November 15, 2005

Indonesia needs help to stamp out bird flu

Indonesia's cash-strapped government has been doing what it could to stamp out bird flu, but needed international help, a top EU health official said Tuesday.

The country, criticised for moving too slowly when the H5N1 virus first appeared in poultry stocks two years ago, said the military would join the fight with thousands of troops going house-to-house in search of sick birds.

The government has so far rejected calls to slaughter all poultry in bird flu-infected areas - which experts claimed was the best way to contain the spread of bird flu - saying it could not afford to compensate farmers.

However, the government was doing what it could, said Markos Kyprianou, the European Union's commissioner for public health and consumer protection, after meeting Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono.

"Indonesia has a plan and the political will to handle this problem," he said, kicking off a two-day visit to the sprawling archipelago. But it "needs international support."

Outbreaks of H5N1 have left poultry flocks devastated across Asia since 2003 and jumped to humans, killing at least 64.

Five of the deaths have been in Indonesia, and officials were awaiting tests that have been sent to a Hong Kong lab for two other young women who died earlier this month.