# 5147
Via IRIN humanitarian news and analysis this morning, a short feature on some of the reasons why Indonesia’s case fatality rate for avian flu is an astounding 83%.
Compare that to the CFR from Egypt, which is 34%, and globally, which runs just about 60%.
Most of these are items mentioned here before;
- a reliance on traditional medicine
- a fear of hospitals (understandable considering how few bird flu patients come home)
- concerns over paying for medical care
- challenges posed by having 250 million people scattered across nearly 2 million sq km and thousands of islands
INDONESIA: Avian flu deadliest in the world
Indonesia- deadliest place in the world to be hit with avian flu
BANGKOK, 16 December 2010 (IRIN) - The number of deaths from avian flu in Indonesia is the highest worldwide, due to a slow response rate and surveillance challenges, say specialists.
Alluded to, but not specifically mentioned in this article, has been the general ineffectiveness of many central government edicts which have been issued to try to control bird flu.
Perhaps most famously, in January of 2007, Jakarta announced an ambitious plan to remove, permanently, the backyard and residential raising of poultry throughout the nation, starting first in the capital.
Residents were given until February 1st to sell, consume, or destroy their small flocks.
Even as the central government was announcing that this policy would be extended first to 9 provinces, then across the entirety of Indonesia, cracks in the coalition were developing.
Authorities in the Central Javan Province, Pandeglang regency and Cilegon municipality all stated they would not go along with this edict.
A few blogs from that time period include:
Eight Months After The Jakarta Poultry Ban
Indonesian Culling Plan Finding Resistance
With an estimated 350 million backyard chickens across the nation - and a population that depends heavily upon them for food security, barter, and as a source of income - this plan was probably doomed from the start.
In the parlance of today’s twitterverse, it was an Epic Fail.
Whether well advised or not, this poultry eradication program’s failure illustrates just how difficult it is to get everyone on the same page when it comes to controlling the virus.
And so four years later, Indonesia’s poultry remains rife with H5N1, they have the highest (known) case fatality in the world, and permanent solutions to the problem remain as elusive as ever.
