[Kabar-indonesia] Indonesia to Test Pandemic Flu Response in Provincial Exercises

[Joyo at aol.com]

Indonesia to Test Pandemic Flu Response in Provincial
Exercises

July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia will stage a pandemic
influenza simulation in the next two months to test
how it will respond to such an emergency in the nation
that accounts for the most human fatalities from bird
flu in the world this year.

The simulation will be carried out in a village in
West Sumatra province, an urban area of West Java
province and in West Kalimantan province on the border
near Malaysia, Bayu Krisnamurthi, secretary of a
government-appointed committee on avian and pandemic
flu, said today in an interview in Jakarta.

``If a pandemic occurred in the country, we need to
have an experience in handling it,'' said
Krisnamurthi. ``How do we isolate the place, how to
implement logistics and security? It will be like a
fire drill simulation.''

Governments worldwide are being encouraged to prepare
for a lethal pandemic amid concern over the H5N1
strain of avian flu, which has spread across Asia,
Europe and Africa this year. Since last July, 40
people have died from the virus in Indonesia.

The virus, which affects mostly birds, has killed 130
of the 228 people known to have been infected with
H5N1 in 10 countries since 2003, according to the
World Health Organization. The WHO is tracking the
spread of the virus in the event it becomes more adept
at infecting people.

The next flu pandemic is more likely to occur in
Africa or Asia because of inadequate disease detection
on those continents, Albert Osterhaus, the head of the
Department of Virology at the Erasmus Medical Center
in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said June 29. Indonesia and
Africa are key areas where bird flu controls are
needed to prevent an outbreak in humans, Osterhaus
said.

Bird flu has killed a person every six days in
Indonesia this year. A cluster of a seven members of a
family in Sumatra provides the first evidence of a
three-person chain of infection after six of them died
as a result of bird flu in May.

Army, Police

The test operation, which may cost as much as 1.5
billion rupiah ($163,000), will involve the army,
police, health and government officials, Krisnamurthi
said.

Indonesia's efforts to combat the H5N1 virus, which
first emerged in poultry in late 2003, are ``not yet
satisfactory,'' and the understanding of the danger of
avian flu is ``minimal,'' international health experts
said June 23 during a three-day meeting in Jakarta.

``The information campaign in the country will be
enhanced in a systematic way, and it must evolve into
a movement because it can only be successful with
community involvement,'' said Krisnamurthi.

Farmers' Compensation

Some Indonesian farmers are reluctant to report bird
flu outbreaks because compensation of 10,000 rupiah
($1.1) for each chicken or bird is well under the
market price.

``We realize it doesn't give enough satisfaction to
the farmers,'' Krisnamurthi said. ``And that's why
we'll need a compensation system that gives less
pressure to the government's funding.''

Indonesia is considering asking support from banks
that could give ``appropriate'' interest rates for
farmers whose flocks have been infected by the virus
to ensure their economic viability because poultry are
a vital source of food and income in many Indonesian
communities, he said.

``This is still an idea, we haven't decided yet,'' he
added.

Thirty million households in Indonesian villages have
more than 200 million chickens in their backyards, the
UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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