Indonesia in bird flu cover-up
2004-01-26 09:40
Jakarta - Indonesia's government was accused on Monday of covering up a widespread outbreak of bird flu after reports that the disease was first detected among sick poultry at least a month ago.
"Government confirms bird flu after long cover-up," read the front-page headline in the Jakarta Post.
Until late on Sunday officials had blamed a widespead outbreak of viral disease among poultry on Java and Bali islands on Newcastle disease.
"The government will not cover it up that Indonesia has now been infected by the avian influenza which has attacked millions of poultry in Indonesia," the agriculture ministry's director for animal husbandry, Sofyan Sudarjat, said Sunday.
He said no Indonesians have so far been reported infected by the potentially deadly disease, which has now spread to several Asian countries and has killed six people in Vietnam and one in Thailand.
The ministry said 4.7 million fowls have been killed since November by a combination of the Newcastle disease and Type A avian influenza, with about 60% of the birds dying from Newcastle disease.
Marthen Malole, a veterinary researcher at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, said the long delay in announcing the flu outbreak was due to pressure from the poultry industry.
"It took too long for the government to finally announce the epidemic," he said.
Malole said several independent and government researchers had confirmed the existence of avian influenza type H5N1 in November. They had urged the government to tell the public as soon as possible to prevent the disease from spreading.
But agriculture ministry spokesperson Hari Priyono said late on Sunday that no immediate mass cull of chickens would be ordered, despite advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that infected flocks should be killed.
Outbreaks of bird flu have also been reported in Cambodia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Millions of chickens have been slaughtered in those countries.
CA Nidom, a member of a national working group on fowl epidemics, says he submitted test results which showed bird flu to the agriculture ministry on December 19.
"All I can say is that it was positively identified as a strain of the avian influenza virus," Nidom said, adding he had reports that 10 million chickens had died since October.
Kompas newspaper, quoting what it said was agriculture department data, said Singapore authorities last October banned chicken imports from Indonesia because of reports of bird flu.
Last November 19, it said, two independent sources reported information on bird flu in Indonesia.
Georg Petersen, WHO representative in Indonesia, said the government had not officially informed it of the outbreak as of Monday morning.
"What is most important now is if agricultural authorities take proper precautions to contain the epidemic among chickens," he said.
Health experts have warned that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu virus could merge with the separate human influenza virus to create a deadlier form of the illness for humans.