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JAKARTA - Indonesia will more than double to 100 the number of hospitals designated to treat bird flu patients across the world's fourth most populous country, a Health Ministry official said on Wednesday. Farid Husain, the director-general for medical services, said the government wanted to be prepared in the event of a sharp rise in the number of bird flu sufferers.
Indonesia currently has 44 hospitals earmarked to treat people suffering from bird flu.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, where it is known to have killed 64 people, including five confirmed deaths in Indonesia. "There are three main things that we have to provide in each hospital -- human resources, ventilators and isolation rooms. We will prepare hospitals with those three things," Husain told Reuters by telephone.
Asked how prepared hospitals were for a bird flu pandemic, he said: "They have to be ready ... We have to get to work." Indonesia, an impoverished country of 220 million people with an underfunded and poorly equipped hospital network, has had five confirmed deaths from bird flu. Local tests have shown two others have died, although those results have yet to be confirmed by a Hong Kong laboratory affiliated with the World Health Organisation.
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, just like human influenza. If it does, millions could die because they would have no immunity.
Husain did not say when the additional hospitals would be ready, but added he hoped each of Indonesia's 33 provinces would have at least one hospital for bird flu patients. Allocation would depend on where the virus had been detected, he said.
"This is the president's commitment. If he said so, we have to get it done. This is to prepare for a high increase (of cases)," Husain said. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has made fighting bird flu one of the government's top priorities. On Monday, he outlined measures to tackle the virus that included seeking licences to make anti-viral drugs as well as reviewing the budget to see if more funds could be allocated.
But the government has largely resisted calls for a mass cull of chickens, saying it did not have the money to compensate owners. Most human bird flu cases in Asia have been blamed on direct or indirect contact with infected chickens.
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