Indonesia's strategies to fight bird flu run afoul of reality

If Indonesia is able to execute a comprehensive bird flu plan written by the government, it will take great strides toward controlling the outbreak in the sprawling island nation, a visiting professor who has studied the region said Friday (March 9).

Unfortunately, there's little chance of that happening.

"There's a level of rhetoric and a level of reality and an increasing gap between rhetoric and reality," said James Fox, visiting professor of Australian studies in Harvard's Anthropology Department.

Fox, visiting Harvard from Australian National University, delivered a grim assessment of the spread of bird flu throughout Indonesia, "The Course of Avian Flu in Indonesia: Implications and Possibilities," as part of the Asia Center's ongoing Modern Asia Series.