[Kabar-indonesia] Experts say RI bird flu effort still far from success

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post
Saturday, August 12, 2006

Experts say bird flu effort still far from success

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Animal health experts are casting doubt on the government's claim that it has 
done its utmost to curb the spread of the H5N1 avian flu virus among poultry, 
saying that the number of fowl culled and inoculated lags far behind the 
number infected.

"The millions of chickens being killed is a lot, but proportionally, it's not 
so much as to cut the chain of virus transmission," Indonesian Veterinary 
Association chairman Budi Tri Akoso said Friday.

The government claimed Wednesday it had culled almost 29 million fowls and 
vaccinated more than 260 million chickens over the last two years, in response 
to international criticism that it had been unwilling to carry out mass culling 
.

Budi said since bird flu is found in almost all of Indonesia's provinces, 
infecting many of the country's estimated one billion chickens, that number is 
small.

"That's why we keep seeing new cases of bird flu emerge," he said.

He added that the government could not claim success on its poultry 
vaccination drive because field workers use eight different kinds of vaccine.

"The government should choose just one type," he suggested. "The more 
vaccines we use the more likely they are to endanger other creatures."

Animal experts believe that the use of a variety of vaccines to curb the 
spread of H5N1 among animals might cause certain strains of the virus to become 
more robust and resistant to vaccines.

He also lamented the absence of standard procedures in poultry slaughtering, 
saying that each region used different methods to cull chickens.

"I know of one region that killed chickens by dumping them in a big hole and 
burning them without killing them first," he said, adding that such methods 
violated international guidelines for the humane killing of animals for disease 
control purposes.

Agriculture Ministry officials have established protocols that address the 
timing and range of fowl slaughtering, vaccination and disinfection spraying, 
but do not specify methods of killing.

I Putu Widhiantara, a communication officer for the Food and Agriculture 
Organization (FAO), which is partnering with the Agriculture Ministry in 
addressing bird flu outbreaks, believes there is still much to be done to cut the chain 
of H5N1 transmission among poultry.

"The government has killed many chickens, but that doesn't mean it's enough, 
because according to data from the National Commission on Bird Flu, Indonesia 
has 435 million chickens living in backyard farms," he said. He added that 
most of the H5N1-infected fowl were found in backyard farms.

FAO is helping the government achieve three essential goals in its campaign 
against bird flu: detecting possible H5N1 outbreaks, containing the virus from 
spreading to wider areas, and preventing the reemergence of the virus in areas 
where poultry have been culled.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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