Word: balis
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...island of Bali has always been a separate part of Indonesia. A Hindu province inside the biggest Muslim country in the world, a jet-setting resort inside a poor, rural nation - and a zone free of human cases of avian influenza in the nation that has recorded the most bird flu infections in the world. But Bali is bird flu free no longer. Today the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the death of a young Balinese woman from H5N1 avian flu, the second case on the island in less than a month. Although Indonesian and WHO officials were quick...
...disease was first detected among the nation's poultry, the virus has spread to virtually every province in Indonesia. So far, 26 Indonesians have died of the disease this year alone. The deaths have become so common that they now rarely catch the world's attention - but the Bali cases are different, especially for the Indonesian government. Tourist arrivals to Bali's beaches are just now recovering from a pair of deadly terror bombings in 2002 and 2005, and the perceived risk of bird flu - though the chances of contracting the disease remain minuscule - could stymie that revival...
...Indonesian government was worried enough about the Bali cases to do something it hasn't done in months: share H5N1 virus samples with the WHO. Under new international health regulations that went into effect in June, all countries are supposed to share virus samples of dangerous diseases like bird flu with the WHO, to help international scientists track contagion - and in the case of the flu, formulate possible vaccines. Since the end of last year, however, Indonesia has refused to share samples, claiming that international drug companies were using Indonesian H5N1 strains to produce vaccines, which they would then sell...
...Indonesia and the rest of the world. As the WHO outlined in its annual World Health Report, released Thursday, the globe has grown so interconnected that open international cooperation is the only way to respond to infectious disease threats like avian flu. Diseases don't respect boundaries - from Bali, bird flu could hop a direct international flight to almost any country in Asia, and then the world. Avian flu has fallen out of the headlines, but that doesn't mean the disease has been eliminated, or the threat of a pandemic has disappeared. "We as humans do very well...
...Since the first Bali bombings five years ago, Indonesia has transformed itself from a country riddled with radical Islamist movements and terror threats - Indonesians once called autumn "the bombing season" because attacks had become so regular - to one of the world's few triumphs in fighting terrorism. Even better, Jakarta has succeeded without resorting to the draconian antiterror tactics increasingly preferred by governments from Sri Lanka to Iraq...