Indonesia confirms bird flu outbreak

Producer:
First broadcast: 04, Radio Singapore International

Indonesia confirmed on Tuesday that the H5N1 virus, or the bird flu, has been found in the country. The avian influenza has killed at least 12 people in Thailand and Vietnam.

Indonesia's agriculture minister said that about 4.7 million chickens have died since November.

Previously, this had been blamed on another avian disease called the Newcastle disease, but now the ministry says 60% of the chickens died of Newcastle disease, and 40% of a combination of Newcastle disease and avian influenza.

The Indonesian government plans to employ a combination of culling and vaccination to control the spread of the disease there.

For more on the outbreak of bird flu in Indonesia, Yvonne Gomez spoke to Dr
Georg Petersen, the World Health Organisation's representative in Indonesia.

GP: As far as we know, there are no human cases and in terms of the health sector, they've been doing everything the guidelines say they should be doing. They have also reactivated the SARS outbreak response team and the system they had put in place at that time, which is very good. They've also sent out teams to many parts of the country, should they require it, and so far there are no reports of human cases.

You're the WHO rep to Indonesia; so what exactly is your role, at least where the bird flu is concerned?

GP: Our role at the WHO when it comes to the bird flu, at country level, would be to give advice to the government and how to deal with it. WHO advice on how they should deal with an epidemic among the birds. We have given very clear advice to the government that they should do culling, and follow guidelines on how to deal with an outbreak like this. Our second point is more directly what we usually do when working with the health sector, to see that they do what they should be doing, like doing a surveillance for possible human cases, giving guidelines for the protection of people who may be in contact with infected chickens, seeing that if there are cases, they are being managed properly and the more traditional health side of it.

You mentioned something about making sure that if there are cases, they are being managed properly. How would you go about doing something like that?

GP: It's back to our role, which is very important to understand. We are not assuring anything. It's the government's responsibility to act. Our role is to advise, give the guidelines. If they need expertise, we will give it. But whether the government follows our guidelines or not, that's up to them. They will then have to respond to their own people, in a way, or the international community might put pressure on them to follow the international guidelines. Because we're not monitoring, for instance, how the culling is done. That's not on our mandate.

Would you be able to tell me, in your opinion, so far, has the Indonesian government been receptive to WHO's advice?

GP: I think the health sector had been receptive all along. Even before we sent them them the guidelines, they'd already started to distribute them when they saw the situation in Vietnam in the news. So I'm rather confident that they health sector has been doing what they should be doing. We were also very pleased when the Minister of Agriculture came around, and the President said that they should start mass culling of chickens in the country, which we understood as following the international guidelines that all the other Asian countries are employing.

There have been some reports actually, about Indonesia having had the bird flu since November last year, and they've only come out to confirm it now, having blamed it on some other disease, called the Newcastle disease. Do you have any comments on that?

GP: No, it would be, in a way, inappropriate for me to comment on what's been happening at the Ministry of Agriculture. I cannot speculate on that. We are just pleased that at least they now have data enough to say there's H5N1 in Indonesia. But that also makes us concerned because that means that a lot of people can be infected, because there's a high mortality rate in this virus in people, and that's why we're concerned that they should follow the proper guidelines for culling and do that in a systematic fashion, wherever it's needed.