Tick, Tick, Tick | 107 Avian Flu Deaths In Indonesia

Chickens - Experts say the danger is the virus may evolve into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, in which case the transmission rate would soar, causing a pandemic in which millions of people could die. Image Credit: FAO

Tick, Tick, Tick 107 Avian Flu Deaths In Indonesia

This morning, two deaths of adolescent Indonesians help to establish the island(s) nation as the most affected nation on Earth due to the bird flu virus.

One boy and one girl bring the total number of deaths to 107, and it is unclear wither these cases can be traced to “Cluster” human-to-human transfer of the virus even though the boy that just passed away had a brother die from the same disease.

There are still other individuals who have tested positive for the Avian Flu but have yet to succumb to the effects of the H5N1 virus of which there remains no cure.

Indonesia - Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting the H5N1 virus, which is endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia. According to United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data on March 19, bird flu has infected 31 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia. Image Credit: FAO

This excerpted from Reuters -

Two Indonesian youths die of bird flu
By Mita Valina Liem; Editing by Ed Davies and Alex Richardson Reuters Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:05am EDT

JAKARTA - Two Indonesian youths have died from bird flu, a health ministry official said on Monday.

A 15-year-old boy from Subang, in West Java, died on Wednesday in an area where chickens had died, said Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the ministry.

An 11-year-old girl from Bekasi, east of Jakarta, who died on Friday also tested positive for the virus, the official said.

"There were dead chickens in the boy's neighbourhood, but in the girl's case it is still unclear," Kandun said via a mobile phone text message.
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Earlier on Monday, a 22-month-old girl from Sumatra's Bukit Tinggi tested positive for bird flu and the health ministry was checking her neighbourhood for possible backyard farming.

"Her condition is improving, and she is being treated at a Padang hospital," Lily Sulistyowati, a health ministry spokeswoman, said by telephone.

Including the latest deaths, Indonesia has had 132 confirmed cases of the virus.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting the H5N1 virus, which is endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia.

According to United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data on March 19, bird flu has infected 31 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia.

Experts say the danger is the virus may evolve into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, in which case the transmission rate would soar, causing a pandemic in which millions of people could die.
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Tick, Tick, Tick – Bird Flu Brings Bali "Low"

The Bali Starling lives only on Bali. As few as six may exist in the wild. Image Credit: Adrian Pingstone in January 2005

Tick, Tick, Tick – Bird Flu Brings Bali "Low"

Indonesia has become the country to watch as it relates to bird flu crossover deaths. Human infection and deaths attributed to Avian Flu virus contracted directly from the raising of birds for food have now claimed 82 victims … the most of any country in the world.

If this virus mutates to where it can be transferred from human to human, the health of the world will be in jeopardy through a pandemic that will have little in the way of vaccines and other tools to counter this threat from the world health community.

If this virus is able to make the crossover from bird - human transmission to human - human transmission, forget the war on terror created by radical Muslim Islamists … a pandemic will become the greatest threat to human life and stability in this world as we know it.

Funny how this threat, Avian Flu crossover, happens to be at its worse in a primarily Muslim believing country (Bali is managed as part of Indonesia while primarily believing in Hindi traditions in religion). One has to ask – What is wrong with these societies and infrastructures that would allow this threat to world health to approach a tipping point? It may be just a coincidence but the world needs answers and a clear counter strategy to combat this potential pandemic.

Excerpts from Forbes via The Sydney Morning Herald -

Bali bird flu deaths spark tourism fears
By Kate Benson and Mark Forbes in Jakarta - August 14, 2007

AUSTRALIAN health officials are on alert after a deadly outbreak of bird flu on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

The finding is another blow to Indonesia's tourism industry, still struggling to recover from the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings.

Ni Luh Putu Sri Windiani, from north-western Bali, became the island's first human victim of bird flu after she died of multiple organ failure on Sunday.

Doctors at the Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar confirmed last night that the 29-year-old Indonesian woman had tested positive to the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Ms Windiani's daughter, Dian, 5, died suffering from similar symptoms at the same hospital 11 days ago after playing with sick chickens outside their house, but experts are unable to determine if she had bird flu.

It is also unclear whether Ms Windiani contracted bird flu from the chickens or from her daughter. She started showing symptoms more than a week ago, but was admitted to hospital six days later. She was transferred to Denpasar on Friday and treated in the isolation unit.

Australian officials said they were closely monitoring the investigation into the deaths.
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Australia's travel advisory already warns of the risk of bird flu in Indonesia, but states the danger to short-term visitors is relatively low.

A spokesman from the Bird Flu Information Centre in Jakarta, Joko Suyono, said many chickens around Ms Windiani's house had died suddenly in recent weeks.

"The villagers didn't burn the carcasses. Instead, they buried them or fed them to pigs," he said.

The deputy director of the World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Ian Barr, said yesterday there was no need to panic.

"Most of these cases occur in villages, not in downtown Kuta or Denpasar, so I'm not sure that travellers should be too concerned."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing, Kay McNiece, said travellers to any bird flu-affected country should steer clear of birds and should practise good hygiene.
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Indonesia reported its first human bird flu case in July 2005.
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Twenty-one Indonesians diagnosed with the disease have survived.
Reference Here>>

We, at MAXINE, become very concerned when officials are "unclear whether Ms Windiani contracted bird flu from the chickens or from her daughter".

We think it is high time that officials in Bali (and Indonesia) become CLEAR as to the source of this latest death due to Avian flu infection and not be so worried about how this might effect tourism.

A Fish For Time … Any Time

Graphic fact file on the coelacanth, a rare fish once thought to be extinct for millions of years until one was caught in 1938 off the coast of East Africa. A living specimen was caught in Indonesia this year, only the second ever in the region. Image Credit: AFP Graphic

A Fish For Time … Any Time

The Coelacanth is just this type of ocean creature.

It has become a fish of our time in that the sightings are so rare that these these occurrences create international attention in the scientific community.

Most scientists believed that this fish was extinct until one was caught and catalogued about 70 years ago, in the Commoros archipelago, off of the coast of Eastern Africa.

Until this latest catch, there was only one other sighting in Indonesia (in the same area, Manado, as this sighting) back in 1998.

Coelacanths, closely related to lungfish, usually live at depths of 656-3,200 feet. They can grow up to 6.5 feet in length and weigh as much as 200 pounds.

This catch was equally unusual, in that, it came on the end of a 360 foot line … about half of the depth that scientists understood this fish could live.

Further, this Coelacanth is a fish for time … any time because it only took a little over two months for information on this capture to make it to general news distribution.

An unidentified researcher measures a coelacanth after it was caught by fishermen at a depth of about 100m off Nungwi, northern Zanzibar July 14, 2007. The fish weighed 27kgs with a total length of 134.8cm. The coelacanth, known from fossil records dating back more than 360 million years, was believed to have become extinct some 80 million years ago until one was caught off the eastern coast of South Africa in 1938 -- a major zoological find. Image Credit: Picture taken July 14, 2007. REUTERS/Dr Narriman Jiddawi/Institute of Marine Sciences in Zanzibar/Handout (TANZANIA)

This from Agence France-Presse (AFP) via Yahoo! News -

Scientists excited by Indonesian-caught coelacanth
By Ronan Bourhis - AFP - Sat Jul 28, 11:06 PM ET

MANADO, Indonesia - Two months ago Indonesian fisherman Justinus Lahama caught a fish so exceptional that an international team of scientists rushed here to investigate.

French experts equipped with sonar and GPS asked Lahama to reconstruct, in his dugout canoe, exactly what it was he did that enabled him to catch a rare coelacanth fish, an awkward-swimming species among the world's oldest.

Indonesian fisherman Justinus Lahama displaying to international researchers how he managed to capture a giant and very rare coelacanth fish in Manado, North Sulawesi, in June. Their fossil records date back more than 360 million years and suggest the animal has changed little in that time. Image Credit: AFP/File/Ronan Bourhis

Last May 19, Lahama and his son Delvy manoevred their frail canoe into the Malalayang river, on the outskirts of Manado, on northern Sulawesi island. Like any other morning, they rowed out to sea and fished within 200 metres (yards) of the beach.
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"I very quickly unrolled the usual trawl line with three hooks, about 110 metres (yards) long, and at the end of three minutes, I felt a large catch," Lahama recounts.

The pull was strong: "I had painful arms -- I felt such a resistance, I thought that I was pulling up a piece of coral."

After 30 minutes of effort under the searing tropical sun, he finally saw a fish swishing at a depth of about 20 metres (65 feet).

"The sea was very calm this day. There was no wind, no clouds, no current. The water was very clear. The fish let itself be drawn in from there," he says.

"It was an enormous fish. It had phosphorescent green eyes and legs. If I had pulled it up during the night, I would have been afraid and I would have thrown it back in," he exclaims.
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Lahama, 48, has fished since he was 10 years old, like his father and his grandfather before him. But he was unlikely to have ever run into this "living fossil" species, as scientists have dubbed the enigmatic fish.

Fin of a very rare coelacanth fish in Manado as Indonesian, Japanese and French specialists (unseen) carry out an autopsy, North Sulawesi, in June. Coelacanths are among the world's oldest fish species. Their fossil records date back more than 360 million years and suggest the animal has changed little in that time. Image Credit: AFP/File/Ronan Bourhis

Lahama's catch, 1.3 metres long and weighing 50 kilograms (110 pounds) was only the second ever captured alive in Asia.
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Their fossil records date back more than 360 million years and suggest that the fish has changed little over that period.
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Returning to port, he [Lahama] showed it off to the most senior fisherman, who became alarmed.

"It is a fish which has legs -- it should be given back to the water. It will bring us misfortune," he told him. But the unsuperstitious Lahama decided to keep it.

After spending 30 minutes out of water, the fish, still alive, was placed in a netted pool in front of a restaurant at the edge of the sea. It survived for 17 hours.

The local fisheries authorities filmed the fish swimming in the metre-deep pool, capturing invaluable images as the species had only previously been recorded in caves at great depths.

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The site of capture, so close to the beach and from a depth of 105 metres, had intrigued the scientists. Does the Indonesian coelacanth live in shallower waters than its cousin in the Commoros?

Lahama's fish is to be preserved and will be displayed in a museum in Manado.
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Tick, Tick, Tick - H5N1 Virus Takes 65th Victim In Indonesia

Garut regency, West Java, Indonesia (highlighted in bright green). Image Credit: Wikipedia

Tick, Tick, Tick - H5N1 Virus Takes 65th Victim In Indonesia

A 20 year-old woman and a 9 year-old boy die from infection to the H5N1 virus bringing a total of 65 deaths to Indonesia -- the most for any country in the world.

We all will really need to begin to worry (and begin praying) when hospital workers in Indonesia begin dying from H5N1 virus ... this will be human-to-human and it will be time for humanity to "go to ground".

Excerpts from The Jakarta Post -

Bird flu deaths in Indonesia reach 65
By Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo/Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post - February 11, 2007

JAKARTA (JP): Provincial administrations are being urged to follow Jakarta in banning backyard poultry, as two more bird flu deaths were reported Sunday in Garut regency, West Java.

A 20-year-old woman died at Slamet Hospital in Garut at about 1 a.m., followed by a 9-year old boy at 4:30 p.m.

"Let's use this as a reminder for all of us to keep poultry away from people," the director general of communicable diseases at the Health Ministry, I Nyoman Kandun, told The Jakarta Post . "Other provincial administrations should follow the Jakarta administration in its effort to keep poultry away from people. Our message is still the same: keep poultry as far away as possible from people and homes," he said.

Kandun said the deep-rooted tradition of people living near their poultry made it difficult for the government to stop the spread of the virus from birds to humans.

"Our biggest concern is still that the virus could mutate into a form where human-to-human transmissions are easy," he said.

Officials have confirmed that the woman who died early Sunday had contact with dead chickens before becoming infected with the H5N1 virus.
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West Java Health Agency head Yudi Prayudha said the woman showed the classic bird flu symptoms of difficulty breathing and a high fever.

The 9-year-old boy was referred to Slamet Hospital on Saturday evening. However, his family brought him home at about 3 a.m., before health officials convinced them to return the boy to the hospital later Sunday morning.
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