Marthen Malelo is a lonely man these days.
The prominent veterinarian made national headlines three years ago by being the first Indonesian researcher to discover bird flu within the country's poultry population.
But with the H5N1 avian influenza virus now infecting and killing humans, including a 43rd death on Monday that made Indonesia the world's worst-affected country, Malelo's phone does not ring much.
"No one has ever asked me to give suggestions to prevent outbreaks," he said in an exclusive interview. "I just stay at home at night."
That might be because the Indonesian government, already stung by criticism of its less-than-stellar efforts at combating bird flu, does not want to hear any more, although Malelo readily gives his two cents worth.
"They don't have enough money and the coordination does not work -- who does what where -- in the control of bird flu in the field," said Malelo, who works at the state-owned Bogor Institute of Agriculture.
"There must be good coordination among the health department, agriculture department and local health offices," he said, adding that presently "there's not enough."
Indonesia prides itself on being the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, but it has nothing to celebrate in passing Vietnam with the most deaths from H5N1.
A 16-year-old boy who had tested positive for bird flu died Monday night in a Jakarta hospital, making him the country's 43rd victim.
Vietnam is second with 42, but has had no deaths this year while Indonesia has had 32.
The continuation of almost weekly victims may lessen the psychological impact of Indonesia's record-breaking death toll, but health experts concede that it will go higher.
"Indonesia is the world's fourth largest country and four times larger than Vietnam, so it's hard to say it represents anything," said Georg Petersen, Indonesia country representative of the WHO.
"As we have said and the Ministry of Health has said, there's still the outbreak among birds in Indonesia," Petersen said. "And as long as there's an outbreak in birds, there may be infections in humans."
More infections, not to mention deaths, are inevitable. Bird flu is endemic in 27 of Indonesia's 33 provinces with millions of chickens and ducks infected.
The Jakarta Post reported Tuesday that bird flu had also spread to the remote eastern province of Papua with around 174 chickens dead and 414 others culled due to suspected infections.
The controversy over culling was one reason the virus was able to blaze across the vast Indonesian archipelago in the first place. The Jakarta government was reluctant to cull chickens, likely because they did not want to compensate commercial chicken farmers for destroying their own livestock.
But the problem is more complex. There are millions of chickens in the backyards of village homes across the country, and trying to organize them for culls or even a vaccination program is difficult if not impossible.
Despite the continuing cases among both birds and humans, the government's nationwide education, prevention and containment program is making progress, according to the WHO.
But Malelo said the Jakarta government has failed to heed advice from experts in Hong Kong who eradicated bird flu through improved hygiene and mandatory segregation of birds in traditional livestock markets that may carry various forms of the virus.
"A major infection source [for humans] is the markets," he said. "But the government for some reason cannot apply the concept here."
Bird flu in Indonesia first grabbed the world's attention in May when seven members of a single family died of the virus -- the largest recorded cluster to date.
The WHO concluded that limited human-to-human transmission likely occurred, but the virus did not spread beyond blood family members.
Despite Indonesia's woes, there is no evidence suggesting a widely feared -- and hyped -- human-to-human pandemic that could kill millions of people will originate here.
"No one is saying a pandemic could be in one country over another -- no one knows for sure," Petersen said. "It's a worldwide phenomenon, almost. Where a pandemic will start is anyone's guess."
That might give Indonesia some comfort as it stands alone atop the current fatality list.
In Chinese author Lu Xun’s (魯迅) novella The True Story of Ah Q (阿Q正傳) — one of the earliest works of modern Chinese fiction, first serialized in 1921 — the story’s hapless protagonist, Ah Q (阿Q), is a poor itinerant worker from China’s peasant class, living during the part-feudal, part-colonial dying embers of the Qing Dynasty. Ah Q is a feeble and psychologically flawed individual who bullies the meek and cowers before the powerful. Despised and regularly mocked by villagers, after every episode of public ridicule and failure, Ah Q consoles himself that he has won a “spiritual victory.” Utterly
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would render the company’s plants inoperable, and that such a war would produce “no winners.” Not only would Taiwan’s economy be destroyed in a cross-strait conflict, but the impact “would go well beyond semiconductors, and would bring about the destruction of the world’s rules-based order and totally change the geopolitical landscape,” Liu said in the interview, according to the Central News Agency. Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands wrote on June 24: “A major war over Taiwan could create global economic
Washington’s official position on US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is that nothing has changed: The US government says it is maintaining its “one China” policy, that Pelosi is free to arrange international trips with congressional delegations independent of the government and that she is not the first US official to visit Taiwan even this year. Yet there is no denying that the fact and the optics of the second-in-line to the US presidency speaking with lawmakers at the Legislative Yuan about inter-parliamentary discussions and learning from each other as equals are hugely significant, as were
Amid a fervor in the global media, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional delegation made a high-profile visit to Taipei. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) awarded a state honor to her at the Presidential Office. Evidently, the occasion took on the aspect of an inter-state relationship between the US and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, despite no mutual state recognition between the two. Beijing furiously condemned Pelosi’s visit in advance, with military drills in the waters surrounding coastal China to check the move. Pelosi is a well-known China hawk, and second in the line of succession to
RSS