Indonesia reports growing poultry deaths
It's almost noon Thursday in Indonesia, and we still have nothing new about the Air Batu cases. But this brief story in The Jakarta Post suggests that the smothering of H5N1 news may be ending: Poultry deaths from bird flu on the rise.
The number of poultry, mostly chickens, that died of bird flu in Purbalingga regency in the first half of 2008 has surpassed the 2007 total, the head of the local development planning agency said Wednesday.
"Some 58,000 poultry died of bird flu in 2007, while more than 60,000 died during the first six month of this year," Heni Ruslanto said.
"The poultry were confirmed to have died of bird flu."
Heni added people in the region had limited information about preventive health measures and how to handle bird flu cases.
"Therefore, we are calling related institutes to pay attention to this problem," he said.
