Forest and Bird Flu

Prof. Dr. Hadi. S. Alikodra, Professor of the Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural University, said that the destruction of forests or deforestation allegedly become one of the major causes of change in the bird flu virus and other viruses that had to be "silent" become malignant and have the ability to infect the human body.

Some twenty years ago (c. 1960), the bird flu virus to attack only birds. Community Cirebon example, know the disease "kok" which attack the domestic chicken. Called "kok" because the infected chickens became difficult to breathe so the only noise ... kok kok falter. If caught quickly and then cut and cooked, humans who eat them will not be infected. However, the disease entered the year 2000 "kok" be extraordinary because infectious to humans, even the chance to cause the death of up to 70%.

Deforestation or forest degradation that occurred in various places in our country is affecting the balance of the ecosystem and encourages microbial ecology imbalance. Things like that make the virus and the disease germs that had been silent suddenly turned into fierce; one of them is the bird flu virus with different variants. Destruction of forests also reduces the oxygen supply in large numbers when humans and living organisms need oxygen to breathe.

Oxygen is exposed to the sun will turn into ozone (O3) and O nascend. The impact of lack of oxygen to the microbes can nourish the growth of microbes. Therefore, besides destroying the affected poultry H5N1, bird flu prevention can be more effective with the reforestation of land, reforestation and greening barren land in various places in order to increase the supply of oxygen.

Thus the intensive needs work is the whole society to be aware of issues related to environment and health / disease and the importance of forest clearing are not casually.