Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesia announced plans Wednesday for a mass chicken slaughter amid fears of a bird-flu epidemic after two more children suspected of having the disease died in the capital.
The government scrambled to calm public fears after the deaths of the two girls, ages 2 and 5.
If bird flu is confirmed as their cause of death, the country’s human toll from the outbreak would climb to six since July. Nine others suspected of having the virus were being treated Wednesday at Jakarta’s infectious diseases hospital.
The government – accused of responding slowly to the outbreak – fired the country’s chief of animal health control for allegedly failing to check the spread of the disease.
It assigned 44 state-owned hospitals to treat avian influenza patients and threatened to forcibly admit anyone showing symptoms of the disease, which include coughing, high fever and respiratory problems.
“If things worsen, it could become an epidemic,” said Health Minister Siti Fadila Supari.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Southeast Asia since 2003, killing at least 63 people and resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds.
Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds, but the World Health Organization has warned the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans – possibly triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Dr. Shigeru Omi, director for WHO’s Western Pacific region, told reporters Wednesday at a WHO conference on the island of New Caledonia that the U.N. agency was prepared to begin distributing large-scale quantities of the antiviral drug oseltamivir to treat bird flu in humans “if and when a pandemic starts.”
