Because West Java's provincial capital Bandung lacks livestock checkpoints, unmonitored and suspect poultry from outlying towns may be reintroducing the bird flu virus into the city, a Bandung official said.

Head of the Bandung agriculture agency's animal disease elimination and prevention division, Endang Sulistiowati, said her office had proposed setting up 12 checkpoints at the city's main portals.

"The city's administration and legislative council have yet to agree on the allocation for it from the city budget," Endang told journalists Tuesday.

Bird flu cases have been reported in nine subdistricts in the municipality this year so far. Two of them, Dago and Babakan Sari, have even experienced two or three outbreaks.

"We keep conducting our rounds of poultry vaccinations, but infected birds mostly come from outside Bandung. The entry points are indeed left uncontrolled."

Endang said 113,085 out of a total 147,447 poultry registered by her office have received vaccinations to date.

Still, she added, it was no guarantee the city was completely free of bird flu even though the number of subdistricts experiencing outbreaks had sharply decreased from 27 last year to only nine this year.

She said she was concerned because most birds slaughtered at the city's 26 slaughterhouses may come from the towns around Bandung whose hygienic standards were unknown.

In 2006 two people died after reportedly touching a dead chicken from a neighborhood slaughterhouse. One tested positive for the bird flu virus.

"That's why we're in dire need of a distribution control mechanism, which we have been pushing for, to clearly monitor the hygienic standards of every single bird entering the city," Endang said.

Head of the West Java animal husbandry agency, Rachmat Setiadi, agreed, saying the weakness in distribution control had in part accounted for the chronic bird flu outbreaks in the human population in the province.

"We can't adequately monitor where the poultry comes from so we can't tell where the infections originate from," Rachmat said.

Separately, 10 employees of the municipal agriculture agency cleaned and disinfected by spraying the residence of a 46-year-old chicken trader, Ukun Sobana, on Jl. Inhoftank on Tuesday.

The agency took measures after Ukun's 32-year-old son, Dadan Hardiansyah, who worked as a poultry slaughterer, died. Officials suspect he was infected with the bird flu virus.

Ukun previously said every day two to three of the 500 pedigree chickens he accepts from various towns outside Bandung die. He considered that rate normal, assuming they may have died from overheating or overcrowding in cages while being transported.

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