INDONESIA: Indonesia yesterday admitted that millions of birds in dozens of districts across the sprawling archipelago have been dying of the avian flu virus and other illnesses for the last five months.
Officials in the world's fourth most populous nation insisted that no human cases of bird flu had been reported. But independent health experts disputed the government's chicken death figures, saying the toll was more than twice the official estimate.
The director general of animal husbandry in the agriculture ministry, Sofyan Sudarjad, said 4.7 million birds in 51 districts had died since August.
About 60 per cent of these had died from Newcastle's disease, which is harmless to humans, while the remainder had been infected with bird flu.
"The government is not trying to conceal that avian influenza has attacked millions of chickens in Indonesia," he said. "Besides attacking egg-laying hens, the avian influenza has also attacked \ chickens, quails and ducklings."
If correct, this would mean Indonesia's poultry industry has been affected more severely than in Thailand and Vietnam, the two countries where human cases have been detected.
A seventh person is suspected of having died of bird flu in Thailand, and the virus's rapid spread has put the entire region on a health alert.
More than nine million chickens have been culled in Thailand and three million in Vietnam.
The World Health Organisation warned yesterday that it might take six months to develop a bird flu vaccine as virus samples from all the infected areas would have to be collated before a definitive antidote could be produced.
Indonesian chickens first started falling ill in August near Pekalongan, in central Java, Mr Sofyan said. The death toll reportedly peaked in November, when 2.6 million died, then fell to 556,000 last month.
A crisis team of officials from the health and agriculture ministries has reportedly been meeting for months to co-ordinate a response, particularly if human cases were detected, but an independent source close to the team said no reports of humans falling ill had been received.
"The ministry is usually very open so I don't think that they'd be able or willing to hide it if humans were ill," the source said. - (Guardian service)