From the Front Lines

In this article, Declan Butler interviews researchers in some of the countries affected by avian influenza about the political and scientific challenges that they face.

Medical epidemiologist, Andrew Jeremijenko, describes the difficulty in controlling the disease in Indonesia. He says that delays in detecting and reporting cases of avian flu are major challenges in his country. In Thailand, Les Sims, a consultant for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), talks about Thailand’s innovative surveillance strategies in successfully combating the disease. Shahid Jameel says that India’s big weaknesses are a lack of laboratories that can carry out rapid surveillance, and the government’s poor communication with the public about the disease.

Claude P. Miller, an immunologist from of the World Health Organization (WHO), believes that the bird flu virus cannot be contained in Africa without vaccination. Guenael Rodier, says that educating the public about high-risk practices is the key task in Azerbaijan. In China, virologist Guan Yi says that current vaccination programmes have not prevented the virus from infecting poultry there. He says that controlling the spread of the disease in aquatic poultry is the key to controling H5N1 in China and southeast Asia.