Failed Indonesian bird flu response concerns experts (Radio Transcript)

ELIZABETH JACKSON: An Australian epidemiologist working at the forefront of the fight against bird flu in Indonesia says that country's failure to effectively deal with the disease it putting not only neighbouring Australia but the whole world at risk of a pandemic.

Dr Andrew Jeremijenko has worked in Indonesia for eight years, most recently as the Project Leader of the Influenza Surveillance Studies for a US Naval Medical Research Group, helping the Indonesian Government.

He says countries like Turkey, Vietnam and Thailand have implemented effective control programs and have since had no human deaths, but in Indonesia the deaths keep on coming, with two suspected H5N1 deaths in the past week.

PETER CAVE: How seriously do you think the Indonesians are taking the threat of bird flu?

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: I think the Indonesians are taking this seriously, but I don't think they're actually dealing with it effectively. I really think that they need to do better research, and more investigations and better investigations to work out what is really happening and to work out an effective control program.

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: I don't think they have the experience on the ground. The influenza research here is still in a very early stage. There's meant to be a national influenza centre in Indonesia, but it really hasn't been working at all. They've got international funding, but they haven't been able to get it up and running yet.

I think they are trying to … they are trying to deal with the problem, but they really need to get an effective control program in place.

Now, Indonesia's had this problem since 2003, August 2003, and there've been human deaths since July 2005, and now we're in 2006, February 2006, and they still really haven't got an effective program together.

PETER CAVE: Is the way that Indonesia is dealing with this problem a threat to Australia?

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: I think it is not only a threat to Australia, I think it is a threat to the whole entire world. Every human case is another potential mutation that could turn this virus into a pandemic virus.

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: I think Nigeria, India, Indonesia, they are all threats to the world. But Indonesia is more advanced, it's had this virus for longer, and so that's why we are more concerned.

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: Yes, that's a good question. We are seeing mutations in the human virus. We are not seeing that same mutation in the bird virus. And that's of great concern.

Basically, when you do an investigation of a bird flu case, you should try to find the virus from the human and match it up with the virus from the bird and find the cause.

Now, in Indonesia, the investigations have been sub-optimal, and they have not been able to match the human virus to the poultry virus, so we really do not know where that virus is coming from in most of these human cases.

PETER CAVE: Does it suggest it's going through an intermediary before it's infecting humans?

PETER CAVE: It's a possibility that we can't rule out. I think they really need to do a lot more investigations. So far the closest match we have to the human virus is from a cat virus. So the cat could be an intermediate. We really don't know what's happening yet. They need to do more studies, they need to get better investigators on the ground to work out what is happening in Indonesia, and it needs to be done urgently.

ANDREW JEREMIJENKO: I think they need international assistance. So far the investigations have been unable to match the viruses. It is poor communication between the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture. There are many reasons, but they don't seem to be able to match the viruses from the human case to the animal case, and that is putting the world at threat.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Dr Andrew Jeremijenko speaking with the ABC's Foreign Affairs Editor, Peter Cave, in Jakarta.

The situation's slowly going downhill in Indonesia. They reported two more deaths this week from the virus, too.

Indonesia is a Muslim country and in fact has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world--170,310,000.

From http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_islam.html

Bird flu just may be the solution to the Muslim problem.

Hank

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