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Jakarta hospitals on bird flu alert

The disease has also devastated poultry stocks, leading to massive cull

JAKARTA: Hospitals nationwide have been put on alert to receive and treat bird flu patients, said the Health Minister on Thursday, hours after Indonesia recorded its first human deaths from the virus.

``We have to be prepared,'' Siti Fadilah Supari said, adding that 44 hospitals were taking part in the campaign. Indonesia joined a list of Asian nations on Wednesday that have seen the H5N1 strain of bird flu jump to humans, saying a 38-year-old Finance Ministry worker and his two daughters, 9 and 1, died of the disease.

That raised the number of persons killed by bird flu region-wide to 57, most of them in Vietnam and Thailand. The disease has also devastated poultry stocks, killing or forcing the cull of tens of millions of chickens and ducks.

Indonesia, which so far has only been killing sick birds, said on Thursday it was stepping up efforts to contain the virus' spread.

From now on all chickens living on farms hit by bird flu will be culledsaid , Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono, adding that authorities would compensate farmers for losses incurred by mass slaughters.

``We can't take any risks now,'' he said. ``If there is an animal on a farm that has contracted the virus, we will cull all livestock on the farm.''

The three family members who died of bird flu earlier this month lived in a Jakarta suburb and did not have any chickens, initially raising concerns that the virus may have been transmitted from one person to another — a theory that has since been largely discounted.

Health officials were narrowing in on the source of infection, Ms. Supari said on Thursday, noting that a small pig and chicken farm near the family's home was hit by the deadly virus between February and April this year.

Birds that contracted the disease at the farm were culled, she said, but gave no more details. — AP

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