Bali learns lessons of bird flu the hard way
The death of a woman from bird flu on Bali will deal a blow to the Indonesian island's tourist industry, still struggling with the impact of terrorist bombings. No East Asian community can consider itself safe from the virus and every effort has to be taken to protect citizens and visitors.
Officials in Bali admit that their surveillance and response systems were inadequate, despite the H5N1 strain of bird flu being endemic on the island since 2003. Given that Bali is the centre of Indonesia's tourist industry, they should not have been so lax.
More people have died of bird flu in Indonesia than anywhere else in the world. While the latest death is the first on Bali, and involved a woman from a rural part of the island, the manner in which the virus has spread with migrating birds should have been cause for heightened concern for the island's health authorities.
Hong Kong, the first place in the world to have suffered human deaths from H5N1, serves as a model. A strict surveillance regime has since been put in place, with poultry vaccinated and regularly tested. Health officials make frequent checks of birds in pet shops and wild birds found dead are also tested. Systems are in place to quickly cull infected poultry.
There is good reason for the vigilance, as was plainly shown by the Sars outbreak in 2003: our reputation and income from tourism depend on it. Bali is now learning the cost of a lack of concern.
Hong Kong's protective measures are not perfect; the central slaughterhouse for poultry that experts have long recommended has still not eventuated. This needs to be built if safeguards are to be as strong as possible.
Even then, there is no guarantee that bird flu can be prevented. Until a proven human vaccine has been developed, the risks of a global pandemic remain high.
In the meantime, sturdy surveillance, response and education programmes are all we have as protection. Balinese authorities have found this out the hard way.
