Avian flu update Page 6

[Kim99]

Indonesian chickensh%t, bullsh%t style
Doctor Revere at Effect Measure

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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Indonesian chickensh%t, bullsh%t style

The source of the virus that infected and killed three members of the same household remains a mystery. Direct contact with infected poultry, the preferred explanation of those hesitant to admit the likelihood of human-to-human transmission has apparently fallen to last on the list. But WHO and Indonesian authorities have a new theory, which might be called the Chickensh%t Theory (CST). Thus Georg Petersen, WHO's representative in Indonesia has raised the possibility that transmission took place from environmental contamination, specifically from poultry feces.

[Petersen] said that the transmission of Avian Influenza virus in Tangerang, which claimed three lives, might have taken place through environmental contamination.

For example, the transmission could have been through chicken dung, Petersen told Tempo by phone on Sunday (23/07). However, he declined to speculate on the sources of the virus and the transmission process. (Tempo Interactive)
http://www.tempointeractive.com/hg/...6-64376,uk.html

Excuse me? He declined to speculate? It sure sounded like he was speculating there. No reticence for Indonesia's Queen of Speculation, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari.

Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said the latest field tests performed by her office had found bird feces containing the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza. She said it was possible Iwan Siswara and his two daughters contracted the disease from the feces of infected poultry.

"We can only say that we discovered bird feces that tested positive for the virus, but it remains unknown where Iwan contracted the disease," Siti said.

She said it was unlikely Iwan and his daughters contracted the virus by eating chicken or through human-to-human transmission.

Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono confirmed the discovery of feces containing the avian influenza virus around Iwan's neighborhood.

"We have found feces that contained the bird flu virus. But we cannot determine if the feces was the source of the virus that killed Iwan and his two daughters," Anton said during a press conference after meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Iwan lived in Legok, Tangerang, Banten, where the government culled dozens of pigs and ducks on Sunday that had tested positive for the virus.

There has also been speculation that Iwan and his daughters contracted the virus from infected pigs.

Avian influenza can be transmitted to humans through an intermediate host such as a pig.
Siti said Iwan and his daughters were the only known human cases of bird flu in the country. She was commenting on three people, including a Malaysian national, who displayed symptoms of avian influenza infection.

Ah, yes. Those "other three." But no need to worry:

Two Indonesians, AS and AB, are being treated at Sulianti Saroso Hospital in North Jakarta after displaying symptoms similar to those associated with bird flu. Their blood samples have been sent to the WHO laboratory in Hong Kong for testing. It normally takes the laboratory at least one week to complete the tests.

The Malaysian national died last week and has been cremated.

"After going over the medical records of the Malaysian man, I am convinced that his death was not caused by the avian influenza virus. He had a high fever for about two weeks, which is more similar to typhoid," Siti said.

People who contract the bird flu virus usually only survive for three or four days if they suffer from a high fever. (Jakarta Post)
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detai...0726.@01&irec=0

She has apparently received training at the Dr. Frist School of Long Distance Diagnosis. Well, at least the source of the infected feces will be taken care of with plans for extensive culling of chickens and pigs, widely reported in the media last week.

In a response to Indonesia's first three fatal human cases of avian influenza, officials killed some infected pigs and poultry yesterday, but not as many as they had planned to, according to news services.
Plans had called for culling about 200 pigs in a village near the Jakarta suburb of Tangerang, the home of a man and two daughters who died of avian flu this month. But officials instead killed only 18 pigs, along with "dozens" of chickens and ducks, according to a Reuters report yesterday.

The agriculture minister, Anton Apriyantono, told a radio station that the original plan would have hurt the local economy, the story said. But his spokesman, Hari Priyono, said the plan was to kill only the pigs that tested positive for avian flu.

He said only 18 pigs tested "truly positive" for the virus, and those 18 were slaughtered, according to the story. "In days to come, whenever we find a positive one here, we will slaughter it straight away," he was quoted as saying. (CIDRAP)
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/co...y2505avian.html

Maybe they're spinning it a bit, but at least health authorities have a reserve of credibility for their otherwise sterling performance in truth-telling:

Fish vendors at Pasar Anyar and Cikokol markets are also enjoying booming sales. In contrast, chicken sellers have seen their sales drop drastically.

"I feel so lucky because I am selling more fish than usual. On the other hand, it is difficult to enjoy because my friends who sell chickens are staring at piles of unsold chicken," said Amawi, 46, a fish vendor at the municipality's downtown market.

Falling chicken sales have been cited as a motive in the suicide of a 22-year-old poultry farm owner from Cisauk district, Tangerang regency. (Jakarta Post)
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detai...0726.G02&irec=1

Apparently this trusting nature is not confined to the poorer segments of Indonesian society, either:

When a government auditor and his 2 young daughters died suddenly this month, there was panic in their middle-class suburb along with reports that they were Indonesia's 1st casualties of avian influenza. Neighbors anxiously traded rumors across the metal fences surrounding their neatly landscaped yards. Mothers kept their children from playing on the palm-lined streets. Some families in this quiet California-style subdivision of bankers, businessmen and doctors considered packing up their belongings in their SUVs and abandoning their homes.

Most residents of the Villa Melati Mas [commuter] community on the western outskirts of Jakarta had paid little [attention] to reports of avian influenza, which has devastated poultry flocks across Indonesia during the last 2 years and killed dozens of people in other Southeast Asian countries.

[snip]

"I'm wondering why this happened. I'm confused. Can we get this? We're trying to be calm," a doctor's wife said anxiously as she stocked up on broccoli and cauliflower from a vegetable peddler plying the subdivision's cobblestone streets. She has forbidden her children to eat outside the home in case the virus can spread through food. "We've stopped going to Kentucky Fried Chicken," she said.

Stoking the neighborhood's fear is uncertainty about the outbreak's cause. Unlike the rural villages of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, where other avian influenza deaths have occurred, there are no farmers or live chickens in Villa Melati Mas. (Alan Sipress in WaPo)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5072401146.html

Well, maybe they think they have a nice, clean neighborhood, but Indonesian health authorities know it is really littered with poultry feces.

Or maybe it's bullsh%t.

posted by Revere
http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com
__________________

 

[Kim99]

The Politics of Pandemic: Is the Bird Flu Already Spreading in Asia?
Independent assessments are imperative, experts say
By Cindy Drukier & Jan Jekielek
The Epoch Times Staff
Jul 27, 2005



ZIYANG, CHINA - July 26: A patient suffering from a mysterious disease is moved to an isolation ward at the Ziyang First People's Hospital in Sichuan Province, southwest China. While official reports cite a swine bacterium as the probable cause, circumstantial evidence and lack of independent confirmation cast doubt on the verdict. (China Photos/Getty Images)
High-resolution image (3000 x 2120 pixels, 300 dpi)
Over the past four weeks, an unidentified disease has killed at least 24 people and made at least 117 others ill in China’s Sichuan province, state-controlled media has reported.

Sichuan health officials say neither H5N1, the bird flu viral variant that is expected to cause the coming avian flu pandemic, nor Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), is causing the deaths. They say a pig pathogen, a bacterium called Streptococcus suis, is responsible for the infections that have been reported in 75 villages and 40 townships, some in close proximity to large city centres.

However, conflicting assessments from experts have cast doubt on this claim, and have highlighted the need for transparency in China’s disease monitoring system.

Both Promedmail.org and Recombinomics.com, websites that closely track infectious diseases, suggest that a swine bacterium is an unlikely cause. According to them, the reported symptoms, the widespread geography of those affected, the speed at which the disease has spread, and the past sporadic (as opposed to “outbreak”) incidence of Streptococcus suis, all point the finger another, more likely viral, cause.

Affirming the true nature of the disease is difficult because the Chinese authorities have not yet allowed any independent analysis of the Sichuan pathogen.

“The situation in Sichuan is difficult to analyze because of a lack of information,” says Dr Henry Niman, founder and president of Recombinomics, Inc., the predictive viral change research centre that runs the Recombinomics.com web site.

This lack of information has some pondering the worst. Unconfirmed reports from China on Boxun.com (“Abundant News” in English) describe symptoms with remarkable similarities to some of those associated with the 1918 flu pandemic. Posts on the website have also proposed that the disease could be strain of Ebola. According to Niman, a strain of Ebola has been shown to have exchanged genetic material with H5N1. It is possible, however unlikely, that a new strain of either disease could emerge.

Officially, there have never been confirmed cases of either Ebola, or H5N1 in humans, in China. And, Boxun doesn’t claim to have definitive information, but rather hopes its reports will prompt further investigation.

Such investigation is certainly necessary: Recall 2002, when China covered-up its SARS epidemic for several crucial months. SARS went on to kill 800 worldwide and made 8,000 others sick. News of SARS only came to light when first-hand accounts appeared on Boxun and The Epoch Times Chinese web site.

Independent isolation and identification of the Sichuan pathogen would do much to build a better the understanding the nature of the Sichuan outbreak. The same approach would also help to better deal with H5N1, which has broken out recently in wild bird populations at Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve, west of Sichuan, as well as in nearby Xinjiang.

However, the PRC government has offered neither the raw data nor the samples that would be required to do a credible genetic assessment. "As far as I know, the [PRC] Ministry of Agriculture has not sent any samples to any international reference labs or any WHO collaborating centers," Roy Wadia, the WHO's spokesman in Beijing, was quoted as saying by the UK Telegraph Group on Monday, July 24. WHO investigators have also been denied access to the Xinjiang site altogether.

Not only is Beijing ignoring WHO requests, but recent state actions are also raising suspicions of another cover-up. On May 21, China’s state media announced that 178 geese had died at Qinghai Reserve; soon after, it upped its figure to 1,000 dead migratory birds. WHO researchers later found, during their only permitted visit to Qinghai Reserve at the end of June, that the death toll had reached 5000, according to Bloomberg. Then, the casualties were continuing at a rate of 20 birds per day. Shortly after the initial announcements, Boxun reported 121 human fatalities in nearby Gangca County, and a corresponding military quarantine, a claim denied by state media. Few further details followed from Boxun, save for a June 5 brief stating that the earlier reporters had been arrested.

Dr Yi Guan, a H5N1 researcher at Hong Kong University, analyzed genetic samples from avian flu-stricken birds and published his findings in the journal Nature on May 25. He and his American and Chinese colleagues described strong similarities between the viral genes of wild birds in western China, and H5N1 in affected poultry farms found earlier in southern China. They also discovered that the Qinghai geese contained "virulence genes" that had a 100 percent mortality rates in both chickens and mice in the lab.

The study further concluded that there was a “…danger that H5N1 might be carried along the birds' winter migration routes to densely populated areas in the south Asia subcontinent, a region that seems free of this virus, and spread along migratory flyways linked to Europe.”

A day after the article was published, director general of the PRC Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary Bureau, Jia Youling, criticised the findings and denied the existence of any bird flu outbreak in southern China. Four days later, the Joint Influenza Research Center, where Yi conducted the bird flu study, was ordered to immediately cease H5N1 research. PRC state-controlled media reported that this was because the lab lacked “the basic conditions for biological safety,” a claim vehemently denied by the Center.

At present, the WHO places the risk assessment of a worldwide avian flu pandemic at three on a scale of six, indicating that human infections have occurred. Since the UN body must wait for official corroboration before any incident can be acknowledged, this rating could well be a conservative under-estimation, limited by political protocols and the limited data provided by the PRC.

The WHO may also be wary of prematurely declaring a global pandemic after its experience with SARS, suggests Dr Niman. He continues, "SARS... has the potential to become a raging pandemic, but did not do so in 2003. Consequently there is concern about over-reacting as well as the difficulty of predicting precisely when a virus such as H5N1 will achieve efficient human-to-human transmission."

Niman has analyzed an apparent pattern of new outbreaks which in his view, seem to be radiating outwards from Qinghai Reserve hypothetically as a result of bird migration. Within the range of the Qinghai birds are the other China H5N1 outbreak sites, as well as a location in Mongolia where 400 sheep reportedly died of a mystery illness in early June. If the culprit there was bird flu, then the array of H5N1 animal hosts now includes domestic and wild birds, pigs and sheep.

Also within range is Novosibirsk, Russia, with over 1000 bird flu deaths in domestic fowl reported on July 26, and Jakarta, Indonesia, where three human family members died in quick succession due to H5N1 infection earlier this month. Bird flu has also resurfaced on a poultry farm near Tokyo, Japan, United Press International reported on June 27.

The recent PRC conduct with respect to H5N1 research, the suspect nature of the official characterization of the Sichuan pathogen, the series unconfirmed reports compiled on Recombinomics.com and Boxun, and the apparent increasing incidence of avian influenza in Asia, together are enough to raise the question: Has the bird flu already gone pandemic there?

While Dr Niman is known for his highly speculative commentary, as well as for proposing worst case scenarios, the seriousness of a prospective raging bird flu pandemic suggests that all possibilities should be considered. Again, only thorough, independent and transparent scientific investigation will be able to assess the validity of existing hypotheses.

On July 22, the WHO issued yet another warning that the coming avian influenza pandemic may be imminent. According to WHO figures, there have been 109 confirmed human cases of bird flu in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia resulting in 55 deaths.

With a lack of confirmed sources or verifiable scientific data from China, which is arguably the most significant and certainly the most disputed locality for H5N1 outbreak and mutation, the world plays a waiting game.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-7-27/30655.html
__________________

 

[Kim99]

http://www.atsnn.com/story/157892.html

Interesting interview with Dr. Niman re: Bird Flu

 

[libtoken]

Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005
From: Nati Elkin <nati@poultrymed.com>
Source: Reuters alertnet, 27 Jul 2005 [edited]
<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/T249165.htm>


Japan finds new bird flu outbreak on chicken farm
-------------------------------------------------
Japanese authorities have discovered a fresh outbreak of bird flu disease
on a chicken farm in eastern Japan, close to where several cases of the
disease have been detected since late June 2005.

Some chickens at the farm had tested positive for a strain of the H5 virus,
a local government official in Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, said
on Wednesday [27 Jul 2005].

Authorities will conduct further tests to confirm the subtype of the virus,
the official said.

All bird flu outbreaks discovered in Ibaraki since late June have been
confirmed as the weak H5N2 strain. This is a less virulent type than the
H5N1 strain found in previous avian flu outbreaks in Japan early in 2004.

The H5N1 strain first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China 8 years
ago and is known to have killed more than 50 people in countries including
Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

The location of the latest outbreak in Japan is about 6 km (4 miles) from
where the initial case was found in late June 2005. Since June,
authorities have killed chickens at 7 farms, all located near the initial
case, after they tested positive in antibody tests. The farm in the latest
case has about 35 000 birds.

Following the new case, authorities limited the movement of eggs and
chickens in a 5-km radius around the farm to prevent the virus from spreading.

Bird flu returned to Japan last year for the first time in 79 years.

Between January and March in 2004, Japan had 4 outbreaks of the H5N1 type
strain, including an outbreak in Kyoto in western Japan in February 2004
that led to the disposal of about 240 000 chickens and 20 million eggs.

--
ProMED-mail
<promed@promedmail.org>

[Final serotyping is pending. In case, as expected, it is H5N2 -- its
phylogenetic relationship to the recent Siberian isolate will be of
interest. - Mod.AS]

 

[Kim99]

Now they're admitting bird flu is the culprit.

Russia: Outbreak Of Bird Flu Confirmed In Siberia

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/07/bc3517d5-1793-4cf6-9359-183ac707bf7c.html
By Jeremy Bransten

Russia has confirmed that a bird flu outbreak has hit Siberia. The authorities say the virus was probably brought to Russia by migratory birds from Asia, but poses little risk to humans. Other experts are not so confident.

Prague, 27 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Russia’s chief epidemiologist, Gennadii Onishchenko, confirmed at a Moscow news conference on 25 July what had been suspected for several days: the first cases of bird flu ever recorded have now hit Russia.

"It is a fact that we have registered the H5 virus in our country. The virus affects birds and to date, there have been no human infections. To date -- at 7 a.m. I spoke with Novosibirsk -- the situation has not changed. No new cases among birds have been registered in the past two days thanks to measures we have taken. And our medical observations show that there have been no human cases," Onishchenko said.

The outbreak was initially detected last week in the western Siberian region of Novosibirsk.

So far, over 1,000 domestic fowl have died -- mostly ducks and geese. No human infections have been recorded.

Onishchenko said scientists believe this is because the bird flu strain detected in Russia is different, and weaker, than the one that has hit large parts of Asia. Most importantly, according to Onishchenko, there have been no cases of this variety ever infecting human beings.Scientists believe that the bird flu virus, once it enters the human body, could mutate or mix with a human flu virus, creating an entirely new flu strain that could be easily passed between people.

The deadly Asian bird flu virus is known to scientists as H5N1. The Siberian variant has been categorized as H5N2, as Onishchenko stressed.

"To date, in all the available [scientific] literature, and in our medical community, there was never been a case of H5N2 being passed to humans," Onishchenko said.

Bird flu viruses are carried by wild, migratory birds. When the birds come into contact with domestic fowl or other animals, the virus can spread.

The Siberian outbreak is thought to have originated in Asia, like its deadlier cousin H5N1.

Despite Onishchenko’s reassurances, scientists around the world are concerned about the Russian outbreak and say it has the potential -- like other bird flu viruses -- to spark a deadly pandemic that could kill millions of people.

Albert Osterhaus, of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, is one of the world’s top virologists. He explained how scientists categorize the family of viruses collectively known as “bird flu.”

"I think it's important to realize that all these viruses, in principle, come from wild birds and the 'H' and the 'N' that we mention relate to proteins on the surface of these influenza viruses in wild birds. And so far we have found 16 'H' molecules in different viruses and we have found 9 'N' molecules in different viruses. They come in different combinations, so you have H1N1, H2N3 etc," Osterhaus said.

That adds up to 144 permutations, or 144 varieties of bird flu. Eight years ago, the first cases of bird flu in humans were detected in Hong Kong. The strain was H5N1.

Of the 18 people who became infected in that first human outbreak, six died. The death toll was so high because humans have no natural immunity to H5N1 -- or any other strain of bird flu -- because until 1997, the disease never affected humans.

H5N1 remains the most-watched strain in Asia and it remains extremely deadly to the people who contract it.

So far, some 100 people have become infected and half of them have died. But Osterhaus notes that other strains of bird flu have also entered the human population and there is no reason why H5N2 -- the strain now active in Siberia -- could not do the same.

"We have now seen, since '97, that there are these viruses that can cross the species barrier, meaning they can also get into humans and they can cause disease and even death in humans. So, we know now that for instance the H7N7 in the Netherlands here caused one fatal case in humans," Osterhaus said. "We know now that the H5N1 virus in southeast Asia has caused more than 100 cases in humans, of whom more than 50 have died in the meantime. And now we see in Russia that another virus, another combination -- the H5N2 -- is causing problems there. And so far, we have not seen that these H5N2 viruses can cause disease in humans but I think it's far too early to say that this could not happen."

What is the link between human cases of bird flu and a possible flu pandemic? Scientists believe that the bird flu virus, once it enters the human body, could mutate or mix with a human flu virus, creating an entirely new flu strain that could be easily passed between people.

If that happened, the new virus would spread like wildfire -- as happened during three flu pandemics in the 20th century -- since no one would have any natural immunity.

To minimize the risk of this happening, Doctor Osterhaus recommends close monitoring of domestic animals in areas where bird flu outbreaks are detected. People should be monitored closely as well, so that they can be isolated and treated if they become infected.

"What you can do is first of all monitor the situation, both in wild and domestic birds. That's one thing. And try at least in the domestic birds to keep it under control. That's one thing. The other thing you can do, of course, is monitor in humans, at a very early stage, whether these things are happening," Osterhaus said. "And if it happens, although at this moment we don't have a vaccine yet and it will take time before we can develop one, you can take measures in the area where this might start. I think there are possibilities there. And I think the world community, in principle, should think about that."

At present there is no way of predicting which of the bird flu viruses could mutate or when this could occur.

 

[Kim99]

News - July 27, 2005

City organizations, businesses warned of Avian flu
By RILEY YATES
Union Leader Staff



MANCHESTER — The city's top health official has sent a letter to businesses and local agencies warning of Avian influenza, a potential pandemic he said could bring echoes of the flu that killed 20 million to 40 million people worldwide between 1918 to 1919.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=58297


Preparing for Pandemic Flu

South Burlington, Vermont - June 15, 2005

The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control have urged local governments to prepare for a catastrophic outbreak of the flu. Health leaders say another flu pandemic is coming and it might be the "Bird Flu."

The Vermont Health Department held a drill Wednesday. It was called "Operation Achoo!" -- a comical name for a serious drill.

"The Vermont Health Department and other local agencies are very concerned about this," said State Epidemiologist Dr. Cort Lohff.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=3480183&nav=4QcSb5Hx

 

[Kim99]

This is not going away~

Mekong province reports bird flu recurrence


Animal health authorities in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre recently killed more than 400 fowls infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus at a local farm, said an official.
Animal health officials have disinfected neighboring farms and areas where the virus was detected, said Phan Trung Nghia, an official of the Ben Tre Animal Health Department.

The province has reported two recurrences of bird flu so far, culling more than 16,700 fowls.


http://thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=8170

 

[Kim99]

U.S. officials working up new bird flu plan
Government to decide who should be vaccinated or receive antivirals first

Reuters
Updated: 3:19 p.m. ET July 27, 2005


WASHINGTON - U.S. health experts are putting together a plan for dealing with a pandemic of avian influenza should one break out, a Health and Human Services Department official said on Wednesday.

The plan includes deciding who should be vaccinated and who should get antiviral drugs first, said Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, an HHS vaccine adviser.

“We know that an influenza pandemic will occur,” Schwartz told a news conference organized by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

The H5N1 strain of avian flu first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago and has killed more than 50 people in Asia, including in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia and most recently Indonesia.

Health experts fear it could kill millions around the world if it mutates into a form that could easily spread from person to person.

2 million doses of Tamiflu stockpiled
HHS has stockpiled more than 2 million doses of Roche’s Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, which has been shown to help protect against bird flu and which can treat the symptoms, Schwartz said.

The agency has plans to order up to 20 million doses.

He said a committee was meeting in Washington this week and would give a plan to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt next week.

Shortcomings in U.S. preparedness include a lack of tests to rapidly diagnose a person or an animal infected with the flu, a ready vaccine supply and ways to rapidly make a new vaccine.

Influenza viruses mutate quickly, so vaccines can only be developed after a new strain emerges. This takes about six months.

“In a pandemic, everyone will be susceptible and vaccination recommendations will likely be universal,” Schwartz said.

And right now, only two companies make vaccine in the United States — Sanofi-Aventis and MedImmune. Chiron makes vaccine for the U.S. market but its factory is in Britain.

“Because every country around the world will be affected, we assume that only vaccine made in the United States will be available here,” Schwartz said. British authorities are likely to keep any vaccine made their for their own residents.

Experts will have to decide who gets vaccinated first. Current guidelines point to the elderly, infants, pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses.

“In a pandemic, we need to consider whether to vaccinate police and firefighters, and utility workers,” Schwartz said.

The public health system also needs to be shored up, with extra hospital beds, isolation units and staffers, Schwartz said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8728975/

 

[Kim99]

So, apparently, there will be a shortage of regular flu vaccine on top of everything else.


By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published July 21, 2005
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050721-103659-1609r

NEW YORK -- Already plagued by production cutting contamination problems, Chiron Corp. now says it will not be able to make or sell flu vaccine at all this year.

The flu vaccine involved was earmarked for European and other non-U.S. markets, the Wall Street Journal said Thursday. It was the second such incident for Chiron.

Less than a week after announcing a production cutback, Chiron said testing at its plant in Marburg, Germany, showed that bacterial contamination of its Begrivac vaccine was more widespread than previously believed, prompting a halt of all shipments this year.

In October, United Kingdom health authorities ordered Chiron to halt production of a flu vaccine for the U.S. market, called Fluvirin, after a similar contamination incident at a plant in Liverpool, England.

That shutdown abruptly deprived the United States of almost 50 million doses of flu vaccine, or roughly half of the expected supply.

Chiron says the two incidents are not related.


Logged

 

[Kim99]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Altai imposes quarantine after Novosibirsk bird flu outbreak

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2262769&PageNum=0

26.07.2005, 13.44


BARNAUL, July 26 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's Altai territory imposed a quarantine after the information about the bird flu outbreak in the Novosibirsk region was confirmed.

"The information about the bird flu outbreak in the neighboring Novosibirsk region has been confirmed, so we are sending cables to mayors and district heads today," first deputy head of the regional veterinary department Anatoly Lapin told Itar-Tass.

Lapin said quarantine measures had been launched at poultry farms, but he did not rule out that they may be extended to the entire territory.

Poultry farm personnel will have two sets of work wear. The workers will have go through disinfection treatment after each contact with poultry. They were also recommended to wash hands every hour and take showers.

As of now, the Altai territory has not reported any bird flu cases. The regional administration banned the export of poultry.

Local specialists warned against buying poultry from private producers or unauthorized sellers, and eating fowl. The virus which allegedly caused the Novosibirsk outbreak spreads by the contact and aerial way, so experts urged the population to stick to personal hygiene norms.

 

[Kim99]

This site has the migratory patterns for different birds. Very interesting as those birds in China should start their migration next month.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/wingedmigration/home.html

 

[Kim99]

Jul 28th editorial from Bangok's "The Nation"

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EDITORIAL: Bird-flu menace looming large
Published on July 28, 2005

International efforts to contain the spread of this potential mass killer are only as good as the weakest link. It is premature to conclude from the three recent bird-flu deaths in Indonesia that the world will soon experience the long-dreaded global influenza pandemic. But the first human cases in a country outside mainland Southeast Asia – when coupled with further incidents of chickens and wild birds dying in Thailand, China, Russia and elsewhere – is enough to alarm scientists and health officials, because the virus seems to be continuing to spread and become more lethal.

Experts say the fact that migratory birds and ducks that were previously immune to the H5N1 virus have died in recent outbreaks is a very ominous sign, indicating the virus has indeed mutated. It also suggests that infection could spread more rapidly around the world, because birds can fly hundreds of miles in a day.

While all the warning signs point to the bad news that the world may be moving towards its first pandemic of the 21st century, Asian countries where the problem originated are not doing a very good job of being open and truthful about the threat. Scientists fear millions of people around the world will be killed if the virus mutates and mixes with human influenza, creating a deadly pandemic strain that could easily be passed from human to human.

Last week at a press conference confirming the country’s first H5N1-related deaths, the Indonesian health minister was quick to rule out any possibility of human-to-human transmission between the three deaths within the same family – a father and two young daughters – even before the results from clinical and epidemiological investigations became available. The minister simply noted that lab tests showed the virus was a conventional one, not new, and therefore there was no need to worry about human-to-human transmission.

But Thailand’s experience, with 17 people infected and 12 deaths, suggests otherwise. Thai experts observed that the epidemiological pattern of the Indonesian deaths might be similar to Thailand’s suspected case of daughter and mother transmission last year.

The mother, who worked in an urban area and had no known history of contact with chickens, became infected with H5N1 and died after nursing her sick daughter, who had bird flu. Initial reports from Indonesia indicate the disease may have passed from the eight-year-old daughter to her younger sister and father, a government official in Jakarta.

While it is too early to conclude what the first three deaths in Indonesia might tell us about the disease, it is important that official statements be supported by scientific facts and not merely consist of speculation designed to suppress panic. In this regard, sceptical eyes are turned towards China, which is doing the worst of all the governments in coming clean with its avian-flu situation.

Despite reports that thousands of migratory birds were recently discovered dead in China and unofficial Internet reports of 120 related human fatalities, Beijing continues flatly to deny the reports. But such a denial could be fatal given the historical record, which shows that last century’s three major influenza pandemics originated in China.

It is encouraging that international organisations that had been relatively muted about China are becoming more vocal. The United Nations recently criticised the Chinese government for withholding vital information that would be useful in fighting the virus like it did in the Sars outbreak. The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week told the world community that it is pressing China to allow international laboratories to examine specimens from birds in Qinghai, where the H5N1 virus has killed more than 5,000 birds from five species.

WHO officials stress that this virus is highly unpredictable and versatile, able to change at any time. It is highly dangerous. But the WHO has not received from China requested information or virus samples from the infected birds.

Despite 100 million human deaths from flu pandemics in the last century, it is only now that science can hear early warnings from nature. The question is, will countries, especially China, with its ambition to become a world leader in the 21st century, listen?


www.nationmultimedia.com

 

[Kim99]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4226459.stm
Eyewitness: Surviving bird flu
By Nga Pham
BBC Vietnamese service



Hung fell ill the same day his brother died
Nguyen Thanh Hung knows he has been lucky.
The 42-year-old construction materials salesman has just been released from Hanoi's Hospital for Tropical Diseases, where both he and his older brother were patients.

Hung is now back at home with his wife and children. But his brother Nguyen Hung Viet died from his illness.


Hung still does not know how they both contracted H5N1, the often deadly virus that causes the respiratory illness bid flu.

"I guess we both got it from the last meal we shared together," Hung said.

"I'd just got back to Thai Binh, where I'm originally from, to visit my brothers. They threw a welcoming dinner where we had our favourite dish, 'tiet canh', which is made with chopped congealed raw duck blood and herbs.

"The duck was plump and looking healthy, so we didn't have the slightest suspicion that it might be sick. Moreover, we were thinking chicken flu only exists in the south of the country," he said.

Just one day after the meal, Hung's eldest brother fell sick with a temperature.

But the family waited a whole week before they finally took him to hospital.

H5N1 BIRD FLU VIRUS
Principally an avian disease, first seen in humans in Hong Kong, 1997
Almost all human cases thought to be contracted from birds
Isolated cases of human-to-human transmission in Hong Kong and Vietnam, but none confirmed


Q&A: Bird flu

"It was New Year's Day. The hospital was running on minimal staffing and only got back to normal operating schedule three days afterwards. It was an unfortunate timing for him.

"At that point, my brother was already too weak. He couldn't breathe, his left lung was totally damaged.

"Yet the doctors didn't think he had bird flu, and his tests came back negative. So I didn't take any preventive measures while taking care of him. I spent days and nights next to his sick-bed, yet I didn't even bother with a mask," Hung said.

Hung's brother died on 10 January. Later on the same day, Hung developed a bad fever.

"I got really worried so the next day I went to a clinic where they took a scan of my lungs. The result came back not so good, and when I complained about difficulties in breathing they referred me to the same hospital where my brother was treated.

"In a way I was lucky that at that time, a number of people had died in the south of bird flu and the media was raising the alarm about this matter.

Panic

"I was immediately put into quarantine. My concern grew each day, as my temperature was staying extremely high. At the worst moment, two thirds of one lung was severely affected.

My temperature was staying extremely high. At the worst moment, two thirds of one lung was severely affected

Nguyen Thanh Hung

"Still, when the doctors told me I had bird flu I was totally shocked. I knew nothing about it and it scared me. The test on the specimen taken from my brother also came back that day, as positive.

"I got into such a panic, even though my fever was beginning to subside. For two nights, I didn't sleep.

"I told myself I should not doze off at any point - something may happen inside me, inside my brain, and I may never wake up.

"Only when my fever had gone and the doctors told me my lungs had made a miraculous recovery did I feel a little relieved," Hung said.

Hung has since fully recovered and was finally released from the hospital on 28 January.

But the doctors are still investigating his case.

Their biggest fear is that Hung contracted the virus from his brother while looking after him at the hospital.

If that were the case, it would be the second suspected human-to-human transmission of bird flu in Vietnam.

Scientists are deeply concerned about the ability of the flu virus to combine with a human form and transmit easily from human to human. If this happened, the world could face a pandemic of devastating scale, experts have warned.

I now know everything about preventing bird flu, I should be employed by the Health Ministry to do their awareness campaign

Nguyen Thanh Hung

Now back to his normal life, Hung has decided to take a long leave of absence from his work.

"They were only too happy to release me. Not everybody believes that I don't have the virus anymore and that it is not easy to contract bird flu virus.

"It is like having a stigma, some people look at you with suspicion and fear. So I think it's best to avoid having too much contact with other people.

"I also look out for any slightest symptoms of bird flu in my family. I'm watching like a hawk," he said.

When it comes to his food, Hung admits he no longer eats those "tricky delicacies" he used to love.

"We have also stopped eating chicken, duck, and poultry in general. Maybe it is too cautious but we cannot risk our health.

"We have to stay alert, very alert," Hung said, adding with a chuckle: "I now know everything about preventing bird flu. I should be employed by the Health Ministry to do their awareness campaign".

 

[Martin]

Japan finds new bird flu outbreak on chicken farm
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese authorities have discovered a fresh outbreak of bird flu disease on a chicken farm in eastern Japan, close to where several cases of the disease have been detected since late June.

Some chickens at the farm had tested positive for a strain of the H5 virus, a local government official in Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, said on Wednesday.

Authorities will conduct further tests to confirm the subtype of the virus, the official said.

All bird flu outbreaks discovered in Ibaraki since late June have been confirmed as the weak H5N2 strain.

This is a less virulent type than the H5N1 strain found in previous avian flu outbreaks in Japan early last year.

The H5N1 strain first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago and is known to have killed more than 50 people in countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

The location of the latest outbreak in Japan is about 6 km (4 miles) from where the initial case was found in late June.

Since June, authorities have killed chickens at seven farms, all located near the initial case, after they tested positive in antibody tests.

The farm in the latest case has about 35,000 birds.

Following the new case, authorities limited the movement of eggs and chickens in a 5 km radius around the farm to prevent the virus from spreading.

Bird flu returned to Japan last year for the first time in 79 years.


Between January and March in 2004, Japan had four outbreaks of the H5N1 type strain, including an outbreak in Kyoto in western Japan in February 2004 that led to the disposal of about 240,000 chickens and 20 million eggs


http://www.rednova.com/news/international/187576/japan_finds_new_bird_flu_outbreak_on_chicken_farm/

 

[Martin]

avian flu updates page 7 at

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=160093