Via CIDRAP, Lisa Schnirring has a good summary of the week so far, including Kyrgyzstan and Togo: Indonesia reports H5N1 decline in poultry flocks. Excerpt:
An agriculture ministry official in Indonesia who spoke yesterday at a pandemic planning conference for businesses said the number of poultry outbreaks caused by the H5N1 avian influenza virus is declining.
Muhammad Azhar, the agriculture ministry's avian influenza control coordinator, said only 2 of Indonesia's 31 provinces have not been hit by the virus, but pointed out that 9 provinces have gone 6 months without reporting any new outbreaks, the Jakarta Post reported today.
"Areas still at risk are those on Java Island, because it is the main producer of both pedigree and nonpedigree chickens," he said, according to the report.
In March, a representative from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that H5N1 virus levels in Indonesia's poultry are so high that conditions might be ripe for viral mutation that could start an influenza pandemic, according to previous reports. The FAO has said the disease is endemic in Java, Sumatra, and southern Sulawesi islands.
The FAO has said the country needs more resources and better coordination to improve surveillance and control of the virus, and that by June that organization hoped to train more than 2,000 response teams to work in more than 300 of Indonesia's 448 districts.
A health minister who spoke at the conference said the number of human H5N1 cases has also declined this year, the Post reported. Erna Tresnaningsih, the health ministry's director for animal-vector diseases, said Indonesia has recorded 20 H5N1 cases and 17 fatalities from the disease so far this year. She said the number appears to trail the numbers seen in 2006 (55 cases and 45 deaths) and 2007 (42 cases and 37 deaths).
