Alarmed by the first deaths from the deadly bird flu virus, Indonesia announced on Thursday authorities would destroy all poultry and pigs on farms infected with the bird flu virus in three newly infected provinces, dpa reported. Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the H5N1 virus had spread through three provinces - Banten, Jambi in east Sumatra and North Sumatra - in the past month. "The government will immediately destroy all poultry and pigs on farms after bird flu virus has been detected in some chickens and pigs in those three provinces," Supari told a press conference. Supari said a survey is underway in the three provinces to determine how many poultry and pigs would have to be destroyed in the "stamping out" campaign, expected to begin Sunday. In addition, the government also prepared as many as 44 hospitals across the country for treatment and detection of avian influenza, she said. Indonesia on Wednesday recorded its first human deaths linked to bird flu after tests confirmed that a father and his two daughters, who died earlier this month, were infected by the highly lethal virus now circulating in much of Southeast Asia. The victims lived in Tanggerang, a suburb on the outskirts of western Jakarta. The man's wife and son have not shown any signs of the disease. Last month, the government announced the first bird flu case in Indonesia when a poultry worker in South Sulawesi was confirmed to have been infected, even though he showed no symptoms. The virus had previously only been found in fowl and pigs in the country. However, Supari explained that health authorities are still unsure the source of the virus in the case of the three deceased family members - Iwan Siswara, 39, Thalita Nurul Azizah, 1, and Sabrina Nurul Aisyah, 9. "We are still waiting for the sequencing results. Until now we don't know the cause and we're still investigate and doing surveillance," the minister said. Supari still expressed confidence that the bird flu was conventional and not a new strain that could be transmitted from humans to humans. "That can be proved because all of the 315 persons who have a close contact with the late Siswara, they are still healthy. No one has symptoms of the disease, such as cough, flu or high fever," Supari said, adding that Siswara's wife was also in healthy condition. Georg Petersen, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative who described the situation in Indonesia as "alarming", said the virus may have been spread among the family members who died, but said this still did not classify as a new strain of virus that could be transmitted from human to human. --more 1319 Local Time 1019 GMT
