AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060914.A06&irec=5
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Bird flu will continue to move through the country's poultry flocks because of shortfalls in the vaccination and biosecurity measures applied here, new research reveals.
Santoso Soeroso, the director of Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Indonesia's main treatment center for bird flu, said the improper vaccination of chickens and ducks may be helping to spread the virus.
"It has become a silent epidemic. People think they have already vaccinated their poultry, they think they have stopped the virus from spreading. In fact, the virus continues to attack (poultry) because the vaccination is improper," he told participants in an Australia-Indonesia science and technology symposium here Wednesday.
Santoso said that research carried out in Bali showed the province had a vaccine failure rate of 39 percent. It also indicated that around 60 percent of ducks had bird flu.
Improper vaccination, he said, includes the use of substandard vaccines and the inability to evaluate the success of the program due to the absence of an unvaccinated control group.
The low coverage of the national vaccination program is another of its weaknesses, he said.
Bagoes Poermadjaja, the deputy director for animal disease monitoring at the Agriculture Ministry, acknowledged that only 60 percent of the country's 300 million chickens and ducks had been vaccinated against bird flu.
"We lack the funds, human resources and capacity for early detection. We are still not giving adequate compensation for slaughtered birds and are having difficulty vaccinating backyard chickens," he told the symposium.
He said there were also deficiencies in the biosecurity measures applied.
Biosecurity includes cage cleanliness and monitoring the movements of birds and chickens to prevent sick poultry being transferred from one area into another.
He said the study showed that most cases of bird flu in humans had occurred in Lampung, Banten, Jakarta and West Java provinces, where poultry is constantly being transported back and forth.
This implied, Santoso said, that monitoring along the busy route was not effective, with the possibility that sick poultry in one of the areas was being taken into the other areas.
Bagoes, however, blamed weak coordination between the central government and regional administrations.
"Regional autonomy has made it more difficult to coordinate as each region has its own authority and priorities. Many regions don't have an agency that specializes in husbandry affairs, let alone bird flu."
The government confirmed Wednesday a 5-year-old boy who died in March had bird flu, bringing the country's toll to 49.
Santoso said that misdiagnosis or late detection had contributed to the high fatality rate here as the country does not have a rapid test for avian influenza.
Jef Hammond of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory said that scientists from both countries were now working on enhancing surveillance efforts at village level so the virus could be detected as early as possible.
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Bird flu will continue to move through the country's poultry flocks because of shortfalls in the vaccination and biosecurity measures applied here, new research reveals.
Santoso Soeroso, the director of Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Indonesia's main treatment center for bird flu, said the improper vaccination of chickens and ducks may be helping to spread the virus.
"It has become a silent epidemic. People think they have already vaccinated their poultry, they think they have stopped the virus from spreading. In fact, the virus continues to attack (poultry) because the vaccination is improper," he told participants in an Australia-Indonesia science and technology symposium here Wednesday.
Santoso said that research carried out in Bali showed the province had a vaccine failure rate of 39 percent. It also indicated that around 60 percent of ducks had bird flu.
Improper vaccination, he said, includes the use of substandard vaccines and the inability to evaluate the success of the program due to the absence of an unvaccinated control group.
The low coverage of the national vaccination program is another of its weaknesses, he said.
Bagoes Poermadjaja, the deputy director for animal disease monitoring at the Agriculture Ministry, acknowledged that only 60 percent of the country's 300 million chickens and ducks had been vaccinated against bird flu.
"We lack the funds, human resources and capacity for early detection. We are still not giving adequate compensation for slaughtered birds and are having difficulty vaccinating backyard chickens," he told the symposium.
He said there were also deficiencies in the biosecurity measures applied.
Biosecurity includes cage cleanliness and monitoring the movements of birds and chickens to prevent sick poultry being transferred from one area into another.
He said the study showed that most cases of bird flu in humans had occurred in Lampung, Banten, Jakarta and West Java provinces, where poultry is constantly being transported back and forth.
This implied, Santoso said, that monitoring along the busy route was not effective, with the possibility that sick poultry in one of the areas was being taken into the other areas.
Bagoes, however, blamed weak coordination between the central government and regional administrations.
"Regional autonomy has made it more difficult to coordinate as each region has its own authority and priorities. Many regions don't have an agency that specializes in husbandry affairs, let alone bird flu."
The government confirmed Wednesday a 5-year-old boy who died in March had bird flu, bringing the country's toll to 49.
Santoso said that misdiagnosis or late detection had contributed to the high fatality rate here as the country does not have a rapid test for avian influenza.
Jef Hammond of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory said that scientists from both countries were now working on enhancing surveillance efforts at village level so the virus could be detected as early as possible.