JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia will declare bird flu a national disaster, giving the government access to special funds to combat the disease that has killed 63 people, the planning minister said.
"It has become an epidemic,'' Paskah Suzetta said Wednesday in Jakarta, where authorities were preparing for the compulsory slaughter of thousands of backyard chickens as part of high-profile efforts to fight the H5N1 bird flu virus.
"The president has indicated he will declare it a national disaster so money can be allocated from the state budget's disaster fund,'' Suzetta said.
Indonesia, which has tallied more than one-third of the world's human deaths from H5N1, has come under criticism for failing to crack down on bird flu when it first appeared in poultry stocks nearly four years ago.
The virus is now endemic in chickens almost all over the country and despite optimism late last year that it may have been contained, it killed six people in the last month.
Many of the 63 people who have died lived near the teeming capital, home also to more than 100,000 backyard chickens, ducks, doves and song birds.
Authorities gave residents weeks to voluntarily destroy their birds and were preparing to go door-to-door in some neighbourhoods Thursday to make sure the order had been carried out, Jakarta Gov. Sutiyoso said.
"I will show no tolerance,'' he said after meeting with mayors, health and husbandry officials.
"Chickens found running loose will be immediately be killed, the sick ones thrown into a fire and the healthy ones given to owners to be fried and eaten.''
The effectiveness of the slaughter campaign remains to be seen, however, amid fears many residents will hide their birds or corrupt officials will be susceptible to bribes. The crackdown will also have to reach well beyond the capital.
Past efforts to carry out mass slaughters have failed in part because the cash-strapped government said it could not afford to compensate bird owners. By declaring the disease a national disaster, it would no longer have such an excuse.
Bird flu remains hard for humans to catch. But international experts fear it may mutate into a form that could spread easily among humans and potentially kill millions around the world.
Indonesia is seen as a potential hotspot for that to happen.
