[Kabar-indonesia] West Java bird flu campaign to involve school children

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Bird flu campaign in West Java to involve school children 

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

The West Java provincial administration is mulling the possibility of 
involving school children in its campaign about the spread of the deadly bird flu 
virus, an official said Monday.

Fatimah Resmiati, head of the West Java Health Office's environmental 
sanitation unit, said that the plan to involve school children had been adopted as 
the current campaign had been ineffective, as shown by the increasing number of 
people falling sick from bird flu. 

The campaign would concentrate on the dissemination of information about bird 
flu with the help of school children, including those attending Muslim 
boarding schools, Fatimah explained. 

She said that West Java had the highest number of bird flu cases, with 23 
patients having tested positive for the virus, and 19 having died. 

By comparison, the total number of people who had been infected with the 
virus stood at 69, of whom 52 had died, she said, explaining that cases of bird 
flu-infected fowl livestock had been detected in 23 out of the 26 regencies and 
municipalities in West Java. 

"As we've already become the 'top scorer', we badly need a better prepared 
campaign to help prevent more fatalities," Fatimah said in Bandung after 
attending a coordinating meeting with representatives of the Ministries of Health and 
Agriculture. 

Over the next two days, Fatimah said officials from the relevant offices 
would discuss the possibility of establishing a regional bird flu prevention 
commission. 

"We have to admit that we all walk by ourselves so that whenever there is 
news about a new case that requires quick handling, we haven't been able to 
respond to it as soon as possible," she said. 

A similar concern was expressed by Fatum Basalamah, head of standardization 
at the zoonosis subdirectorate of the Ministry of Health, who underlined the 
importance of involving school children as a means of conveying information on 
the bird flu danger to their parents and the public at large. 

Fatum said that the existing anti bird-flu campaign through the mass media 
had not been able to heighten public awareness. 

"Despite the huge coverage, the public have not been persuaded to act better. 
In Bandung, there were patients who were found to have fed their dogs with 
dead chickens. We have to open our eyes about the problem," she said. 

Fatum explained that the exact details of the children's campaign remained to 
be worked out. 

A similar campaign involving children was waged by the West Java Health 
Office during an outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever two years ago, when school 
children were involved in eradicating the mosquito larvae. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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