Indonesia seeks Vietnam advice on fighting bird flu
JAKARTA - Indonesia will study how Vietnam managed to contain an outbreak of bird flu in humans, Jakarta's health minister said on Tuesday as the number of positive cases of the deadly virus in the country rose to five.
"They have limited resources like us but they were able to properly halt avian influenza," Siti Fadillah Supari told Reuters after meeting her Vietnamese counterpart, Tran Thi Trung Chien.
"We will dissect the case, whether that is because of their eradication measures or something else."
Vietnam has recorded 44 deaths from bird flu, the most of any of the four Asian nations where the virus has claimed lives, but there have been no new cases there since July.
There have been five confirmed cases in Indonesia since July, comprising three deaths and two people being treated.
The World Health Organisation warned last month that bird flu was moving towards a form that could be passed between humans, and the world had no time to waste to prevent a pandemic.
Vietnam's vice minister of health, Trinh Quan Huan, told Reuters in an interview on Sept. 23 that Vietnam had bird flu under control and that a mass poultry vaccination programme to innoculate 260 million birds was due to end in November.
Earlier, Indonesia said a 21-year-old man from the island of Sumatra was being treated for bird flu, bringing the number of positive cases in the country to five.
Tests at a laboratory in Hong Kong had confirmed the results, said I Nyoman Kandun, director general of disease control at the ministry.
"He participated in the butchering of a sick chicken. The chicken meat was then shared with neighbours," Kandun told Reuters by telephone.
The man was being treated at a hospital in the city of Bandar Lampung along with his four-year-old nephew, who has tested positive for bird flu in Indonesia but yet to be confirmed by the Hong Kong laboratory as having the virus.
Some officials have put the number of positive cases in Indonesia at six. Officials have also said four or five people had died, but not all test results were sent to Hong Kong.
Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia since late 2003 and has been found in birds in Russia and Europe.
Kandun said 22 people were under observation for bird flu-like symptoms in the world's fourth-most-populous nation but that none had shown positive results yet.
By Telly Nathalia & Ade Rina - Reuters - October 11, 2005.
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