement biosecurity measures and there is a lack of public awareness about the disease in the densely populated countryside, home to millions of backyard chickens. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appealed to the international community Thursday to help Indonesia fight its widening bird flu outbreak, telling donors his country needed “full financial and technical support.” His comments came one day after WHO confirmed five more human fatalities - one of them in the country’s second-largest city on Java island and the others in Tanah Karo - and one infection. Bird flu is currently transmitted from birds to humans, but health experts fear that if the virus mutated into a form easily passed between people it could trigger a global pandemic that could kill millions. – AP
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