CATEGORY 5 "HURRICANE AMESELES" SIGHTED

Lack of political will in Indonesia will see to the rapid spread of Bird Flu in this sprawling archipelago. When this happens, it will be only a matter of time when an infected illegal economic migrant slips through our net to visit one of his many "saudara" somewhere along the west coast.
The future will be "ain't what it used to be". We may have handled the Nipah and SARS virus rather well but again that is only a category 2 hurricanes. What is the government strategy in the containment of the "selesema burung"? How would the tracking of the already infected be done? How do we test and quarantine cluster infections? We may have started to stock up Tamiflu, it may be too little and too late. We cannot afford to continue to be in denial of the situation. There are so very many questions left unanswered by the relevant authorities.


Botched culls typify Jakarta's flu paralysis
Link : Sydney Morning Herald
September 24, 2005

The lure of free entertainment on a sunny Sunday afternoon drew hundreds to a field near the Javanese village of Babat to witness the first mass cull of pigs infected with the deadly bird flu virus.

Adults and children milled around, watching animals being slaughtered, thrown into a pit and burnt with no sign of public safety precautions. The Indonesian Agriculture Minister, Anton Apriantono, shouted frantically to department staff to find if it was saf
e to remove his white mask to answer questions.

"Don't blame me if you get bird flu because you don't wear a mask. This is very dangerous, you know, as the virus can be transmitted through the air," he warned reporters that July afternoon.
Mr Apriantono was soon struggling to explain why only 31 pigs and 40 ducks from Tangerang region, bordering Jakarta, were being culled, instead of the promised hundreds of infected pigs and thousands of chickens.

"We only culled the infected animals as we do not have the money to carry out a mass culling," he said.

Days earlier, an auditor who lived nearby, Iwan Rapei, and his two daughters died with symptoms of heavy pneumonia. Tests confirmed Mr Rapei carried the bird flu virus.
Yesterday the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency demanded Indonesia improve its virus control and immediately start culling in infected areas.

In April tests at pig farms uncovered bird flu infections, but no cull was ordered. This week it emerged several of the 17 Indonesians in hospital with bird flu in the latest outbreak came from Tangerang or areas close to Jakarta.
The botched cull raises concerns about Indonesia's ability to prevent a pandemic that could kill millions across the region.

The World Health Organisation's regional spokesman, Peter Cordingley, believes Indonesia is now the "hot spot" for bird flu, and the WHO's country representative, Georg Peterson, describes it as the "weak link" in global efforts to avert a pandemic.

Experts are seething. "They have spent a year saying they have it under control; this is bullshit," said one official working on the outbreak. "Indonesia hasn't got it under control and the longer they go on not culling the bigger the problem is going to be."

Mr Cordingley said the WHO has known "for some time the H5N1 virus is entrenched in Indonesian poultry populations".
"Each time a human being becomes infected, we worry because one of the scenarios for this pandemic to start is if one person has the avian influenza virus in his body at the same time as the normal flu virus, [then] there is the possibility of genetic exchange between the two viruses."

Although tests had shown more than half its exotic birds carried the bird flu virus, Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo was kept open on Sunday for thousands of visitors, including hundreds of expatriates on a charity fun run. Several of those since taken to hospital were zoo visitors.
The Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, at first denied the possibility of human transmission, then stated it was inevitable and Indonesia was in the grip of an epidemic. She later reversed her position, saying the outbreak could possibly become an epidemic and called on the nation to increase "alertness" .

But Mrs Supari's extraordinary flu alert was attacked by other cabinet ministers on the grounds it could harm tourism and investment.
This week Mr Apriantono finally announced culls in "highly infected" areas. But he later said more than 20 per cent of stock had to be infected for a cull order to be issued - and that no such areas existed.
Mr Cordingley said the problem was a familiar one in Asia. "There is no incentive for somebody who raises chickens to report infected chickens if he is not going to be compensated for the day government authorities come in and kill all his chickens," he said.