JAKARTA, Oct 27: Indonesia’s agriculture minister said on Thursday bird flu was spreading to residential areas and that the country was enlisting students to help locate sick chickens.

“We realize that the virus has spread to housing areas. Almost all chickens infected by the virus were found in housing areas, not in the farms,” Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono told foreign correspondents.

His comments come after the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had expressed concern at a lack of awareness in Indonesia’s suburban and rural communities about the threat posed by the virus.

The minister said the government was monitoring bird flu using mobile surveillance units and was enlisting between 500 and 1,000 veterinary students from several state universities to look for sick chickens in poultry farms.

The government was also inviting volunteers to take part in the monitoring effort, he said.

At least four people have died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus in Indonesia and three others have been confirmed as infected but remained alive.

The FAO said on Monday it would send a team of experts to Indonesia to help the country combat the deadly virus at source, by organising a house-by-house search for infected birds on the main island of Java.

“We are very much concerned about the presence of the virus in the small flocks of millions of backyard poultry farmers,” said FAO’s veterinary service head Joseph Domenech.

“There still seems to be a lack of awareness in the rural and suburban communities about the threat the virus poses to humans and animals,” Domenech said.—AFP