Indonesia struggling to cope as death toll from bird flu reaches 40

Jul 3 2006

The World Health Organisation has confirmed the death of an Indonesian boy last month was from bird flu.

To date the official death toll in Indonesia from the deadly virus has now reached 40 and makes the sprawling archipelago one of the hardest hit countries from bird flu and second only to Vietnam which had 42 deaths.

Tests done by a WHO laboratory in Hong Kong have confirmed the boy had the H5N1 avian virus.

According to officials the 5-year-old died on June 16 in Tulungagung in East Java province a week after being admitted to hospital.

Few details have been released other than that there was a dead chicken in a cage very near to his home.

Indonesia has had more deaths this year from the virus than any other country and the steady rise in human bird flu infections and deaths since the first reported outbreak in poultry in late 2003, concerns world health officials.

Of Indonesia's 1.2 billion chickens, 30 percent live in the backyards of homes in both rural and urban areas and the virus is endemic in poultry all across Indonesia.

The 220 million population is spread across 17,000 islands over a 5,000 km radius and monitoring and controlling diseases is tricky.

A great many of the population are poor and their poultry represents a living and an essential food source and is partly to blame for Indonesia's reluctance to cull poultry.

The government has repeatedly said that the mass culling of birds is an exercise which is too costly and impractical.

Instead the vaccination of vulnerable poultry has taken place but this has been both sporadic and selective and not that effective in stopping the spread of the virus.

H5N1 avian influenza remains essentially a disease of animals and is relatively difficult to contract.

Almost all deaths and infections to date have been the result of close contact with sick or dead birds.

But the persistent fear is that the virus will mutate and acquire the ability to transfer from human to human triggering a pandemic which would kill billions of people.

Experts insist this has not happened so far though the deaths of six members of one family in May from the virus had everyone on tenterhooks.

Despite on-going financial support and advice from world health authorities, Indonesia is struggling to cope with the virus.