And with new cases in poultry reported in its eastern Papua province recently, surrounding countries are increasingly nervous that the virus will keep spreading.

Thirty million households in Indonesian villages keep more than 200 million chickens in backyards, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Laurence Gleeson, a regional manager for the organization, told reporters in Jakarta this week that "the endemic circulation of the virus in backyard chickens is going to be a real challenge in Indonesia".

Shigeru Omi, the WHO's director for the Western Pacific region, said earlier this month that the Indonesian government is struggling to implement measures to control avian flu at the district level.

Provinces are responsible for dealing with disease outbreaks with little supervision from Jakarta, which does not have the resources to monitor the spread of the virus in poultry.

The country appears to be lagging far behind south east Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam, which have been congratulated by health officials recently for successfully stemming the spread of bird flu.

But in Indonesia, human deaths have now reached 30, surpassing those in Thailand, although not Vietnam. And health officials have identified seven known cluster cases - the highest in the world.

Gleeson believes that "Indonesia hasn't yet effectively stemmed the spread of the illness".

He called on the government to "at the very least" increase public awareness of the risks of the disease.

The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has infected poultry in 27 of Indonesia's 33 provinces but the recent spread to Papua has raised fears it could infect birds in surrounding countries, including Australia, so far unaffected by the disease.