Life is Healthy

• Bengkulu still on bird flu alert
• Two children believed infected by bird flu
• Bird flu continuing to menace Cirebon district
• Bird flu kills hundreds of chickens in Jambi
• Bird flu spreading in Kerinci district

Antara News, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 04:49 WIB

Garut, W Java (ANTARA News) - The bird flu viruses attacking Indonesia have been classified as "highly pathogenic avian influenza" (HPAI), a veterinarian said here Tuesday.

In the West Java district of Garut alone, there were at least 75 cases of HPAI between 2006 and 2010 in which more than 2,893 chickens suddenly died, Dida K.Endang said.

The attacks of bird flu viruses in 48 villages of Garut district over the past four years had sparked fears of human infection, said the head of Garut`s veterinary office.

To protect local residents from the worst possibilities, a total of 7,000 infected chickens were culled.

Local authorities paid the owners a compensation of Rp12,500 (US$1,4) for every culled chicken, Endang said.

However, not all people welcomed the amount of compensation. Instead of giving the positively infected chickens for culling, they hid the poultry and just handed over small chickens, he said.

As a result, the efforts to control and halt the spread of bird flu viruses in Garut district were not so successful. This condition was worsened by the lack of locals` health awareness, he said.

Instead of burning the infected chickens, many Garut residents throw them into rivers, creeks, or ponds. Worse, some even consumed the infected chickens, he said.

In curbing the spread of the dangerous viruses, he urged the people to report any suspicious bird flu cases immediately to 12 bird flu surveillance teams.

The team members would have gone to the suspicious spots within 24 hours. The people could also report the condition to the heads of neighborhoods or villages, he said.

The West Java provincial government had targeted that by 2014 the province would have been free from bird flu viruses, Endang said.

The habit of throwing the bird flu-infected chickens into the river was not only found in Garut but also in such other West Java towns as Bogor.

This situation had also made Head of Bogor City`s Health Office Triawan Elan deeply concerned.

"We have asked local residents, who find chickens suddenly die not to throw them into the rivers but to burn them," Triawan Elan said recently.

He warned that the threats of bird flu viruses remained real after tens of chickens in Caparigi suburb suddenly died.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), avian influenza or "bird flu" is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs.

The WHO has warned that the infection with avian influenza viruses could spread very rapidly through poultry flocks.

Indonesia has 33 provinces. Only three have been confirmed free from the threat of bird flu viruses.

Indonesia has been dealing with bird flu since 2005. However, the H5N1 type influenza is also known to have attacked chicken and birds in other Asian countries, such as Thailand, Cambodia, China, and Vietnam.

A genetically mutated avian flu virus is believed to be behind a string of deadly outbreaks in bird populations over the past two years, a scientist said on Tuesday, warning that the new virus had the potential to be more lethal than its ancestor should it infect humans.

Virologist I Gusti Ngurah Mahardhika said the government’s vaccination program with a large number of poultry farms in the past few years may backfire because the mutation was partly suspected to have been caused by an outdated vaccine.

“I have strong evidence that the old vaccine seed [already developed by the country’s vaccine makers] cannot stop the new virus,” said Mahardhika, who is also head of the Biomedical and Molecular Biology Laboratory at the Udayana University’s Veterinary Medicine School.

He said isolated virus samples taken from already vaccinated farms in Java, Sumatra, Bali and Sulawesi from 2008 to 2009 were compared with samples from their ancestor H5N1 virus taken from Legok, Banten, in 2003.

“From the study, we found genetic differences of up to 8.7 percent from the ancestor virus,” he said.

The Legok virus is still being used by most vaccine producers here as the vaccine seed and the recent mutations may mean the seed virus is outdated.

The genetic differences in the virus samples are mostly represented by changes in the acid composition, or RNA [ribonucleic acid], which “have never been found before [in the 2003 virus samples].”

Genetic mutations, according to Mahardhika, could be triggered by either natural causes or vaccine resistance.

In the case of samples he studied, Mahardhika said the changes pointed more to the possibility of vaccine resistance rather than natural causes.

“Flu viruses are highly mutagenic and their RNA structure can quite easily undergo changes, or a deletion. The vaccine also has a masking effect whereby it only provokes immunity in the birds’ respiratory systems although the virus can still be found in the bird’s saliva. So now we can see a seemingly healthy chicken but its droppings and saliva are full of this virus,” he said.

The most recent viral outbreak in poultry populations was reported on Monday from Pekanbaru where thousands of chickens died in several villages. In one of the villages in Indragiri Hulu, two toddlers — aged three years and six months old — are suspected of having been infected.

A Web site jointly developed by Surabaya’s Airlangga University and Kobe University in Japan, www.birdflucorner.wordpress.com, reported that the two neighboring toddlers had had a history of contact with dead chickens.

Indonesia has been the hardest hit by the spread of avian flu, both in humans and poultry. The first outbreaks in bird populations were reported in 2003 with the virus spreading to humans two years later. At least 125 people have died of this bird flu.

So far, human infections can only result from direct contact with dead fowls and there is no scientific evidence that the virus is able to transmit from human to human although suspicions were raised after a few cluster cases were found in which a number of members from the same family had became infected. Simple hygienic practices such as hand washing help prevent infections.

Microbiology clinic professor with the University of Indonesia, Amin Soebandrio, concurred with Mahardhika’s findings, saying he had suspected that such changes would come.

“Research has also been carried out by my students on a similar issue using only 2004 virus samples. And genetic changes are apparent.”

Amin said further study must be done to check whether the changes directly affect the resistance of the virus to the vaccine being used by the government.

“We need to see whether the changes increase the capacity of the virus to infect the human respiratory system,” he said. “If that’s the case, it’s more than likely the virus will also be resistant to the antiviral we are now using to treat patients with avian influenza.”

Tjandra Yoga Aditama, the director general of disease monitoring at the Ministry of Health said the public should not worry too much about these findings because it did not mean a new virus had been created.

“Viruses always have the potential to mutate — that’s common in nature — but these studies don’t meant we’ve found a new strain of virus,” he said.

Memed Zoelkarnain, spokesman for the National Commission for Avian Influenza and Pandemic Prevention, said the findings must be studied further in a bid not to scare people and called on the media to be sensible when reporting on this issue given the findings are preliminary.

“We don’t want to frighten the public,” he said.

Memed, also a veterinary doctor, said Mahardhika should double check with “all vaccine makers” because there was more than one vaccine maker in the country but only a few of them used the 2003 vaccine seed.

Antara News, Monday, February 1, 2010 13:35 WIB

Sukadana, East Lampung (ANTARA News) - Bird flu (Avian Influenza) has broken out in three subdistricts of East Lampung and is spreading to other parts of the region, local residents here said.

"Earlier, bird flu cases were mostly found only in three sub districts, namely Sukadana, Purbolinggo and Marga Tiga. Now , however, more sub districts are affected ," Saefudin (40), a local resident of Batanghari Nuban, East Lampung District, said here on Monday.

In addition to the three subdistricts, the bird flu virus or H5N1 had also spread to Batanghari Nuban and Labuhan Ratu subdistricts, East Lampung.

The H5N1 virus was first detected at Terbanggi Marga village, Sukadana sub district; Sukadana Baru village, Marga Tiga sub district; and Tambah Dadi village, Purbolinggo sub district. However, it has spread to other villages, such as Gunung Tiga village, Batanghari Nuban sub district; and Rajabasa Lama village, Labuhan Ratu sub district.

In January 2010, some 1,176 chickens had died of bird flu in East Lampung.

The East Lampung district authorities have conducted spraying of insecticides in and round caches where chickens had been found infected by the bird flu virus.

Despite the bird flu attack, there was no human case found in the district.

Antara News, Monday, February 1, 2010 15:00 WIB

Purbalingga (ANTARA News) - Bird flu killed around 5,500 chickens in Purbalingga district, Central Java, during January 2010, a local official said.

Some 5,000 dead chickens were found at Tumanggal village and 500 at Pasunggingan village, both in Pengadegan sub district, Purbalingga, Hartono, head of the Purbalingga animal husbandry office, said here on Monday.

The local authorities have conducted measures such as insecticide spraying, rapid test and vaccination to prevent the bird flu or H5N1 virus from spreading to wider areas.

Last year, there were four cases of bird flu and around 6,000 chickens were killed by the virus

Antara News, Friday, January 29, 2010 13:12 WIB

Sukadana, Lampung Province (ANTARA News) - Bird flu (Avian Influenza or the H5N1) virus has stricken three sub districts in East Lampung District, killing at least 1,176 chickens.

"In the current rainy season, chickens are prone to various diseases, including bird flu," Dewanto, head of the East Lampung district animal health unit, said here on Friday.

Some 1,176 chickens had died in seven villages since early January 2010, while in 2009 there had been only 708 dead chickens in 11 villages.

The affected villages include Sukadana, Purbolinggo, and Marga Tiga, East Lampung.