Thursday, 31 January, 2008 | 16:57 WIB
TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Community have given a Rp132.3 billion grant for handling bird flu in Indonesia.
The fund will be used to finance a project to prevent bird flu infection from spreading to humans over the next three years.
The project, which is named INSPAI or Implementing the National Strategic Plan for Avian Influenza, is aimed at increasing life expectancy for the people who are infected by the H5N51 bird flu virus.
According to Nyoman Kandung, the Director General of Disease Control and Environment Health Improvement, the project is aimed at increasing clinical management in hospitals, healthy behavior and people's awareness of bird flu.
“Markets will also be worked on, which we call wet market, as it has been found that infection can also come from wet markets,” he said during a press conference with the Vice Chairman of European Community Pierre Phillipe, yesterday (30/1).
This project will be managed by the WHO with the main partners being the Health Department and the National Commission for Bird Flu Handling and Pandemic Influenza Alertness (FPBI), which will have representatives on the Steering Council or officers for monitoring the project.
The Steering Council comprises high officials who represent the Directorate General of Medical Service, the Health Research and Development Agency, the Directorate General of Public Health, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) and representatives from WHO and the European Community.
Phillipe said he regarded that Indonesia was already serious about handling the bird flu epidemic.
Indications of this are that the government already has good planning and strategy in bird flu handling, although a lot of bird flu cases still occur.
Therefore the European Commission wants to assist the government in applying the strategy.
“This is our reason to give the Indonesian government assistance to fight bird flu,” he said.
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