Renewed Bird Flu Alert for Bali

[AlaskaDenise]

Well-Coordinated Response from Local Officials as New Outbreak of Avian Flu Discovered in Several Bali Villages.


(2/14/2009) Following the sudden unexplained death of tens of chickens in Abiansemal in the Badung regency of Bali on Monday, February 10, 2009, local authorities have moved quickly to isolate a possible local outbreak of Bird Flu and exterminated more than 40 birds owned by local villagers.

According to Radar Bali, officials, clad in protective clothing and masks, descended on the area and began shooting free ranging chickens with air rifles while some residents assisted by rounding up their birds and presenting them for elimination. The carcasses of the dead birds were immediately burned and buried in the local cemetery while other sanitation officers sprayed disinfectant on the soil in and around the village.

The Chief of the Livestock, Fisheries and Oceans Division (Disnakkanlut) for the Badung regency, I Made Badra, confirmed that his staff were compelled to destroy poultry suspected of possible contagion with Bird Flu in order to prevent additional new infections. Badra said, "elimination, like this, is much more effective than vaccination."

Health officials have identified the villages of Jagapati, Angantaka and Sedang as "red zones" which will be kept under quarantine and close observation for the coming 30 days. Badra said that should any additional sudden deaths occur among poultry populations in this area, all birds in the three villages will then be immediately culled. Additional safety precautions include the closing and disinfection of local slaughter houses.

As part of the protocols stipulated in the disease control and surveillance program to prevent bird flu contagion the nearby village of Munggu has also been put on round the clock monitoring while bio-security measures have been introduced in surrounding areas.

One Man Hospitalized

Meanwhile, a 20-year-old man, Putra Orana Yoga, who had close contact with the infected birds is hospitalized in the isolation ward of a local hospital after complaining of nausea, fever and breathing difficulties. The young man has been started on a course of Tamiflu while doctors await the results of lab tests to confirm a bird flu infection.

The last confirmed death attributed to bird flu in Bali occurred in August 2007 when a 29-year-old woman succumbed to the disease.

In order to prevent any possible spread of the H5N1 virus Denpasar officials have order the disinfecting of the Badung market and the Satria Bird Market.

Bali Bird Park Introduces Strict Bio-Safety Measures

Bali popular Bird Park in Singapadu (Gianyar) have immediately stepped up bio-security measures applied to visitors to the park and the large captive bird collection housed at their facility.

The shoes of visitors the Bali Bird Park are disinfected upon entering and leaving the park while the visitors are sprayed with an aerosol disinfectant.

Curators at the Park have also increased the scheduled cleaning and disinfection schedule of all cages. A program of rapid testing for bird flu symptoms have also been introduced for both staff and birds with all tests-to-date coming up negative for traces of the disease.

Meanwhile, the Bali Bird Park continues to operate in a normal fashion welcoming an average of more than 200 visitors every day.

https://www.balidiscovery.com/messages/message.asp?Id=5048

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Renewed Bird Flu Alert for Bali

Clever statement by Mahardika

Bird flu not a danger: Expert

Luh De Suryani , The Jakarta Post , Denpasar | Tue, 02/17/2009 1:43 PM | Bali

The island's tourism industry will not be endangered by avian flu as long as the government incorporates all stakeholders in the containment effort, a leading expert says.

I Gusti Ngurah Mahardhika, head of the Biomedical and Molecular Biology Laboratory at Udayana University's Veterinary Medicine School, said the government should share the virus samples with other institutions to predict the infection route and to study the possibility of whether the virus can infect humans.

"In fact, the Udayana Medical School has the technology to analyze the virus. If we can gain access to the samples gathered by the Animal Husbandry Agency and the Veterinary Main Office, we can help analyze the viruses that spread recently," he said.

He said the results would be useful in finding out where it came from and whether it was already in Bali or from outside the island.

"The most important thing is figuring out whether the viruses that were gathered in 2009 have the potential to infect humans," said Mahardhika, who was the first scientist to identify the existence of bird flu on the island.

Recently, Bali had another brush with bird flu. Early this month, Jagapati village in the Abiansemal district of Badung saw a resurgence of the virus after officials discovered bird flu in five of the 15 birds that suddenly died there.

Mahardhika said laboratory staff had gone to the infected site to gain more insight into the much-dreaded H5N1 virus.

"But we are not an officially designated avian influenza laboratory. We just check the samples we retrieve ourselves from field visits in response to requests from members of the community or companies," he said.

His laboratory does examina-tions of suspected bird flu viruses, which cost Rp 300,000 (US$25) per sample.

"We can usually give the results within a day. In fact, if the sample arrives first thing in the morning, we can give a one-day service," he said.

Periodically, the samples that test positive in Udayana's laboratory get sent to the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta.

"Most of the virus sequencing has been sent to the international public database at the Genebank. The information there is very useful to help predict the genetic tendencies of viruses, such as whether it prefers mammals in general or humans in particular," he said.

One example of that was when he predicted that the first human case of bird flu infection would occur in Jembrana in 2006.

"That time, we predicted that the first case would occur either in Jembrana, Buleleng or Klungkung. And we were right. The first case happened in Jembrana," he said.

"And from our studies of the virus in 2007, we believed that the virus that attacked people in Jembrana would be different from the ones that attacked people in Tabanan. Fortunately, the bird flu only struck two people. Or it is possible it attacked more than two but somebody missed it or it went unreported."

Mahardhika said the Udayana Veterinary School was ready to support the Bali government in responding to bird flu in a quid pro quo agreement.

"All we want in return is simple and cheap, and that is the right to publish and communicate the genetic information of the virus to other scientists and the public, locally, nationally and internationally," he said.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/17/bird-flu-not-a-danger-expert.html