Re: General Indonesian News - 23 June 2008 +
Re: General Indonesian News - 23 June 2008 +
Campaigns take bird flu education to villages
Dian Kuswandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Red spaghetti, a chicken roll and hot chili fried eggs replaced the usual banners, posters and stickers in a bird flu campaign here Sunday.
The campaigner, one of the country's biggest Muslim organizations Muhammadiyah, said it knew better approaches were needed to ensure its campaigns could engage locals.
"Specific activities would make them feel they're really involved in the campaigns against bird flu," event organizer Ahmad Imam M. Rais said.
In the past two and half years, Muhammadiyah has seen 12,000 members in 12,000 villages carry out bird flu campaigns across the country, Ahmad said.
Campaigners work to remove poultry from residential areas, train local residents to properly handle infected chickens by covering up and burying diseased fowl instead of dumping it in rivers, and promote regular use of disinfectants to kill the H5N1 virus.
Under the Muhammadiyah Team to Tackle Avian Influenza, the organization has also established a network of 7,000 "Avian Influenza Force" volunteer groups in nine provinces
: Jakarta, North Sumatra, Lampung, Banten, West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java and Bali.
"Our approach is to make people believe there is nothing to be afraid of with bird flu, because it is preventable," Ahmad said.
However, he said, it was not easy to teach villagers about the epidemic, especially when it comes to changing their deep-rooted knowledge and behavior.
"In many cases, villagers were confused about the difference between symptoms of bird flu and those of Newcastle disease (ND). So, when they found their H5N1-infected chickens died, they thought it was simply because of ND, resulting in improper burying and the spread of the virus," Ahmad said.
The government has said it cannot control the avian influenza epidemic on its own due to limited resources.
"As the government can't walk alone in fighting bird flu, community groups can definitely act to bring bird flu campaigns closer to the public as they have members across the country," Health Ministry Director General for Disease Control and Environmental Sanitation, I Nyoman Kandun, said during the campaign.
He said Muhammadiyah, with some 30 millions members, could help the government prevent and control bird flu outbreaks across the country.
"With 500 hospitals and health clinics, as well as 17,000 educational institutions across the country, Muhammadiyah can back the government's effort to fight the epidemic in remote areas," Kandun said.
Besides Muhammadiyah, professional and religious groups like the Indonesian Veterinarian Association and Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama have also been working with the government in fighting bird flu for the past few years, Kandun said.
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http://old.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20080825.A04&irec=3
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