Via The Jakarta Post: Public told to stay alert despite declining threat. Excerpt:
Efforts to reduce the transmission of avian influenza (bird flu) in Indonesia should not stop despite the significant decrease in H5N1 cases.
“Bird flu cases in poultry and humans are decreasing. The last case found in a human was in Jakarta in January,” Emil Agustiono from the Coordinating Public Welfare Ministry said Wednesday.
“The H5N1 virus, which is pathogenic and deadly, is endemic in Indonesia,” he said. “But we should not be afraid. We just need to be aware of it.”
According to the World Health Organization, the number of deaths due to H5N1 in Indonesia decreased steadily from 45 in 2006, to 37 in 2007 and to 19 in 2009.
To help Indonesia reduce the risk of bird flu, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control Project (CBAIC) conducted a 4-year program.
“The focus has been to work at the community, government, local government, health and husbandry agency level, as well as with commercial farms,” Maria Isabel Busquets of CBAIC said.
“This is all to reduce the risk of avian influenza transmission.”I would be delighted to think that no one in Indonesia had died of H5N1 since January, but we do have some suspected H5N1 deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl named Joice Evelyn, reported here this morning.
H5N1 has been a huge and embarrassing political issue in Indonesia since 2005. The official numbers of confirmed cases and deaths may have declined, but Jakarta has deliberately failed to report those cases promptly and accurately as it's supposed to as a signatory to the International Health Regulations.
The threat may be declining, but we're entitled to be skeptical about the numbers Jakarta gives us.
