Indonesia said on Tuesday that tests have shown it is suffering from the same strain of bird flu that has killed 12 people in Thailand and Vietnam.
The results of the tests, conducted overseas, have prompted the government to raise measures to stop the spread of bird flu, which has infected millions of fowls across the huge archipelago.
”The results of the identification … show that the subtype of the type A avian influenza in Indonesia is H5N1,” said the Agriculture Ministry’s director for animal health, Tri Satya Naipospos.
”These results will be used as a basis for measures to be taken by the government … and to determine the strain of vaccines which will be used to eradicate this avian influenza,” Naipospos told a press conference.
She said that so far no Indonesians are known to have been infected by the virus, adding that the government will take two-pronged measures to deal with the outbreak.
For existing cases healthy birds sharing the same coops as infected poultry will be destroyed and those within a 1km radius will be vaccinated.
”If a new case takes place in a new area, we will perform stamping-out, which is a mass culling of the infected farm and other farms within a radius of 1km.”
The planned measures appear to extend Indonesia’s culling plans, which were earlier described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as inadequate.
But they do not appear to follow WHO recommendations that all birds within a radius of 3km of any outbreak should be killed.
Compensation will be given to chicken farmers who suffered the outbreak after January 29, Naipospos said.
Naipospos said it is ”theoretically possible” for the virus to transfer from chickens to pigs and her office is monitoring pig farms in Bali, which traditionally are located near chicken coops.
”The droppings of the birds are eaten by pigs. This is something that we have to be careful with,” she said.
”The Health Ministry continuously carries out efforts to monitor if such mutation could take place.”
The Health Ministry also said that so far no Indonesians have been found infected by bird flu, citing laboratory test results of more than 200 blood samples taken in Banten province in West Java and Bali.
Indonesia was among the last countries in the region to order a cull to stop the spread of the disease, which has hit 10 countries.
It admitted the presence of the disease only on January 25, months after flocks began dying.
The H5N1 strain has emerged in eight countries including Indonesia, while Taiwan and Pakistan have reported weaker strains.
The WHO has warned that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain could kill millions across the globe if it combines with a human influenza virus to create a new virus transmissible among humans.
Welfare Minister Yusuf Kalla has said farmers who refuse the culling of poultry will face a two-year prison sentence. The government has earmarked 50 billion rupiah ($5,92-million) to compensate farmers.
Agriculture Minister Bungaran Saragih has estimated that 1,25-million people will lose their jobs because of the outbreak. — Sapa-AFP
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