What to expect next in Indonesia

What I think we can expect from Indonesia over the coming weeks is a fair amount of confusion. Sporadic cases of bird flu continue to be reported. WHO's latest update adds six to bring the Indonesian total to 48, of which 36 have been fatal. The wide publicity given the large cluster in Sumatra is likely to increase the index of suspicion that new cases of pneumonia, if there is a history of exposure to poultry -- common in Indonesia -- will be admitted to a bird flu isolation ward as a precautionary measure.

As we noted in an earlier post, there are a huge number of pneumonias every year in Indonesia -- 186,000 cases in the under five age group in West Java alone in 2005 -- many with exposure to poultry. If even a fraction of these is pegged a "suspect" case, the wards will fill up quickly with suspect bird flu cases. The result will be detection of some more genuine cases and more reports of crowded wards full of suspect cases, all possibly without any real change in the incidence of disease.

Add to this the chaos of a devastating earthquake, a government unable to cope at any level and a world peering in with trepidation and you have a recipe for -- a fair amount of confusion.

Unfortunately, expecting to be confused does not lessen confusion.