Indonesia reports asymptomatic H5N1-infected poultry
Indonesia, China report bird flu traces found in healthy-looking poultry, increasing risk of human infection
As Rosanne Rosanna Danna used to say on “Saturday Night Live,” “It’s always something: If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” Now we hear from Jakarta, Indonesia, that traces of H5N1 bird flu have been found in apparently healthy-looking poultry, making it tougher to detect the disease in the country hardest hit by the virus. Sick or dead chickens are used as a sign of H5N1 infection, but the appearance of “asymptomatic” chickens means humans could become more easily infected with bird flu. Indonesia has the world’s highest death toll from the disease, killing 79 people.
“The poultry death rate is not so high, but there is a trend that chicken or poultry are infected by the virus but they don’t die. So, the H5N1 virus is not fatal to poultry,” Musny Suatmodjo, director of animal health at the agriculture ministry, told a news conference.
Bird flu is endemic in poultry in many parts of Indonesia, which has been struggling to contain the disease because millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity to people across the archipelago. Contact with sick fowl is the most common way people become infected. Around the world, 189 people have died of H5N1 infection since the virus reappeared in Asia in late 2003.
Bird flu is essentially a poultry disease, but scientists are worried about the virus’s ability to adapt to new environments and hosts. They fear this increases the chances of the virus mutating into a form that can jump easily between people, triggering a pandemic. Authorities fear healthy-looking poultry could shed the virus in their faeces, increasing the risk of spreading bird flu to people.
Note that Hong Kong-based researchers have detected asymptomatic chickens and other poultry in mainland Chinese markets in recent years, which they believe were responsible for most of the H5N1 human infections there. The Indonesian Bird Flu Commission said last week the H5N1 bird flu virus in Indonesia might have undergone a mutation that allows it to jump more easily from poultry to humans.
