JAKARTA, 26 January 2004 — Indonesia yesterday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu among millions of chickens while Thailand deployed its army to kill thousands of infected chickens.
In Jakarta, Sofjan Sudardjat, a senior Department of Agriculture official, said: “The government is not trying to conceal that avian influenza has attacked millions of chickens in Indonesia.”
He said further tests would be conducted to determine whether the virus was the same strain that has swept through six other countries in the region, killing at least six people and millions of poultry.
“This strain has only affected chickens (in Indonesia) so far,” he said.
Governments in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have ordered mass chicken culls to combat the spread of the bird flu. Vietnam has slaughtered more than 3 million chickens and Thailand 9 million.
In Thailand, hundreds of soldiers and 60 prisoners from the provincial jail were brought in to help with a mass chicken slaughter in Suphanburi to try to halt the spread of the virus.
Thailand confirmed outbreaks of bird flu at two more farms yesterday, as the prime minister admitted his government had suspected for several weeks that the deadly disease had hit its billion-dollar poultry industry, but did not tell the public in order to avoid panic. “We have suspected this (bird flu outbreak) for about a couple of weeks,” Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters during a visit to Suphanburi, the province where the virus has hit hardest and where scores of now-ruined farmers charge that the government ignored their pleas for help.
The bird flu outbreak is potentially the worst crisis to face Thaksin since the telecommunications tycoon came to power in 2001 promising prosperity through economic reform.
A 56-year-old Thai man is suspected of having died from the virus. Two boys, aged six and seven, have been hospitalized as confirmed cases, and two other people are under surveillance. Six confirmed bird flu deaths have been reported in nearby Vietnam.
In Indonesia, about 40 percent of nearly 5 million chickens that have died since October were infected by Newcastle disease, another poultry ailment not dangerous to humans, Sudardjat said. It first hit the Central Java provincial town of Pekalongan.
Sudardjat said samples of the bird flu virus had been sent to Australia for further testing. He said results identifying the subtype of the virus would not be available until Wednesday or Thursday.
