Indonesia tests 7 for bird flu from same village
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Seven Indonesians from the same village in North Sumatra have been hospitalised and are being tested for bird flu, an official said on Wednesday, raising fears of new cluster cases in the country.
The group comes from Karo district in North Sumatra province where bird flu killed as many as seven people in an extended family in May, triggering fears the H5N1 bird flu virus had mutated into a form that could spread easily between people.
“Whether it is a new cluster or not, that must be scientifically proved,” said Runizar Ruesin, head of the bird flu information centre at Indonesia’s health ministry.
He said the seven were admitted to the local Kaban Jahe hospital, with three referred to a state-run hospital.
The latter three are children - two siblings aged 10 and six and their 18-month-old neighbour.
“I am still waiting for the result of the tests,” Ruesin said.
Another official said chickens in the area where they lived had died and tested positive for bird flu. Sick poultry is the usual mode of transmission of the disease, endemic in birds in about two-thirds of the country’s provinces.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono and Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie travelled to Karo on Wednesday to assess the situation, but were jostled by villagers angry about a planned bird culling.
At one point, locals tried to rip off the protective masks being worn by the three ministers, who eventually were forced to take off the white protective suits they were wearing, and the planned cull was called off as the army restored order.
“This is the first time that we have had a rejection of bird culling,” the agriculture minister said.
Many in Indonesia oppose culling, contesting whether their fowl are sick and with compensation of only 12,500 rupiah ($1.40) a bird.
MONITORING THREE CHILDREN
The seven being tested are from the village of Sumber Mufakat, in the same district as the case in May, which was the biggest cluster of the disease the country has recorded and sparked fears of a global pandemic of bird flu in humans.
The World Health Organisation said in May two members of the cluster, a man and his ailing son, might have caught the virus in a case of direct human-to-human transmission, but the virus did not spread very far if this did happen.
Sari Setiogi, the WHO’s spokeswoman in Indonesia, said the body was aware of the latest suspected cases.
“But they are still suspected cases. We have to wait for the test results.”
The three children out of the group were hospitalised on Tuesday after showing symptoms of bird flu, said Luhur Suroso, the director of the Adam Malik hospital.
“Their lungs have not shown signs of pneumonia but we have to keep monitoring them because in one or two days things could change,” Suroso told Reuters.
Indonesia has been criticised for not doing enough to stamp out H5N1, which still remains essentially an animal disease but experts fear could spark a pandemic if it mutates into a form that can pass easily among people.
Earlier on Wednesday, the welfare minister said government policy had been tightened to extend from one to five kilometres (3 miles) the area in which birds would be culled.
The government has so far shied away from mass culling of poultry, citing lack of funds and impracticality in a country with millions of backyard fowl.
Indonesia has recorded 42 deaths from the H5N1 bird flu virus, equalling Vietnam, where no one is known to have died of the disease this year.
Human cases of bird flu have been rising steadily in Indonesia since its first known outbreak in poultry in late 2003.
Worldwide, the disease has killed at least 134 people since it re-emerged in east Asia in 2003.
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