# 3386
If you go to the Singapore’s Ministry of Health’s Webpage you’ll find a chart listing Countries/ Regions with community spread and / or known to have exported cases.
At the very bottom you’ll find.
Getting good information out of Indonesia’s Ministry of Health has been a problem for quite some time. Despite numerous local media reports of human cases of bird flu (including fatalities) over the past six months, the MOH has yet to report a single H5N1 infection for 2009.
The MOH has also refused to release bird flu virus samples to the WHO for more than 2 years now.
It appears that the same reluctance to report extends to the H1N1 swine flu as well. At least they are consistent. Not playing any viral favorites here.
We’ve seen media reports, some of which are translated and archived on The Bird Flu Information Corner - which is a joint endeavor between Kobe University in Japan and the Institute of Tropical Disease, Airlangga University, Indonesia- that strongly suggest the H1N1 virus has been in Indonesia for several weeks.
Today we get a report from Jason Gale and Naila Firdausi of Bloomberg News, where Indonesia admits that they’ve identified a couple of swine flu cases.
Imported cases, according to Health Minister Supari, with no sign of community transmission.
This article also delves into the concerns that the H1N1 virus might meet, and swap genetic material with, the H5N1 virus.
While no one knows what will happen should these two viruses both infect the same host simultaneously, the potential for a reassortment and the creation of a `hybrid virus’ is there.
And that worries some scientists.
This from Bloomberg.
Indonesia Finds Swine Flu Virus After Exporting Cases (Update1)
By Jason Gale and Naila Firdausi
June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia reported its first swine flu infections, two days after it was listed by the Singapore health ministry among countries known to have exported cases to the city-state.
An Indonesian pilot who had traveled to Australia and Hong Kong before falling ill is recovering in Jakarta, and a British woman who arrived from Australia is hospitalized in Bali, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said today. Tests on relatives of the pilot were negative for the new H1N1 virus, she said.
Health officials worry that transmission of the virus in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most-populous nation, would increase the chances that the bug combines with the H5N1 bird flu strain that’s lethal in three of every five reported cases. Indonesia accounts for a third of the 433 fatal bird flu cases reported to the World Health Organization worldwide.
“What we fear is if H1N1 combines with H5N1,” Supari told reporters in Jakarta. “The combined virus may have the ease of spread, like H1N1 has, with the increased virulence of H5N1.”
The bug may have been circulating in Indonesia if infected travelers from the nation carried it into Singapore. People carrying the virus typically take two to seven days to develop a fever, cough and other symptoms.
“So far, there are no local cases,” Supari said, adding that visitors from Australia to Bali, a popular holiday destination, will be screened more carefully for the virus. “I am, frankly, concerned about visitors from Australia. We will add special measures for this.”
