Theresa42
Well-known member
Welcome to the land of bird flu confusion
August 11, 2006
Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's staggering number of bird flu cases may not be something to be ashamed of, as Vice President Jusuf Kalla once said, but being the world's number one for fatalities is certainly not something to be proud of, sir.
From the beginning, the government took the wrong approach to handling the virus. They dealt with it like they dealt with seasonal dengue outbreaks and other infectious diseases -- in a piecemeal and lethargic fashion -- meaning many other people did not take the outbreak seriously either.
It is no doubt still fresh in many people's minds how the government's "get-tough" measures -- proposals for a mass cull of birds in infected areas -- were reacted to by bird owners and poultry farmers.
Then the news was filled with stories of backyard fowl breeders and chicken farmers -- their angst, their anger and their pride. Their opposition meant the government scaled back the measures and ended up backpedaling. In many cases the final solution was to do nothing.
But the chickens kept dying and young people did too. It was hard to keep count of the fatalities -- 42, 43, 44, or 45?
And if many people here still think avian influenza is something rare, and in some cases not real at all, then the government must be held responsible for not sharing the truth.
One could understandably wonder, with the paucity of information out there about bird flu, whether the virus really poses any danger at all.
Is H5N1 being controlled or curbed? Will there ever be a cure? Is oseltamivir, the wonder drug commonly mentioned in association with the virus, available over the counter or out of reach? How much does it cost and how does it work? Is it better to vaccinate birds or cull them? Is the virus now spreading more easily between humans?
There are, of course, answers to these questions, but we rarely hear them from the government.
Talk to officials and one finds a bewildering range of opinions about the disease, some informed and some not.
And it is this confusion that has too often left the state paralyzed.
With all due respect to the democratic right to freedom of expression, someone in government must take charge and be consistent when making public statements about the disease.
The government and the media have a huge influence on public opinion and wrong, inaccurate or mistimed information can spread panic or lull people into a false sense of security.
The idea to set up the National Commission on Bird Flu earlier this year was a welcome start to what seemed to be a carefully planned strategy by the government.
Unfortunately the establishment of the commission was ignored by most national media, which chose to focus on other more sensational news.
Now there are new questions. What is the authority of the commission, how does it work on the ground, and what its strategic plan? How much money does it have and what can the public expect from it?
Only recently there was a piece of news involving commission chairman and Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie and Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari paying a visit to a North Sumatra hospital.
The pair met a bird flu patient, gave him a pat on the shoulder and called it a day. Before they left, the ministers also mentioned a new suspected case of bird flu involving two young girls and made a bunch of promises about an immediate mass cull and a vaccination program for the area.
Luckily, the tests on the young girls turned out to be negative.
But the public heard little about the activities of the commission and there was no information about how to contact it.
Most bird flu stories these days involve deaths or suspected illnesses, the circumstances of the victims' families and more promises.
Infectious disease expert Richard Schabas -- quoted in Colum Murphy's latest book Flu Action Plan, A Business Survival Guide -- says scaring people about avian influenza accomplishes nothing if people are not told what to do about it. One might add "boring" and "confusing" to the list.
The details may be different but the story is often the same. An example from the media: "X" who died of bird flu the other day was tested positive for the H5N1 virus. After the who, the what, the when and the where, the rest of the story was a jumble of meaningless statistics, which looked like lazy space-filling rather than real journalism.
Sometimes, to make things more riveting, contradicting quotes from officials are added to show the government's collective confusion.
Expose people to a constant stream of half-baked information and they will go numb eventually. They will only get alarmed if their neighbors start dropping like flies, and still no action is taken. By then, it will be too late for an information strategy.
The government needs to help the media give a context to what has happened, correct misunderstandings and misinformation and, most importantly, share tips on what people can do to avoid catching and spreading the virus.
H5N1 must no longer be a stranger to us, as knowing our enemy is the best way to win a war.
And if this fight means killing the virus' hosts -- our beloved pet birds, chickens, ducks and other carriers -- then there should be no hesitation.
The media's job is to ensure that state officials do not feel comfortable about continuing a laid-back approach to combating the virus -- the kind of approach that sees thousands of people die in avoidable disasters and from preventable diseases every year.
Officials are extremely practiced at picking up the ball in a public show and then quietly dropping it behind their backs. And it is all too easy for them to do this when the media all-too-often exhibits an extreme form of attention deficit disorder.
For the greater good, in a time like this it is better to be constant, alarmist and informative than piecemeal, confusing and late.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060811.A05&irec=4
August 11, 2006
Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's staggering number of bird flu cases may not be something to be ashamed of, as Vice President Jusuf Kalla once said, but being the world's number one for fatalities is certainly not something to be proud of, sir.
From the beginning, the government took the wrong approach to handling the virus. They dealt with it like they dealt with seasonal dengue outbreaks and other infectious diseases -- in a piecemeal and lethargic fashion -- meaning many other people did not take the outbreak seriously either.
It is no doubt still fresh in many people's minds how the government's "get-tough" measures -- proposals for a mass cull of birds in infected areas -- were reacted to by bird owners and poultry farmers.
Then the news was filled with stories of backyard fowl breeders and chicken farmers -- their angst, their anger and their pride. Their opposition meant the government scaled back the measures and ended up backpedaling. In many cases the final solution was to do nothing.
But the chickens kept dying and young people did too. It was hard to keep count of the fatalities -- 42, 43, 44, or 45?
And if many people here still think avian influenza is something rare, and in some cases not real at all, then the government must be held responsible for not sharing the truth.
One could understandably wonder, with the paucity of information out there about bird flu, whether the virus really poses any danger at all.
Is H5N1 being controlled or curbed? Will there ever be a cure? Is oseltamivir, the wonder drug commonly mentioned in association with the virus, available over the counter or out of reach? How much does it cost and how does it work? Is it better to vaccinate birds or cull them? Is the virus now spreading more easily between humans?
There are, of course, answers to these questions, but we rarely hear them from the government.
Talk to officials and one finds a bewildering range of opinions about the disease, some informed and some not.
And it is this confusion that has too often left the state paralyzed.
With all due respect to the democratic right to freedom of expression, someone in government must take charge and be consistent when making public statements about the disease.
The government and the media have a huge influence on public opinion and wrong, inaccurate or mistimed information can spread panic or lull people into a false sense of security.
The idea to set up the National Commission on Bird Flu earlier this year was a welcome start to what seemed to be a carefully planned strategy by the government.
Unfortunately the establishment of the commission was ignored by most national media, which chose to focus on other more sensational news.
Now there are new questions. What is the authority of the commission, how does it work on the ground, and what its strategic plan? How much money does it have and what can the public expect from it?
Only recently there was a piece of news involving commission chairman and Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie and Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari paying a visit to a North Sumatra hospital.
The pair met a bird flu patient, gave him a pat on the shoulder and called it a day. Before they left, the ministers also mentioned a new suspected case of bird flu involving two young girls and made a bunch of promises about an immediate mass cull and a vaccination program for the area.
Luckily, the tests on the young girls turned out to be negative.
But the public heard little about the activities of the commission and there was no information about how to contact it.
Most bird flu stories these days involve deaths or suspected illnesses, the circumstances of the victims' families and more promises.
Infectious disease expert Richard Schabas -- quoted in Colum Murphy's latest book Flu Action Plan, A Business Survival Guide -- says scaring people about avian influenza accomplishes nothing if people are not told what to do about it. One might add "boring" and "confusing" to the list.
The details may be different but the story is often the same. An example from the media: "X" who died of bird flu the other day was tested positive for the H5N1 virus. After the who, the what, the when and the where, the rest of the story was a jumble of meaningless statistics, which looked like lazy space-filling rather than real journalism.
Sometimes, to make things more riveting, contradicting quotes from officials are added to show the government's collective confusion.
Expose people to a constant stream of half-baked information and they will go numb eventually. They will only get alarmed if their neighbors start dropping like flies, and still no action is taken. By then, it will be too late for an information strategy.
The government needs to help the media give a context to what has happened, correct misunderstandings and misinformation and, most importantly, share tips on what people can do to avoid catching and spreading the virus.
H5N1 must no longer be a stranger to us, as knowing our enemy is the best way to win a war.
And if this fight means killing the virus' hosts -- our beloved pet birds, chickens, ducks and other carriers -- then there should be no hesitation.
The media's job is to ensure that state officials do not feel comfortable about continuing a laid-back approach to combating the virus -- the kind of approach that sees thousands of people die in avoidable disasters and from preventable diseases every year.
Officials are extremely practiced at picking up the ball in a public show and then quietly dropping it behind their backs. And it is all too easy for them to do this when the media all-too-often exhibits an extreme form of attention deficit disorder.
For the greater good, in a time like this it is better to be constant, alarmist and informative than piecemeal, confusing and late.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060811.A05&irec=4