01.15.07, 7:33 AM ET
JAKARTA (XFN-ASIA) - Indonesia is preparing to ban backyard poultry farming in a renewed effort to fight bird flu, officials said, after the feared disease killed four people last week.
The fatalities raised Indonesia's death toll from the virus to 61, the highest in the world. The vast majority of bird flu cases have occurred after contact with infected poultry.
'This is already ... a situation of health emergency, and we hope that the protection of humans will be much better if birds and humans are separated,' said Aburizal Bakrie, the coordinating minister for people's welfare.
He spoke after a meeting between ministers and the heads of the Jakarta, West Java and Banten regions, which have been worst-hit by the H5N1 virus.
Indonesia's efforts to curb the spread of bird flu have been hampered by the reluctance of some poultry owners, especially backyard farmers, to hand over their sick or potentially infected birds for slaughter.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said most of Indonesia's victims had had contact with poultry around the house rather than birds from commercial farms.
'In principle, there should be no birds in residential areas,' the minister said, adding that regulations banning backyard poultry will be introduced in the three worst-hit regions.
World Health Organization representative Georg Petersen welcomed the move.
'It is important to reduce contact between birds and people and restrict the raising of chicken in highly-populated areas,' he told Agence France-Presse.
'It has always been our advice to the government to separate birds and humans and in principle this is a very good move,' he said.
Bakrie said the economic impact of the move is being calculated by the affected regions. Jakarta and the provinces of West Java and Banten account for the bulk of bird flu cases.
Bayu Krisnamurthi, the head of the national committee for the control of avian influenza, said the regulations will have to be introduced and implemented by regional governments, which have authority over local farming and fishing.
H5N1 has killed around 160 people worldwide since late 2003 and triggered the mass slaughter of tens of millions of poultry.
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