Living Cheek by Beak in Indonesia

Chickens are inseparable from daily life in Indonesia in a way that must be witnessed to be understood. The birds are used in religious rituals as a magnet for evil spirits. For poor villagers, chickens are walking bank accounts: since the birds forage for their own food, they can be raised cheaply and sold when extra income is needed. It’s not unusual for Indonesians to sleep with their birds to protect them from thieves. “We keep chickens not just for money but to reduce stress,” says Hadiat, a farmer in the village of Kaseman in West Java. “But now with the flu, they stress us out.”

Public-health experts around the world share Hadiat’s anxiety. The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, has been jumping from birds to people for years. The fear is that if bird flu manages to combine with a strain of human influenza and form a superstrain that easily spreads from person to person, it could threaten the lives of millions. Preventing a pandemic thus depends on tracking and controlling infected poultry, and nowhere is that challenge more daunting than in Indonesia. Home to 234 million people and 1.3 billion poultry, it has recorded more human deaths (79) from bird flu than any other country. H5N1 is found in nearly every corner of the archipelago and has become so prevalent that the government no longer reports individual outbreaks to international authorities. Unlike on commercial farms in the West, chickens are often raised in backyards. And because people live cheek by beak with poultry, H5N1 can more easily pass from birds to humans.

Indonesia has budgeted nearly $60 million to combat bird flu in 2007, up 9% from the year before, “but it’s still not enough to control the disease,” says Elly Sawitri, a Ministry of Agriculture official. The U.S., together with the MOA, is helping fund a program that has dispatched 1,300 veterinary officials across Indonesia to educate and enlist villagers in the fight against bird flu. But Indonesia still needs much more money to help farmers stop flu in their poultry. Until that happens, the risk of a pandemic will persist. And the rest of the world may pay the price once Indonesia’s chickens come home to roost.