Indonesia Appeals For Bird Flu Help

Featured Article
Main Category: Bird Flu / Avian Flu
Article Date: 21 Jun 2006 - 5:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Indonesia says it lacks the resources to effectively combat the spread of bird flu and is appealing for international help. It is appealing for $50 million, spread over three years, to set up a system to combat bird flu in farmed and backyard poultry. The appeal was made during a three-day meeting of international experts in the capital, Jakarta.

Bayu Krishnamurthi, Indonesia's national bird flu coordinator, said that to be able to report to the world what is happening in Indonesia it needs more resources.

As Indonesia still struggles with the financial consequences of the 2004 tsunami, followed by a major earthquake in May 2006, there is virtually no money to face the H5N1 threat. Some in the meeting said the country needs up to $900 million to deal with bird flu - just $59 million has been awarded by the Indonesian government for this year.

The $50 million appeal would establish better surveillance as well as a more coordinated and effective rapid response system, said Krishnamurthi. He added that he would dearly wish that the meeting may be the turning point for a country that is overwhelmed with adverse events.

Indonesia has a population of 220 million, consisting of thousands of populated islands. A public awareness campaign is no easy task. Add to this that a huge proportion of the population depends on backyard poultry for survival. Asking people to destroy their chickens is seen as a threat to survival by millions of people.

One month ago seven family members died of H5N1 infection in Indonesia. An eighth person also died with bird flu like symptoms, however, she was buried before samples could be taken - she probably died of bird flu as well. It is most likely several members of this family infected each other. This led to alarm that H5N1 had mutated. The family shared a very small room. H5N1 does have the ability to transmit from human-to-human if there is continuous, close physical contact with the infected person. Tests indicated the virus had not mutated. Scientists were intrigued that only blood relatives were infected - from father to son, to sister, but not from father to wife or in-laws. Scientists are also baffled that they cannot find an animal source for this cluster of infections.

If H5N1 is allowed to establish itself in a country, is it seems to be in Indonesia, the likelihood of it mutating grows. The H5N1 virus could mutate if it infected a human with normal human flu. It could exchange genes with the human flu virus and pick up its ability to become easily human-transmissible. If, or when this happens, the world could be facing a serious pandemic threat.

At the moment H5N1 has to get deep down into the human lung(s) to make a person ill. This is not easy and is the main reason why relatively few humans have become infected, when compared to birds. Also, if an infected person coughs and sneezes, tiny amounts of the virus are expelled, making it very difficult to infect other humans. For the virus to jump easily from human to human it will need to infect the upper respiratory tract. Fortunately, upper respiratory tract infections are easier to treat and survival rates are much better. The theory goes that when the virus mutates and a pandemic comes, the illness will not be as deadly for infected humans as it is now.

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

• Additional
• References
• Citations