Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
Re: General Indonesian News - 27 September 2008 +
Re: General Indonesian News - 27 September 2008 +
Indonesia Says Pandemic Threat Remains as Deaths Ease (Update1)
By Leony Aurora and Naila Firdausi
Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia, the nation with the most bird flu deaths, said the threat of a deadly flu pandemic hasn't passed even though no new human cases of the H5N1 virus have been detected in the archipelago since July.
The government has started work on its own H5N1 vaccine and allocated 700 billion rupiah ($64 million) in next year's budget to prepare for a pandemic, including building facilities to produce inoculations, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said. The nation may also resume sharing H5N1 samples with the world next year if it can complete an agreement at a World Health Organization meeting next month.
Producing its own vaccine may strengthen Indonesia's position in demanding access to affordable shots for Asia in exchange for sharing H5N1 samples. The Southeast Asian nation, which accounts for 46 percent of bird flu deaths globally in the past six years, has withheld samples since December 2006, saying the viruses are its own intellectual property. Doctors can't produce up-to-date vaccines without the latest virus strains.
``We have made seasonal flu vaccine,'' Supari said in an Oct. 31 interview in Jakarta. ``The leap to avian flu vaccine won't be too hard.'' She said Indonesia has already developed a so- called ``seed vaccine,'' a genetically modified form of a virus that can be grown safely to mass-produce vaccines.
The H5N1 flu strain is known to have infected at least 387 people in 15 countries since 2003, according to the Geneva-based WHO. Almost two of every three cases were fatal. Health officials worldwide are concerned the virus may mutate into a form easily passed between humans, touching off the first flu pandemic in almost four decades.
Negotiations Advance
Negotiations to resume virus-sample sharing ``have come a long way,'' Supari said. ``The only obstacle left is the choice of tracking system,'' she said. Indonesia expects to reach an agreement on changes to the WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance Network at a meeting in Geneva in December and may resume virus- sharing next year, she said.
It's at least the second time Supari has promised to resume sharing virus samples. In March 2007 she said Indonesia would recommence virus-sharing ``immediately.'' In August last year the WHO said it was yet to receive any samples.
``We've heard some of these things before, so I guess we've just got to be patient and wait for them to be played out,'' said Ian Barr, deputy director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference & Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia. ``We would be very happy if Indonesia resumed sharing the viruses,'' Barr said in a telephone interview today.
`Even More Danger'
Michael Leavitt, the outgoing U.S. secretary of health and human services, last week urged his as-yet-unknown successor to ``strongly defend'' the 60-year-old practice of nations sharing virus samples freely, and said countries that withhold viruses are exposing the world to ``even more danger.''
The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has killed 112 people and sickened 25 others in Indonesia, according to the WHO. Most infections were caused by contact with infected poultry, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers, according to the WHO.
No new human cases have been found since the last ones were detected in July, Supari said, citing better public understanding about how to keep poultry safely.
``I can't say the threat has passed, but at the moment, there's nothing that can trigger a pandemic except if it's man- made,'' Supari said.
Laboratory tests and DNA analysis conducted by the health ministry's research center and the government-funded Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology on ``hundreds of samples'' since the country stopped sending the virus to the WHO found no mutation toward a human-to-human transmission, she said.
Indonesia in April released a national plan for coping with an influenza pandemic. The plan assumes a pandemic flu virus will strike 30 percent of the world's fourth-most populous nation, or 66 million people, and kill more than 153,000.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=acboyNqM6t_U&refer=asia
Re: General Indonesian News - 27 September 2008 +
Indonesia Says Pandemic Threat Remains as Deaths Ease (Update1)
By Leony Aurora and Naila Firdausi
Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia, the nation with the most bird flu deaths, said the threat of a deadly flu pandemic hasn't passed even though no new human cases of the H5N1 virus have been detected in the archipelago since July.
The government has started work on its own H5N1 vaccine and allocated 700 billion rupiah ($64 million) in next year's budget to prepare for a pandemic, including building facilities to produce inoculations, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said. The nation may also resume sharing H5N1 samples with the world next year if it can complete an agreement at a World Health Organization meeting next month.
Producing its own vaccine may strengthen Indonesia's position in demanding access to affordable shots for Asia in exchange for sharing H5N1 samples. The Southeast Asian nation, which accounts for 46 percent of bird flu deaths globally in the past six years, has withheld samples since December 2006, saying the viruses are its own intellectual property. Doctors can't produce up-to-date vaccines without the latest virus strains.
``We have made seasonal flu vaccine,'' Supari said in an Oct. 31 interview in Jakarta. ``The leap to avian flu vaccine won't be too hard.'' She said Indonesia has already developed a so- called ``seed vaccine,'' a genetically modified form of a virus that can be grown safely to mass-produce vaccines.
The H5N1 flu strain is known to have infected at least 387 people in 15 countries since 2003, according to the Geneva-based WHO. Almost two of every three cases were fatal. Health officials worldwide are concerned the virus may mutate into a form easily passed between humans, touching off the first flu pandemic in almost four decades.
Negotiations Advance
Negotiations to resume virus-sample sharing ``have come a long way,'' Supari said. ``The only obstacle left is the choice of tracking system,'' she said. Indonesia expects to reach an agreement on changes to the WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance Network at a meeting in Geneva in December and may resume virus- sharing next year, she said.
It's at least the second time Supari has promised to resume sharing virus samples. In March 2007 she said Indonesia would recommence virus-sharing ``immediately.'' In August last year the WHO said it was yet to receive any samples.
``We've heard some of these things before, so I guess we've just got to be patient and wait for them to be played out,'' said Ian Barr, deputy director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference & Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia. ``We would be very happy if Indonesia resumed sharing the viruses,'' Barr said in a telephone interview today.
`Even More Danger'
Michael Leavitt, the outgoing U.S. secretary of health and human services, last week urged his as-yet-unknown successor to ``strongly defend'' the 60-year-old practice of nations sharing virus samples freely, and said countries that withhold viruses are exposing the world to ``even more danger.''
The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has killed 112 people and sickened 25 others in Indonesia, according to the WHO. Most infections were caused by contact with infected poultry, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers, according to the WHO.
No new human cases have been found since the last ones were detected in July, Supari said, citing better public understanding about how to keep poultry safely.
``I can't say the threat has passed, but at the moment, there's nothing that can trigger a pandemic except if it's man- made,'' Supari said.
Laboratory tests and DNA analysis conducted by the health ministry's research center and the government-funded Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology on ``hundreds of samples'' since the country stopped sending the virus to the WHO found no mutation toward a human-to-human transmission, she said.
Indonesia in April released a national plan for coping with an influenza pandemic. The plan assumes a pandemic flu virus will strike 30 percent of the world's fourth-most populous nation, or 66 million people, and kill more than 153,000.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=acboyNqM6t_U&refer=asia
inas Peternakan and fisheries Kabupaten Subang, West Java vaccinated 1.8 million poultries to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus. Agus Kandawiratma Sugama, Kepala of the Pelayanan Kesehatan Field of the Dinas Peternakan Animal and fisheries of Kabupaten Subang said, the implementation of the bird flu vaccination was only carried out in time of one round then. "Because of the quota" of the "vaccine that we received only for 1.8 million available poultries," said Agus.