Via Reuters: Expert calls for animal surveillance in Indonesia. When the expert is Dr. Guan Yi, we'd better listen. Excerpt:
A leading bird flu expert urged Indonesia on Thursday to do more animal surveillance to curb the H5N1 virus, which has killed 46 people so far in the country, the highest death toll anywhere in the world.
The virus was first detected in the Indonesian archipelago in late 2003 and is now endemic in almost all of its provinces, due in part to reluctance to carry out mass culling of birds.
"Indonesia should do more animal surveillance and understand how the virus behaves. It is a place that causes concern," said Guan Yi, a microbiology professor at the University of Hong Kong.
"Since 2003, it has had no new introduction of the H5N1. It has only one strain, but its problem is like China's. It can't clean it up," said Guan, who has studied the virus since 1997, when it made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong.
Guan's call came as 4 people were admitted to an Indonesian hospital with bird flu symptoms in an area of West Java that has seen a series of confirmed and suspected cases in humans.
At least two people in Cikelet, about 90 km (55 miles) south of the provincial capital of West Java, Bandung, have been confirmed to have died from the H5N1 virus in recent weeks.
