Indonesia declares bird flu a national disaster

Bird flu isn't going away whether you want it to or not. The WHO (World Health Organization) is predicting a world-wide pandemic.

Indonesia is set to declare bird flu as a national disaster, giving the government access to special funds to combat the disease that has killed 63 people nationwide, the planning minister said today.

“It has become an epidemic,” Paskah Suzetta said in the capital, Jakarta, where authorities are preparing for the compulsory slaughter of thousands of backyard chickens as part of high-profile efforts to fight the H5N1 virus.

“The president has indicated he will declare it a national disaster so money can be allocated from the state budget’s disaster fund,” he added.

Indonesia, which has suffered more than a third of the world’s human deaths from bird flu, has been criticised in the past for failing to crack down on the disease when it first appeared in poultry stocks nearly four years ago.

It is now endemic in chickens almost all over the country and, despite optimism late last year that it may have been contained, killed six people in the last month. Many of the 63 people who have died lived near Jakarta, home also to more than 100,000 backyard chickens, ducks, doves and song birds.

Authorities, who gave residents weeks to voluntarily get rid of their birds, will now go door to door in some neighbourhoods to make sure the order is carried out, said Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso.

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