Indonesia’s densely populated communities, reliance on backyard poultry farming, and a long rainy season create the perfect conditions for the virulent H5N1 avian influenza strain to hide and evolve. The Community-Based Avian Influenza Control (CBAIC) project is working to expose the disease by getting people to talk about it and take action to keep it at bay

Mr. Sunar was alarmed. His backyard poultry were silently dying and he didn’t know why. What he did know was that sudden death in poultry could be a sign of avian influenza. He had seen an announcement on television warning about this deadly disease and urging those impacted to report the poultry deaths to local authorities. So that’s what Mr. Sunar did, beginning a chain of community response that led to rapid testing of Mr. Sunar’s birds, confirming the presence of H5N1 avian influenza (AI). Disinfection and culling, door-to-door canvassing to inform the community, and investigations to detect any possible human cases were also completed. Thanks to Mr. Sunar’s actions and the quick response of trained workers from the village to district to regional level, a potential AI outbreak was stopped within 48 hours.

Mr. Sunar’s case demonstrates the impact of the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control (CBAIC) project. It illustrates an effective community-based AI surveillance and response network in action and exemplifies the project’s emphasis on strategic behavior change communication (BCC), which put communities on alert for AI and showed them how to respond.

During its three years, CBAIC focused on four main areas: strengthening AI planning and pandemic preparedness at the national, regional and local government levels; managing and coordinating village and community-level training for H5N1 prevention and control; expanding BCC programs; and developing and testing a biosecurity services model in collaboration with the Indonesian commercial poultry industry.

Led by Development Alternatives International (DAI) and funded by USAID, CBAIC trained more than 27,000 village and subdistrict AI coordinators across nine provinces in western Indonesia. The CBAIC BCC campaign, coordinated by CCP, utilized mass media advertising, media relations and advocacy, and community based and interpersonal communication to reach AI targeted populations, the private sector, media and government officials. The media campaign alone reached an estimated 159 million viewers.

These strategies combined to increase the AI surveillance and response capacity of the country, providing thousands of communities with the knowledge and tools needed to prevent and control AI, ultimately reducing the risk of pandemic influenza developing from the H5N1 strain of AI.