Experts descend on Jakarta to sort out bird flu outbreaks

An international team of experts are meeting in Jakarta this week to assess the avian flu situation in Indonesia.

Experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UNICEF and agencies including the US and European centres for disease control will meet in Jakarta to look at the introduction of measures to reduce bird flu in Indonesia, where human cases of H5N1 infection have risen at a disturbing rate over the past year.

This follows the confirmation by the Ministry of Health in Indonesia of the country's 50th case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

The latest case was in a 7-year-old girl who developed symptoms on 26 May, was hospitalized on 30 May, and died on 1 June.

Her 10-year-old brother died of respiratory disease on 29 May, but no specimens were taken for testing and the cause of his death is undetermined.

An investigation has discovered a history of chicken deaths in the household and neighbourhood before the illness developed but laboratory tests of surviving family members and close contacts have revealed no further cases.

The experts are meeting as a result of a request from the Indonesian government, and is being welcomed as a sign that Indonesia is concerned about the threat posed by H5N1 both for its citizens and the global community.

The meeting comes as criticism of Jakarta's response to the H5N1 threat is growing, in particular its failure to control the spread of the virus in animals.

Many experts also say that while Indonesia continues to meet with international experts it is doing little to implement their recommendations.

It seems Indonesia's National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness asked the WHO and its animal health counterpart, the Food and Agriculture Organization, to bring a variety of experts to Indonesia to study the scope of the problem and make recommendations on how best to deal with it.

Since Indonesia began reporting human cases of H5N1 last July, infections have been occurring at the rate of one a week on average and the WHO says they are concerned about cases which are turning up across a vast region and the number of clusters occurring.

To date of the 49 confirmed cases, 37 have died but a number of other people are suspected of having had the virus, but died and were buried or cremated before samples could be taken to test for infection.

Of the 10 countries that have recorded human cases of H5N1, Indonesia to date has had the second highest number of cases; only Vietnam exceeds that of Indonesia.

But Vietnam's efforts to combat the virus in poultry flocks appear to have been successful and the country has not reported a human case of H5N1 since last November.