Indonesia defends bird flu fight as cases surge
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with government defending bird flu efforts, details on patients) JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Indonesia is making strides in fighting bird flu despite the emergence of new cases, including two deaths this year, a government official said on Friday. A 37-year-old woman, from Serpong in west Java, died of bird flu on Thursday and her husband and son as well as two other women were being treated for symptoms of the disease, said a doctor at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where the dead woman was treated. Health ministry official Joko Suyono told Reuters earlier in the week that the woman had bought a live chicken and slaughtered it at her house, but it was unclear whether this was the cause of the infection. Her death, which came after a 14-year-old boy died of the H5N1 bird flu virus on Tuesday, takes the country's human death toll from bird flu to 59, the highest in the world. A 22-year-old woman being treated at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital had tested positive for bird flu, while results for the other three were still pending, said Runizar Ruesin, head of the bird flu information centre at the health ministry. Muchtar Ichsan, the head of the bird flu ward at Persahabatan hospital, said the two women -- one from Tangerang west of Jakarta and the other from a South Jakarta suburb -- were in critical condition and had been placed on a respirator. "Both women have severe respiratory problems," he said. The 22-year-old woman had a history of contact with chickens but it was not clear if the other woman, who was four year older, had had contact with sick birds, Ichsan said. The father and son were in "relatively good condition", he said. The latest confirmed case brought the number of people infected by the virus to 77 in the Southeast Asian country. 'IMPROVEMENT FIGHTING THE DISEASE' "Aside from the latest cases, we have had some major improvement in fighting the disease but the danger is still there and the nature of this virus is random," Bayu Krisnamurthi, head of the national commission on avian influenza, told a news conference. "The people's awareness is much higher compared with that in early 2006, the ratio of confirmed cases to suspected cases is lower, the death ratio to confirmed cases is also lower." Krisnamurthi said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus, despite the husband and son of the woman who died on Thursday. He said people were more vulnerable to the virus during the rainy season but hoped the latest cases did not indicate a trend. Krisnamurthi's deputy, Tri Satya Napospos, said a bill on livestock farming giving the central government greater power to deal with bird flu outbreaks in the regions had been submitted to parliament. She said the central government's role was limited due to regional autonomy. "I have always said the the main problem is still in the poultry sector, especially in ... small farms and backyard chickens," she told the same news conference. She said the agriculture ministry had only 60 million doses of vaccine for small farms and backyard chickens. "It means we only can vaccinate not more the 30 million fowl, as one bird needs to get two shots. That's only 10 percent of total 300 million fowl in those two sectors," she said.
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