The Indonesian government will slaughter all chickens and pigs in areas affected by bird flu outbreaks in the next three days, including two provinces of North Sumatra and Jambi in Sumatra island which have been affected since one month ago, a minister said here Thursday.

The government would beef up surveillance over the poultry being traded in order to prevent spreading of the disease, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said.

"The formula to prevent the spread of the bird flu in the affected areas is by eradicating the poultry up to the radius of 15 kilometers, including in North Sumatra province, Jambi province and Tanggerang (an outskirts of Jakarta)," said Fadilah.

She attributed the current outbreaks of the epidemic to the fact that the authorities did not totally kill all chickens and pigs contaminated by the H5N1 virus that appeared in 2003 in 20 provinces throughout the country.

In the light of the deaths of thousands of chickens in the town of Sukabumi, West Java province, Fadilah could not confirm that it was caused by the H5N1 virus.

Regarding to the death of three persons from a family in Tanggerang, the minister said that the authorities had not found out how the victims got infected, but she said that there is a possibility that the victims were infected in the town, as not all the pigs which had the virus in late February and April in an area of 15 kilometers from his residence were destroyed.

The minister said that the blood samples of 315 people who had contact with the family were tested negative.

On the same occasion, the World Health Organization representative George Peterson said that it is not possible that the virus could spread out of the family cluster, as he had seen it in Vietnam and Thailand.

"We have not seen any infection spreading outside the influence family contact. It is not human-to-human transmission," he said.

The bird flu virus, which hit Asia in late 2003, has previously killed 40 people in Vietnam, half of them since December, 12 in Thailand and four Cambodians.

Health authorities fear the virus will mutate and become easily passed between humans, causing a global pandemic.

Last month, Indonesia reported its first human case in a poultry worker, but the man did not develop symptoms and is healthy.

Source: Xinhua