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It has been a week since Jakarta declared that the country was facing an extraordinary bird flu outbreak, but as the disease claimed the sixth victim in the country yesterday, the government was facing criticism for its handling of the crisis.
Officials have been accused of being slow in sharing information, slow to carry out checks and held back by ponderous bureaucracy. However, it is important to bear in mind that the Indonesian government cannot combat the disease by itself.
The latest victim was a 27-year-old woman named Karwati. Meanwhile, a test confirmed yesterday that a five-year-old girl named Riska, who died last Wednesday, was a victim of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus. The death toll from the disease in South-east Asia since 2003 has risen to 65. Vietnam has recorded 43 deaths, Thailand 12 and Cambodia four.
The deaths have put Jakarta at the forefront of the fight against what World Health Organization (WHO) has said could develop into "an inevitable pandemic that might kill millions". The risk of a large-scale outbreak is compounded by WHO experts' predictions that the virus is about to mutate into one that can be transmitted among humans.
Critics have said that Jakarta has been slow, clumsy and cheap in handling the threat, but it is also fair to argue that logistics, geographical size and local customs make the fight against bird flu an enormous task in the archipelago country of more than 17,000 islands.
Chicken is a staple food for the vast majority of the 220 million Indonesians. Birds and humans interact freely in backyards where chickens are reared. At the wet markets, hygiene is generally poor. Medical infrastructure is virtually non-existent outside main cities.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the culling of birds in heavily-infected areas, but the move has raised protests in some villages as it will affect the livelihood of many Indonesians.
To erect an effective barrier against the danger posed by the virus requires skills and funds well beyond Jakarta's means.
Hence international help is needed — as capital and expertise — and it is needed fast. The recent arrival of American and Australian experts in Jakarta and news of plans by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries to establish an anti-bird flu global fund are good signs, but not enough.
But these cannot absolve the Yudhoyono government, which has constantly rebuffed the WHO's calls to mass-cull birds within a 3km radius of outbreaks.
Since 2003, when the virus first hit Indonesia, 9.5 million birds have reportedly been infected but only 71 birds have been culled. This foot-dragging has contributed to the spread of the virus and the WHO has called it endemic of Indonesian birds.
Jakarta's "extraordinary" alert last week has not brought any extra financial commitments by the government to fight the virus, nor has it convinced many that the country is prepared to face a large epidemic — should it happen.
Jakarta has said it will forcibly hospitalise suspects and start the mass-culling of birds in affected areas. But observers say that it will be a challenge as the government has not raised the issue of farmers' compensation. And, while culling solves one problem, the bigger issue is preventive measures.
Many Indonesians are unsure how avian flu is spread and how it can be prevented. Even the local media has done little to raise awareness. Most reports focus on superstitions and triggered unnecessary fears about eating chicken or eggs.
All these, coupled with red tape — a perennial issue plaguing Indonesia's bureaucracy — has slowed the procedure of importing tamiflu, a vaccine which helps fight the virus. Reports say that so far only a handful of vaccines are available in the 44 hospitals in the nation.
Government spokesperson Achmad Pitoyo said the vaccine is available only for around 2 million chickens. There are around 1 billion poultry and 290 million free-range chickens across the country, 60 per cent of them in densely-populated Java.
However, if Indonesia is taking the virus seriously, it must do more.
Fabio Scarpello is an analyst covering
Indonesian social and political developments. - TODAY
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