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Indonesians were warned on Friday that the country was not immune to the influenza pandemic and that a past flu epidemic had in fact claimed at least 1.5 million lives during the colonial period.

“We need to stay alert as we already have a history of flu epidemics and there’s no reason it won’t happen again,” said Bayu Krisnamurthi, the executive chairman of the National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Preparedness (Komnas FBPI).

He was responding to a presentation by University of Indonesia historians about past outbreaks of flu in the country.

The historians found old Dutch East Indies government documents showing that the archipelago was struck by a large-scale flu outbreak in 1852, which began in Ambon, Maluku, and was transmitted widely.

Research team member Kresno Brahmantyo said that at least 1.5 million people died from the epidemic, from a population of about 30 million at the time.

“We’ve been perusing all the documents left by the Dutch colonialists and we found some interesting facts about influenza epidemics,” he said.

Kresno said the symptoms mentioned in the documents were very similar to bird flu symptoms, where sufferers developed severe joint pain, nausea and headaches and had trouble breathing. He said it was interesting that the most common drug used to treat the outbreak at that time was opium.

“Some documents mention, from the autopsy results, that opium was found in many dead bodies,” he said.

Kresno said the widespread nature of the epidemic was shown by the colonial government’s decision to issue an official warning across the country. The team even found a comic book promoting ways to avoid flu transmission in old Javanese script, which was also used for shadow puppet shows.

“It shows how serious the situation was at that time,” he said.

Bayu said the history of flu epidemics in Indonesia should be seen as a warning to citizens and the government that pandemics, including the current H1N1 strain, commonly referred to as swine flu, are a very real threat.

International conferences on pandemic preparedness, he said, have all agreed that even though swine flu’s fatality rate was very low, the possibility of a second wave of outbreaks could have severe consequences for the world.

An outbreak, Bayu said, would affect Indonesia’s economy, such as the tourism industry suffering from lack of visitors and a rise in workplace absenteeism.

“Not to mention the social psychological effect on those who are infected,” he said.

Bayu said the main concern was that the virus could mutate or join another strain that might be more destructive. “I can’t imagine what would happen if H1N1 united with H5N1 [the bird flu strain], which has higher case fatality rate,” he said.

Therefore, he said, it was important to promote awareness and tighten the monitoring systems to prevent an outbreak from occurring in the country.