May 18, 2006

 

Indonesia finds bird flu in poultry and pigs in Sumatra

 

 

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 (May 18), while appealing 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.

 

However, 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 the family cluster."

 

The absence of proof of human-to-human transmissions prompted a top UN official Thursday to promote spending international funds on fighting the virus at its source - the animals - rather than on preparations for a possible pandemic in the future.

 

Right now "it is not a disease of human beings, it is a disease of animals," Jacques Diouf, the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, told reporters Thursday in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

 

"If we are able to eliminate or at least limit the number of birds that are infected, then we would limit the risk of transmission to human beings and other consequences of mutation for direct transmission from human to human," he said.

 

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.