The speed at which Indonesia has become the country with the most human bird flu deaths has experts worried, but they say the pace will continue until the problem is tackled at the source.
The country's 43 reported deaths in just over a year comes as the H5N1 virus spreads virtually unchecked among the billions of poultry in backyard farms throughout the vast archipelago.
Indonesia became the nation hardest hit by bird flu after local tests concluded a 16-year-old boy from Jakarta's outskirts succumbed to the H5N1 virus late on Monday. The tests were conducted by a typically reliable local laboratory, but have not been confirmed by a WHO-affiliated lab.
PHOTO: AP
The country has racked up nearly a third of the world's fatalities in just one year, with the latest case surpassing Vietnam's reported 42 deaths, which occurred over a period of about two-and-a-half years.
Experts say the number of human deaths are a symptom of a much larger problem -- the rampant spread of infection among the country's poultry.
"When you have trouble controlling infection among the chicken flocks, you are naturally going to see continuing infections among humans," Anthony Fauci, the US National Institutes of Health's infectious disease said in a recent interview.
He said the more it spreads, the greater chance it has of eventually evolving into a strain that could cause a human pandemic.
"It's obviously a toll in human suffering, but it also continues to give this virus the capability of circulating," he said. "And the more it circulates, the more you have an opportunity."
Fauci, who visited Southeast Asia last year, said Indonesia has not shown the same aggressive approach as Vietnam and Thailand in tackling the problem in poultry.
Vietnam has not reported any human cases in nearly nine months and no poultry outbreaks this year, after launching a nationwide mass vaccination campaign in poultry last year.
Thailand -- which has reported 16 deaths and is currently experiencing a flare-up -- relied on strong village-based surveillance and mass slaughtering when outbreaks were discovered.
But in Indonesia many local governments have refused to carry out mass poultry slaughters and vaccinations have been sporadic. One of the main issues is a lack of centralized control in a very young democracy.
Many powers once held in Jakarta were given to regional and community governments after dictator Suharto was ousted in 1998. Funding and policy decisions are often at the whim of inexperienced officials, mayors and village heads.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is working with the government at the village level to develop local outbreak detection teams to snuff out poultry outbreaks before they can spread.
But progress is slow with limited resources in a country of 220 million people spread across 17,000 islands.
"It's a disgrace. We have the biggest problem in the world with avian influenza in Indonesia and yet the world is still not investing in getting a systematic control program in place," said Peter Roeder, an FAO expert in Rome who has worked closely with Indonesia.
"What's Vietnam going to feel like if they get virus reintroduced from Indonesia?" he asked.
So far, about US$50 million has been committed to the WHO and FAO for work in animal and human health in Indonesia over the next 18 months, the World Bank says.
Roeder said that amount is needed over three years just to deal with the problem in poultry, which is endemic.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and