October 28, 2005

 

Up to 1,000 Indonesian students to survey poultry
 

 

The Indonesian government will launch a "big surveillance programme" by recruiting up to 1,000 students to fight the spread of the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono said Thursday.

 

On Friday, the ministry will sign an agreement with four universities and the Veterinary Research Agency, or Balitvet, for recruitment purposes, Apriyantono said during a press conference.

 

Experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN will train the students to identify sick birds and alert villagers to the risks of the disease.

 

"The number is about 500 to 1,000 students, but after the FAO comes to Indonesia to help us, we can recruit as many as we can," Apriyantono said.

 

However, the minister said that surveillance would focus on high risk areas such as Java, South Sulawesi and South Sumatra.

 

"We can't undertake surveillance for the whole of Indonesia, because it's too big," Apriyantono said.

 

The H5N1 strain of bird flu that has decimated poultry stocks across Southeast Asia since 2003 has also killed more than 60 people - including four in Indonesia in as many months this year.

 

The ministry is also hiring more veterinarians to step up measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

 

Anton said the ministry will also hire 100 medical veterinarians and 50 veterinarians, who will be deployed to the high risk areas to monitor poultry shipments.

 

"Around 60 percent will be deployed in Java and 40 percent outside Java," Bahri said.

 

International health authorities have cautioned that Indonesia, like Vietnam and Cambodia, could potentially be a weak link in the global effort to prevent or contain a possible future outbreak of a more deadly human variant of H5N1.

 

Joseph Domenech, the FAO's chief veterinary officer, said many people in Indonesia seem to be unaware of the risks.

 

"There still seems to be a lack of awareness in the rural and suburban communities about the threat the virus poses to humans and animals," he said in a statement announcing plans for house-to-house searches earlier this week.

 

After sick birds are identified, the FAO and Indonesian authorities will decide on control measures, such as slaughtering or vaccination, he said.