canberra increases indonesia bird flu aid
Canberra increases Indonesia bird flu aid September 26, 2005 - 5:35PM
Australia will boost Indonesia's stockpile of drugs to combat the deadly bird flu after voicing concerns about the speed of Jakarta's response to the outbreak.
Australia will fund an extra 40,000 doses of the anti-viral medication Tamiflu for Indonesia, after its death toll from the virus rose to six.
A 27-year-old woman died today and officials confirmed that a five-year-old girl had died of the virus.
They are the latest victims of the disease which claimed more than 60 lives throughout Asia.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today the drugs would help Indonesian authorities, who had found themselves without enough doses to cope with the outbreak.
"(It) will give the Indonesians the capacity to deal with the problem, at least in the short-term," he told reporters.
"I think they've been caught a bit short, to tell you the truth, and they're finding it difficult to handle," he said.
Anti-viral medication was being distributed among the population, but only slowly.
Australia now has funded a total of 50,000 doses of medication to Indonesia.
"(The Tamiflu has) been (distributed) a little slowly, a little more slowly than we would have liked, but I think they're getting better organised now, particularly with the support of the World Health Organisation," Mr Downer said.
Australia is working hard on its border security to keep out products which could bring the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the country.
Quarantine officers have seized tonnes of poultry and poultry-related products at at Australian airports over the past financial year to keep Australia free of the disease.
The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) has been screening all flights from nations affected by bird flu since January 2003.
Over the past financial year, they confiscated 1.7 tonnes of poultry meat, 1.7 tonnes of moon cakes, 1.5 tonnes of eggs, 390kg of egg noodles and 65kg of feathers.
Mr Downer said that despite the precautions, Australia was still at the mercy of nature, unable to do anything about birds migrating from affected countries.
"No country either can, or for that matter should, try to stop birds migrating, and so birds do move between Australia and other parts of the world, other parts of the world back into Australia as the seasons change," he said.
"So avian flu could be brought into Australia, there's no question of that."
Mr Downer intends working with regional neighbours on a package of measures dealing with the bird flu threat which he will take to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial meeting in November.
"(We want to) make sure that we're well prepared, or as best prepared as we can be, in the event that avian flu mutates and can be transmitted between people," he said.
