Through the mouths of babes

Bird flu campa ign in West Java to involve school children

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

The West Java provincial administration is mulling the possibility of involving school children in its campaign about the spread of the deadly bird flu virus, an official said Monday.

Fatimah Resmiati, head of the West Java Health Office's environmental sanitation unit, said that the plan to involve school children had been adopted as the current campaign had been ineffective, as shown by the increasing number of people falling sick from bird flu.

The campaign would concentrate on the dissemination of information about bird flu with the help of school children, including those attending Muslim boarding schools, Fatimah explained.

She said that West Java had the highest number of bird flu cases, with 23 patients having tested positive for the virus, and 19 having died.

By comparison, the total number of people who had been infected with the virus stood at 69, of whom 52 had died, she said, explaining that cases of bird flu-infected fowl livestock had been detected in 23 out of the 26 regencies and municipalities in West Java.

"As we've already become the 'top scorer', we badly need a better prepared campaign to help prevent more fatalities," Fatimah said in Bandung after attending a coordinating meeting with representatives of the Ministries of Health and Agriculture.

Over the next two days, Fatimah said officials from the relevant offices would discuss the possibility of establishing a regional bird flu prevention commission.

"We have to admit that we all walk by ourselves so that whenever there is news about a new case that requires quick handling, we haven't been able to respond to it as soon as possible," she said.

A similar concern was expressed by Fatum Basalamah, head of standardization at the zoonosis subdirectorate of the Ministry of Health, who underlined the importance of involving school children as a means of conveying information on the bird flu danger to their parents and the public at large.

Fatum said that the existing anti bird-flu campaign through the mass media had not been able to heighten public awareness.

"Despite the huge coverage, the public have not been persuaded to act better. In Bandung, there were patients who were found to have fed their dogs with dead chickens. We have to open our eyes about the problem," she said.

Fatum explained that the exact details of the children's campaign remained to be worked out.

A similar campaign involving children was waged by the West Java Health Office during an outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever two years ago, when school children were involved in eradicating the mosquito larvae.