H5N1 human deaths in China - this may be it folks
- Thread starter CanadaSue
- Start date
KateCanada
Inactive
Okay, I'm freaked now! I never really read much about this TILL NOW because I thought the "WHO" had things under control. This article has probably been posted before but it's the first time I've read it. Sure woke me up. Holy sh@t!
(I know it's old, but it sure explains things clearly)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-16.htm
The Monster at the Door
by Mike Davis
As in a classic 1950s sci-fi thriller, our world is imperiled by a terrifying monster. Scientists try to sound the alarm, but politicians ignore the threat until its too late. Indifference ultimately turns into panic.
The monster, of course, is H5N1, the lethal avian flu that first emerged in 1997 in Hong Kong and is now entrenched - in an even more lethal strain - in a half dozen Southeast Asian countries. It has recently killed scores of farmers and poultry workers who have had direct contact with sick birds.
For seven years researchers have warned that H5N1 would eventually fall in love with a human influenza virus in the body of sick person (or possibly a pig) and produce a mutant offspring that could travel at pandemic velocity from human to human.
The media episodically gives page fifteen coverage to these warnings, which, at most, cause a small shudder before readers turn the page to more important stories about Paris Hilton's sex video or John Kerry's war record.
Ironically, in our 'culture of fear' - with Ashcroft and Ridge ceaselessly ranting that the terrorist apocalypse is nigh - the least attention is given to the threat that is truly most threatening.
On 14 September, Dr. Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional director for the western Pacific, tried to shake complacency with an urgent warning that human-to-human transmission of avian flu was a "high possibility."
Two weeks later (28 September), grim-faced Thai officials revealed that the dreaded viral leap had already occurred. A young mother, who had died on 20 September, most likely had contracted virus directly from her dying child.
A crucial threshold has been crossed. Of course, as Thai officials hastened to point out, one isolated case doesn't make a pandemic. Human-to-human avian flu would need a certain critical mass, a minimum initial incidence, before it could begin to decimate the world.
The precedent always invoked to illustrate how this might happen is the 1918-19 influenza pandemic: the single greatest mortality event in human history. In only 24 weeks, a deadly avian flu strain killed from 2 to 5 per cent of humanity (50 to 100 million people - including 675,000 Americans) from the Aleutians to Patagonia.
But some researchers worry that H5N1 is actually an even more deadly threat than H1N1 (the 1918 virus).
First of all, this flu - at least in its bird-to-human form - is a far more vicious killer. In 1918-19, 2.5 per cent of infected Americans died. In contrast, more than 70 per cent of this year's H5N1 cases (30 out of 42) have perished: a lethality comparable to ebola fever and other nightmare emergent diseases.
The Center for Disease Control has estimated that a new pandemic would infect 40 to 100 million Americans. Multiply that by a 70 per cent kill rate and ponder your family's future.
Secondly, as the WHO has repeatedly emphasized, the avian flu seems to have conquered an ecological niche of unprecedented dimension. The rise of factory poultry farming in Asia over the last decade, and the dangerously unhygienic conditions in farms and plants, have created a perfect incubator for the new virus.
Moreover, in the face of desperate WHO efforts to geographically contain the avian pandemic by destroying infected bird populations, the virus has literally taken flight. H5N1 has been identified in dead herons, gulls, egrets, hawks and pigeons. Like West Nile, it has wings with which can cross oceans and potentially infect bird populations everywhere.
In August, furthermore, the Chinese announced that the avian strain had been detected in pigs. This is a particularly ominous development since pigs, susceptible to both bird and human flu, are likely crucibles for genetic 'reassortment' between viruses. Containment seems to have failed.
Thirdly, a new pandemic will use modern transportation. The 1918-19 virus was slowed by ocean-going transport and the isolation of rural society. Its latterday descendant could jet-hop the globe in a week.
Finally, the mega-slums of Asia, Africa and Latin America are like so many lakes of gasoline awaiting the spark of H5N1. Third World urbanization has created unparalleled high-density concentrations of poor people in ill health, ripe for viral slaughter.
What are the frontlines of defense against such an unthinkable catastrophe?
One of the most urgent tasks is to ensure that poultry workers in Southeast Asia receive ordinary flu vaccinations in order to prevent possible mixing of human and avian genes. But current production of seasonal flu vaccine is mostly consigned to the richer countries, and Thai officials have complained that they cannot obtain enough donated doses to conduct a systematic vaccination.
Meanwhile a prototype H5N1 vaccine is under development, but only in quantities to safeguard frontline public health and safety workers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Pharmaceutal companies to date have not found sufficient profit incentives to increase their output of vaccines and virals. As the New York Times emphasized last Thursday (30 September), there has been a disastrous "mismatch of public health needs and private control of production of vaccines and drugs."
Indeed last April, at a historic WHO-convened summit about global defenses against a possible pandemic, leading experts expressed their deep pessimism about existing preparations.
"The consultation concluded that supplies of vaccine, the first line of defence for preventing high morbidity and mortality, would be grossly inadequate at the start of a pandemic and well into the first wave of international spread."
"Limited production capacity largely concentrated in Europe and North America," the WHO report continues,"would exacerbate the problem of inequitable access."
"Inequitable access,' of course, is a euphemism for the death of a large segment of humanity: a callous triage already prepared in advance of the H5N1 plague by indifference to third world pubic health.
This is the moral context of the deafening silence about the H5N1 threat in the current presidential debate. Although the General Accounting Office recently concluded that "no state is fully prepared to respond to major public health threat," the Kerry camp has failed to sound the tocsin about the Bush administration's lethargic preparations.
Only Ralph Nader appears to be fully awake to the peril. In a letter to President Bush in August, he repeated scientific warnings that the "The Big One" was coming and urged a 'presidential conference on influenza epidemics and pandemics" to confront "the looming threats to the health of millions of people."
It has become fashionable, of course, in some 'progressive' circles to excoriate Nader's presence in the campaign as divisive egoism. But who else is warning us about the Monster at the door?
God have Mercy if this is really happening!
(I know it's old, but it sure explains things clearly)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-16.htm
The Monster at the Door
by Mike Davis
As in a classic 1950s sci-fi thriller, our world is imperiled by a terrifying monster. Scientists try to sound the alarm, but politicians ignore the threat until its too late. Indifference ultimately turns into panic.
The monster, of course, is H5N1, the lethal avian flu that first emerged in 1997 in Hong Kong and is now entrenched - in an even more lethal strain - in a half dozen Southeast Asian countries. It has recently killed scores of farmers and poultry workers who have had direct contact with sick birds.
For seven years researchers have warned that H5N1 would eventually fall in love with a human influenza virus in the body of sick person (or possibly a pig) and produce a mutant offspring that could travel at pandemic velocity from human to human.
The media episodically gives page fifteen coverage to these warnings, which, at most, cause a small shudder before readers turn the page to more important stories about Paris Hilton's sex video or John Kerry's war record.
Ironically, in our 'culture of fear' - with Ashcroft and Ridge ceaselessly ranting that the terrorist apocalypse is nigh - the least attention is given to the threat that is truly most threatening.
On 14 September, Dr. Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional director for the western Pacific, tried to shake complacency with an urgent warning that human-to-human transmission of avian flu was a "high possibility."
Two weeks later (28 September), grim-faced Thai officials revealed that the dreaded viral leap had already occurred. A young mother, who had died on 20 September, most likely had contracted virus directly from her dying child.
A crucial threshold has been crossed. Of course, as Thai officials hastened to point out, one isolated case doesn't make a pandemic. Human-to-human avian flu would need a certain critical mass, a minimum initial incidence, before it could begin to decimate the world.
The precedent always invoked to illustrate how this might happen is the 1918-19 influenza pandemic: the single greatest mortality event in human history. In only 24 weeks, a deadly avian flu strain killed from 2 to 5 per cent of humanity (50 to 100 million people - including 675,000 Americans) from the Aleutians to Patagonia.
But some researchers worry that H5N1 is actually an even more deadly threat than H1N1 (the 1918 virus).
First of all, this flu - at least in its bird-to-human form - is a far more vicious killer. In 1918-19, 2.5 per cent of infected Americans died. In contrast, more than 70 per cent of this year's H5N1 cases (30 out of 42) have perished: a lethality comparable to ebola fever and other nightmare emergent diseases.
The Center for Disease Control has estimated that a new pandemic would infect 40 to 100 million Americans. Multiply that by a 70 per cent kill rate and ponder your family's future.
Secondly, as the WHO has repeatedly emphasized, the avian flu seems to have conquered an ecological niche of unprecedented dimension. The rise of factory poultry farming in Asia over the last decade, and the dangerously unhygienic conditions in farms and plants, have created a perfect incubator for the new virus.
Moreover, in the face of desperate WHO efforts to geographically contain the avian pandemic by destroying infected bird populations, the virus has literally taken flight. H5N1 has been identified in dead herons, gulls, egrets, hawks and pigeons. Like West Nile, it has wings with which can cross oceans and potentially infect bird populations everywhere.
In August, furthermore, the Chinese announced that the avian strain had been detected in pigs. This is a particularly ominous development since pigs, susceptible to both bird and human flu, are likely crucibles for genetic 'reassortment' between viruses. Containment seems to have failed.
Thirdly, a new pandemic will use modern transportation. The 1918-19 virus was slowed by ocean-going transport and the isolation of rural society. Its latterday descendant could jet-hop the globe in a week.
Finally, the mega-slums of Asia, Africa and Latin America are like so many lakes of gasoline awaiting the spark of H5N1. Third World urbanization has created unparalleled high-density concentrations of poor people in ill health, ripe for viral slaughter.
What are the frontlines of defense against such an unthinkable catastrophe?
One of the most urgent tasks is to ensure that poultry workers in Southeast Asia receive ordinary flu vaccinations in order to prevent possible mixing of human and avian genes. But current production of seasonal flu vaccine is mostly consigned to the richer countries, and Thai officials have complained that they cannot obtain enough donated doses to conduct a systematic vaccination.
Meanwhile a prototype H5N1 vaccine is under development, but only in quantities to safeguard frontline public health and safety workers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Pharmaceutal companies to date have not found sufficient profit incentives to increase their output of vaccines and virals. As the New York Times emphasized last Thursday (30 September), there has been a disastrous "mismatch of public health needs and private control of production of vaccines and drugs."
Indeed last April, at a historic WHO-convened summit about global defenses against a possible pandemic, leading experts expressed their deep pessimism about existing preparations.
"The consultation concluded that supplies of vaccine, the first line of defence for preventing high morbidity and mortality, would be grossly inadequate at the start of a pandemic and well into the first wave of international spread."
"Limited production capacity largely concentrated in Europe and North America," the WHO report continues,"would exacerbate the problem of inequitable access."
"Inequitable access,' of course, is a euphemism for the death of a large segment of humanity: a callous triage already prepared in advance of the H5N1 plague by indifference to third world pubic health.
This is the moral context of the deafening silence about the H5N1 threat in the current presidential debate. Although the General Accounting Office recently concluded that "no state is fully prepared to respond to major public health threat," the Kerry camp has failed to sound the tocsin about the Bush administration's lethargic preparations.
Only Ralph Nader appears to be fully awake to the peril. In a letter to President Bush in August, he repeated scientific warnings that the "The Big One" was coming and urged a 'presidential conference on influenza epidemics and pandemics" to confront "the looming threats to the health of millions of people."
It has become fashionable, of course, in some 'progressive' circles to excoriate Nader's presence in the campaign as divisive egoism. But who else is warning us about the Monster at the door?
God have Mercy if this is really happening!
DR Niman has a new article off babelfish- looks like its closer to 121 dead, and more infected.
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15644
if he's right- looks like we got ourselves a pandemic, folks!
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15644
if he's right- looks like we got ourselves a pandemic, folks!
justRose
Inactive
If birds are spreading this how can it be stopped? I was reading about migratory geese being infected. We can't kill all the birds; we can't even contain a small portion of them. http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15579
The chickens aren't the problem it's the wild birds.
The chickens aren't the problem it's the wild birds.
China invents vaccines for bird flu virus
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/5/2005 8:18
Chinese scientists yesterday announced that two newly developed vaccines are fully capable of stopping the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus to fowl, water birds, mammals or humans.
They also said they are willing to provide technical support in epidemic prevention to other countries and regions and contribute to the breeding industry and public health security worldwide.
Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, based in Harbin, capital of northeastern Heilongjiang Province, said the two new vaccines developed by her lab had proved to be a success: having passed a state-level appraisal, plus a permit granted by the Ministry of Agriculture for sale on the market.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 percent," said Chen.
In the meantime, China has developed three new technologies with which it takes less than 10 hours to confirm a bird flu epidemic, compared to 72 hours in the past, with more time being gained for prevention measures or for taking action.
Dr Bernard Vallat, director general of World Organization for Animal Health, said China leads the world in research on bird flu and technologies for prevention.
The two new vaccines have been sent to Gangcha County, where dead migratory birds, confirmed as felled by the deadly H5N1 virus, were found on May 4, in a bid to prevent the deadly avian disease from spreading further.
The Ministry of Agriculture also made an announcement about the incident last Saturday. It is the first reported bird flu case on the Chinese mainland since last year when China wiped out the primarily avian-borne epidemic disease.
Sources said some of the dead migratory birds discovered in Gangcha, northwestern Qinghai Province, migrated from Southeast Asia. Migration is said to be an important mode for spreading the bird flu virus, and China is on the route of migratory birds in Asia.
There is a higher risk for waterfowl to be infected with the deadly bird flu virus after mingling with migratory birds already carrying the killer disease. The bird flu virus can easily spread to domestic fowl and even humans via the water birds infected with the H5N1 virus.
There were no reports in the world of vaccines being tested on water birds before China began its research. The latest experimental results show that the newly developed vaccines are equally effective in water fowl, and ducks and geese.
(Xinhua)
http://english.eastday.com/eastday/englishedition/nation/userobject1ai1127917.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/5/2005 8:18
Chinese scientists yesterday announced that two newly developed vaccines are fully capable of stopping the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus to fowl, water birds, mammals or humans.
They also said they are willing to provide technical support in epidemic prevention to other countries and regions and contribute to the breeding industry and public health security worldwide.
Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, based in Harbin, capital of northeastern Heilongjiang Province, said the two new vaccines developed by her lab had proved to be a success: having passed a state-level appraisal, plus a permit granted by the Ministry of Agriculture for sale on the market.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 percent," said Chen.
In the meantime, China has developed three new technologies with which it takes less than 10 hours to confirm a bird flu epidemic, compared to 72 hours in the past, with more time being gained for prevention measures or for taking action.
Dr Bernard Vallat, director general of World Organization for Animal Health, said China leads the world in research on bird flu and technologies for prevention.
The two new vaccines have been sent to Gangcha County, where dead migratory birds, confirmed as felled by the deadly H5N1 virus, were found on May 4, in a bid to prevent the deadly avian disease from spreading further.
The Ministry of Agriculture also made an announcement about the incident last Saturday. It is the first reported bird flu case on the Chinese mainland since last year when China wiped out the primarily avian-borne epidemic disease.
Sources said some of the dead migratory birds discovered in Gangcha, northwestern Qinghai Province, migrated from Southeast Asia. Migration is said to be an important mode for spreading the bird flu virus, and China is on the route of migratory birds in Asia.
There is a higher risk for waterfowl to be infected with the deadly bird flu virus after mingling with migratory birds already carrying the killer disease. The bird flu virus can easily spread to domestic fowl and even humans via the water birds infected with the H5N1 virus.
There were no reports in the world of vaccines being tested on water birds before China began its research. The latest experimental results show that the newly developed vaccines are equally effective in water fowl, and ducks and geese.
(Xinhua)
http://english.eastday.com/eastday/englishedition/nation/userobject1ai1127917.html
Makes me go hmmm....
China is having a high rate of infection quickly and they are the ones that have come out with these new vaccines. Anyone think maybe these vaccines are what is causing the outbreak? People getting the flu from the vaccines? Spread from animal testing? Maybe even changed the make up of the avian flu when playing with it to make these vaccines.
hmmm....
China is having a high rate of infection quickly and they are the ones that have come out with these new vaccines. Anyone think maybe these vaccines are what is causing the outbreak? People getting the flu from the vaccines? Spread from animal testing? Maybe even changed the make up of the avian flu when playing with it to make these vaccines.
hmmm....
if its gone H2H avian infection risk will be the least of our problems.
this may be the first wave of a pandemic. what remains to be seen is
1-verification of the reports. dont expect official verification form china until they have no other alternative- thats the pattern they followed with SARS. possibilty exists , IMHO, that they will find this leak and plug it, cutting off what little we are hearing for several weeks or possibly months
2- evidence of efficient H2H transmission outside the stated area. Watch for sudden outbreaks of unexpected clusters in other counties. current case descriptions include travel to SE asia. if reports are true, that will no longer matter-but a low index of suspicion that relie son that marker will allow spread within the human population before public health "gets it".
this may be the first wave of a pandemic. what remains to be seen is
1-verification of the reports. dont expect official verification form china until they have no other alternative- thats the pattern they followed with SARS. possibilty exists , IMHO, that they will find this leak and plug it, cutting off what little we are hearing for several weeks or possibly months
2- evidence of efficient H2H transmission outside the stated area. Watch for sudden outbreaks of unexpected clusters in other counties. current case descriptions include travel to SE asia. if reports are true, that will no longer matter-but a low index of suspicion that relie son that marker will allow spread within the human population before public health "gets it".
KateCanada
Inactive
Canadian Public Health Agency report:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/h5n1/index.html
It says we are seeing the third wave of H5N1.
I can't believe how scary this is.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/h5n1/index.html
It says we are seeing the third wave of H5N1.
I can't believe how scary this is.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1491811,00.html
Flying Dutchman mans the species barrier
A dynamic professor dubbed the virus hunter believes that bird flu is the greatest threat to mankind. He tells Mark Honigsbaum how the world should fight back
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
To reach Albert Osterhaus's office on the 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam you negotiate several biohazard laboratories, two corridors lined with deep freezes and a pair of old-fashioned egg incubators. Finally, you reach a room decorated with posters of seals and cats, and are ushered into the professor's presence by one of three secretaries he employs to manage his increasingly hectic schedule.
Like the viruses he chases for a living, Osterhaus is continually on the move, and the demands on his time are constantly multiplying. Three weeks ago he was in China and Vietnam to meet officials from the World Health Organisation. The week before that, it was India. This week, he is back in his office to check on the progress of research projects - and to make time to talk to the Guardian.
A veterinarian turned virologist, Osterhaus is an authority on several viruses that have crossed the species barrier. In 1998, he showed that the canine distemper virus was responsible for the mass deaths of Siberian seals in Lake Baikal. The following year, he identified influenza B - a strain of flu that normally infects only humans - in seals off the coast of the Netherlands. Then, in April 2003, at the height of the panic over Sars (severe acquired respiratory syndrome) in Hong Kong, he showed that the disease was caused by a coronavirus that normally resides in civet cats and other carnivorous animals (Osterhaus beat rival labs in the US and Germany to the proof by fast-tracking approvals to conduct live virus trials).
But the virus which increasingly occupies his time these days, and the one that he believes poses the greatest threat to mankind, is the avian influenza virus, H5N1.
On his trip to Vietnam, the World Health Organisation presented data about how cases of H5N1 were multiplying in members of the same family group, a process known as clustering. This could indicate that the virus, which has prompted mass culling of poultry throughout south-east Asia, is becoming infectious among people.
The following week, Nature reported that the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was struggling to get serum samples from people and poultry infected with the latest strains of the virus forwarded to its labs for analysis. Then, no sooner had he returned to Rotterdam last weekend, the Chinese reported that 178 wild geese had been found dead at a research centre in a western province, Qinghai - also victims of H5N1.
"It's another worrying finding," he says. "Normally, these viruses don't kill wild birds. They only heat up when they pass from wild birds to poultry. It could be that we haven't looked at the mortality in wild birds closely enough. Or it could be a spill back from domestic poultry."
The more pressing concern, however, is the threat H5N1 poses to people. Since the start of the current outbreak in south-east Asia in 2003, there have been more than 90 human infections and 54 deaths. If H5N1 were to become a super-spreader like Sars, then infections could leap round the world in a matter of days, triggering a global pandemic.
Indeed, such is the concern among Osterhaus and his colleagues at Holland's National Influenza Centre that he is now calling for the WHO and FAO to join forces with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and establish a global task force to combat the virus.
In a leading commentary for today's edition of Nature, Osterhaus argues that while Vietnam, Hong Kong and other south-east Asian states have taken steps to cull infected poultry and contain human outbreaks, the responses at a national level have been patchy and ad hoc. In particular, the failure to forward serum samples to WHO reporting labs quickly enough means that the true incidence of infections may be underestimated.
One of the task force's roles, argues Osterhaus, would be to ensure that farm workers with the greatest exposure to the virus are properly monitored and that adequate virological and clinical data are collected, including detailed post mortem reports. Animal health experts recruited by the task force should also survey poultry and other domestic birds for all sub-types of the virus. Osterhaus would also like to see better monitoring of wild bird populations, the natural reservoir of influenza A viruses.
"We need much more data on influenza in wild birds because that's where it comes from," he says. "But at the same time we also need better data on outbreaks in poultry and better reporting from labs so that we can get the sequences out and know if and in what direction the virus is mutating. And we need these data sets to be linked, from humans to birds, so that we can build up a repository of information. At the moment all we have is a series of snapshots."
Osterhaus argues that nothing can stop a global influenza pandemic. On average, pandemics occur every 30 years and are as inevitable as the tides. However, just as the United Nations is now establishing listening posts to provide an early warning of another tsunami, so the global flu task force could provide an equivalent early warning system.
According to Osterhaus, the task force would come under the umbrella of the WHO's flu pandemic preparedness plan and include virologists, epidemiologists and other specialists from the fields of animal and human health, as well as ecologists, agriculturists and experts in translating science into policy.
The result, write Osterhaus and his colleagues in Nature, is that when people begin to fall ill, "outbreak management teams can be formed and targeted at a specific outbreak".
To do nothing is not an option. The mortality rate from H5N1 is already high, but as the virus mutates, it could become more pathogenic. Some experts estimate conservatively that within a few months, close to 30 million people would be hospitalised and a quarter would die.
"Although these estimates are speculative, they are among the more optimistic predictions of how the next flu pandemic might unfold," warns Osterhaus in Nature.
In five accompanying commentaries, other experts, including Antony S Fauci of the US National Institute of Health, and Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, also argue that time is running out and that if more money is not poured into vaccine research, the world could be heading not just for a pandemic, but economic disaster too.
This is not the first time experts have issued such dire warnings. In 1957 and again in 1967, avian influenzas crossed the species barrier, triggering the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics. But though those pandemics, caused by H1 and H2 strains of the virus, claimed about 1 million lives worldwide, their impact was not nearly as great as the 1918 Spanish influenza, a pandemic which may have killed as many as 50 million people. And while Sars triggered scares in 2003, there were only 1,000 deaths - a mortality rate of just 10%.
What makes Osterhaus think H5N1 is different?
Osterhaus pauses, surveying the pictures of seals and cats pinned to his walls - a secretary placed them there as a reminder of Osterhaus's previous life as a vet. "We know the virus kills different mammalian species, not just humans but cats and tigers, and we know that the virus spreads easily in other animals and is highly pathogenic if they are infected in the right way," he says.
"We also know that the virus has a high fatality rate. For some reason, it is not transmitting efficiently from human to human at present. However, if that were to happen, either through mutation or reassortment, it would be a big worry."
Osterhaus's is a powerful voice. "He's very dynamic. He's always on the move. We call him the flying Dutchman," says John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary Medical School in London. "As a trained vet he can deal with the interface between animal and human viruses. He's got experience on both sides of the fence, which is a tremendous advantage in this field. He's really a superstar."
In Holland, Osterhaus is known as the virus hunter because of his instinct for smelling out new viruses. After qualifying as a vet, he obtained a PhD in virology from Utrech University in 1978. He then joined the Netherlands' National Institute of Public Health and Environment where in between producing vaccines, he began studying animal viruses. Besides seals, Osterhaus has found new viruses in dolphins, African wild dogs, lions, finches and cats. Then, in 2001, he isolated the human metapneumovirus. The cause of respiratory disease in young children and people with compromised immune systems, hMPV is actually an old virus; Osterhaus has found antibodies for it in serum samples from patients from the 1950s, but until 2001 no one had realised people were infected with it.
Osterhaus's discoveries enabled him to assemble his own team at Erasmus in association with the hospital's virology department, funding his research through a combination of grants, commercial trials and patent agreements with biotech companies. The result was that when in 2003 the WHO approached Osterhaus to work on Sars, he was in the perfect position.
The problem was that many of the serum samples from patients in Hong Kong contained both hMPV and the coronavirus. The only way to prove which was the primary cause of disease was to conduct live tests for each virus separately in animals. Side-stepping the hospital's animal ethics panel, Osterhaus appealed directly to a senior civil servant in the Dutch ministry of health and got clearance to experiment on macaque monkeys. His resulting proof that the cause was the coronavirus enabled the WHO to contain the outbreak faster.
Osterhaus's unconventional methods drew criticism from animal welfare activists and led to a reprimand from the Dutch parliament. But he insists that he did the right thing, and points out that the Netherlands has since amended its laws governing animal experiments. Osterhaus was subsequently knighted.
The irony is that when Klaus Stohr, the head of the WHO's influenza programme, first approached his lab to conduct the trials, Osterhaus nearly turned him down. In the winter of 2003, Dutch poultry farms were infected with a deadly plague. The virus responsible, H7N7, had already led to the death of a 57-year-old veterinarian and Osterhaus's team were seeing cases of conjunctivitis in farm workers and chicken cullers, a sure sign that they were also infected with the virus. With Holland in the grip of a winter flu epidemic, caused by the most common human strain of the virus, H3, Osterhaus feared that there was a risk of double infections.
Normally, avian influenza strains infect only bird populations or are not highly pathogenic in people and other animals. But virologists believe that pigs and sometimes people can be infected with avian and human influenza strains at the same time, providing a "mixing bowl", which allows the viruses to swap genes. Such a reassortment may have been behind the virulence of the 1918 flu, and is the reason why Osterhaus and other virologists fear that it could happen again.
Until 1997, virologists did not think avian strains could infect people directly. But when a doctor in Hong Kong sent Osterhaus serum from a three-year-old boy who had died of a mysterious respiratory disease there, to his surprise, he found H5N1. It was another first for his lab. He immediately alerted the WHO, and the Hong Kong authorities implemented a cull, killing 1.2m of the territory's chickens.
What worries Osterhaus is that while in 1997, only six of the 18 people hospitalised in Hong Kong with H5N1 died - a mortality rate of 33% - since then, the mortality rate has doubled, suggesting that the latest strain is more virulent. Then there are the reports of clustering, which suggest that it may also be becoming more infectious. However, Osterhaus points out that the cases may simply reflect the fact that family members are being directly exposed to the same infected poultry.
"The fact that we are seeing more clusters of human infections points in the direction of human transmission, but this should not be exaggerated. I think the bigger danger is that we will get a reassortment," says Osterhaus.
It could happen with H5N1, but it could also occur with another avian strain that scientists have yet to identify. Earlier this year, for instance, Osterhaus's colleagues discovered a new subtype of hemagglutinin - the protein spike which protrudes from the surface of the virus and enables it to invade animal cells - in black-headed gulls from Sweden. The discovery brings the number of hemagglutinin subtypes to 16. But had Erasmus not had an arrangement with ornithologists in Sweden to forward faecal samples from wild birds regularly, it would never have made the discovery.
A task force need not be that expensive. Osterhaus estimates the cost at less than $1.5m a year - a snip set against the $120m losses incurred by Vietnam and Thailand since the current H5N1 outbreak devastated their poultry industries.
The problem is that the WHO, FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health are already huge bureaucracies, and politicians may well decide that they already have sufficient resources to respond to the threat
That, argues Osterhaus, would be a mistake. He points out that after the 9/11 attacks, the US poured billions into combating the threat of bio-terrorism.
"That's fine, but we should not forget that the main bio-terrorist is nature herself," he says. "Flu is knocking on the door. It is only a matter of time."
Further reading
www.virology.nl
Home page for the Erasmus medical centre, Rotterdam, department of virology
www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en
World Health organisation updates on avian influenza
http://masl.to/?E2325422B
Influenza pandemic information from International SOS
http://masl.to/?O1722322B
UN food and agriculture organisation special report on avian influenza
www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN INFLUENZA/A_AI-Asia.htm
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
ICE
Flying Dutchman mans the species barrier
A dynamic professor dubbed the virus hunter believes that bird flu is the greatest threat to mankind. He tells Mark Honigsbaum how the world should fight back
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
To reach Albert Osterhaus's office on the 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam you negotiate several biohazard laboratories, two corridors lined with deep freezes and a pair of old-fashioned egg incubators. Finally, you reach a room decorated with posters of seals and cats, and are ushered into the professor's presence by one of three secretaries he employs to manage his increasingly hectic schedule.
Like the viruses he chases for a living, Osterhaus is continually on the move, and the demands on his time are constantly multiplying. Three weeks ago he was in China and Vietnam to meet officials from the World Health Organisation. The week before that, it was India. This week, he is back in his office to check on the progress of research projects - and to make time to talk to the Guardian.
A veterinarian turned virologist, Osterhaus is an authority on several viruses that have crossed the species barrier. In 1998, he showed that the canine distemper virus was responsible for the mass deaths of Siberian seals in Lake Baikal. The following year, he identified influenza B - a strain of flu that normally infects only humans - in seals off the coast of the Netherlands. Then, in April 2003, at the height of the panic over Sars (severe acquired respiratory syndrome) in Hong Kong, he showed that the disease was caused by a coronavirus that normally resides in civet cats and other carnivorous animals (Osterhaus beat rival labs in the US and Germany to the proof by fast-tracking approvals to conduct live virus trials).
But the virus which increasingly occupies his time these days, and the one that he believes poses the greatest threat to mankind, is the avian influenza virus, H5N1.
On his trip to Vietnam, the World Health Organisation presented data about how cases of H5N1 were multiplying in members of the same family group, a process known as clustering. This could indicate that the virus, which has prompted mass culling of poultry throughout south-east Asia, is becoming infectious among people.
The following week, Nature reported that the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was struggling to get serum samples from people and poultry infected with the latest strains of the virus forwarded to its labs for analysis. Then, no sooner had he returned to Rotterdam last weekend, the Chinese reported that 178 wild geese had been found dead at a research centre in a western province, Qinghai - also victims of H5N1.
"It's another worrying finding," he says. "Normally, these viruses don't kill wild birds. They only heat up when they pass from wild birds to poultry. It could be that we haven't looked at the mortality in wild birds closely enough. Or it could be a spill back from domestic poultry."
The more pressing concern, however, is the threat H5N1 poses to people. Since the start of the current outbreak in south-east Asia in 2003, there have been more than 90 human infections and 54 deaths. If H5N1 were to become a super-spreader like Sars, then infections could leap round the world in a matter of days, triggering a global pandemic.
Indeed, such is the concern among Osterhaus and his colleagues at Holland's National Influenza Centre that he is now calling for the WHO and FAO to join forces with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and establish a global task force to combat the virus.
In a leading commentary for today's edition of Nature, Osterhaus argues that while Vietnam, Hong Kong and other south-east Asian states have taken steps to cull infected poultry and contain human outbreaks, the responses at a national level have been patchy and ad hoc. In particular, the failure to forward serum samples to WHO reporting labs quickly enough means that the true incidence of infections may be underestimated.
One of the task force's roles, argues Osterhaus, would be to ensure that farm workers with the greatest exposure to the virus are properly monitored and that adequate virological and clinical data are collected, including detailed post mortem reports. Animal health experts recruited by the task force should also survey poultry and other domestic birds for all sub-types of the virus. Osterhaus would also like to see better monitoring of wild bird populations, the natural reservoir of influenza A viruses.
"We need much more data on influenza in wild birds because that's where it comes from," he says. "But at the same time we also need better data on outbreaks in poultry and better reporting from labs so that we can get the sequences out and know if and in what direction the virus is mutating. And we need these data sets to be linked, from humans to birds, so that we can build up a repository of information. At the moment all we have is a series of snapshots."
Osterhaus argues that nothing can stop a global influenza pandemic. On average, pandemics occur every 30 years and are as inevitable as the tides. However, just as the United Nations is now establishing listening posts to provide an early warning of another tsunami, so the global flu task force could provide an equivalent early warning system.
According to Osterhaus, the task force would come under the umbrella of the WHO's flu pandemic preparedness plan and include virologists, epidemiologists and other specialists from the fields of animal and human health, as well as ecologists, agriculturists and experts in translating science into policy.
The result, write Osterhaus and his colleagues in Nature, is that when people begin to fall ill, "outbreak management teams can be formed and targeted at a specific outbreak".
To do nothing is not an option. The mortality rate from H5N1 is already high, but as the virus mutates, it could become more pathogenic. Some experts estimate conservatively that within a few months, close to 30 million people would be hospitalised and a quarter would die.
"Although these estimates are speculative, they are among the more optimistic predictions of how the next flu pandemic might unfold," warns Osterhaus in Nature.
In five accompanying commentaries, other experts, including Antony S Fauci of the US National Institute of Health, and Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, also argue that time is running out and that if more money is not poured into vaccine research, the world could be heading not just for a pandemic, but economic disaster too.
This is not the first time experts have issued such dire warnings. In 1957 and again in 1967, avian influenzas crossed the species barrier, triggering the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics. But though those pandemics, caused by H1 and H2 strains of the virus, claimed about 1 million lives worldwide, their impact was not nearly as great as the 1918 Spanish influenza, a pandemic which may have killed as many as 50 million people. And while Sars triggered scares in 2003, there were only 1,000 deaths - a mortality rate of just 10%.
What makes Osterhaus think H5N1 is different?
Osterhaus pauses, surveying the pictures of seals and cats pinned to his walls - a secretary placed them there as a reminder of Osterhaus's previous life as a vet. "We know the virus kills different mammalian species, not just humans but cats and tigers, and we know that the virus spreads easily in other animals and is highly pathogenic if they are infected in the right way," he says.
"We also know that the virus has a high fatality rate. For some reason, it is not transmitting efficiently from human to human at present. However, if that were to happen, either through mutation or reassortment, it would be a big worry."
Osterhaus's is a powerful voice. "He's very dynamic. He's always on the move. We call him the flying Dutchman," says John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary Medical School in London. "As a trained vet he can deal with the interface between animal and human viruses. He's got experience on both sides of the fence, which is a tremendous advantage in this field. He's really a superstar."
In Holland, Osterhaus is known as the virus hunter because of his instinct for smelling out new viruses. After qualifying as a vet, he obtained a PhD in virology from Utrech University in 1978. He then joined the Netherlands' National Institute of Public Health and Environment where in between producing vaccines, he began studying animal viruses. Besides seals, Osterhaus has found new viruses in dolphins, African wild dogs, lions, finches and cats. Then, in 2001, he isolated the human metapneumovirus. The cause of respiratory disease in young children and people with compromised immune systems, hMPV is actually an old virus; Osterhaus has found antibodies for it in serum samples from patients from the 1950s, but until 2001 no one had realised people were infected with it.
Osterhaus's discoveries enabled him to assemble his own team at Erasmus in association with the hospital's virology department, funding his research through a combination of grants, commercial trials and patent agreements with biotech companies. The result was that when in 2003 the WHO approached Osterhaus to work on Sars, he was in the perfect position.
The problem was that many of the serum samples from patients in Hong Kong contained both hMPV and the coronavirus. The only way to prove which was the primary cause of disease was to conduct live tests for each virus separately in animals. Side-stepping the hospital's animal ethics panel, Osterhaus appealed directly to a senior civil servant in the Dutch ministry of health and got clearance to experiment on macaque monkeys. His resulting proof that the cause was the coronavirus enabled the WHO to contain the outbreak faster.
Osterhaus's unconventional methods drew criticism from animal welfare activists and led to a reprimand from the Dutch parliament. But he insists that he did the right thing, and points out that the Netherlands has since amended its laws governing animal experiments. Osterhaus was subsequently knighted.
The irony is that when Klaus Stohr, the head of the WHO's influenza programme, first approached his lab to conduct the trials, Osterhaus nearly turned him down. In the winter of 2003, Dutch poultry farms were infected with a deadly plague. The virus responsible, H7N7, had already led to the death of a 57-year-old veterinarian and Osterhaus's team were seeing cases of conjunctivitis in farm workers and chicken cullers, a sure sign that they were also infected with the virus. With Holland in the grip of a winter flu epidemic, caused by the most common human strain of the virus, H3, Osterhaus feared that there was a risk of double infections.
Normally, avian influenza strains infect only bird populations or are not highly pathogenic in people and other animals. But virologists believe that pigs and sometimes people can be infected with avian and human influenza strains at the same time, providing a "mixing bowl", which allows the viruses to swap genes. Such a reassortment may have been behind the virulence of the 1918 flu, and is the reason why Osterhaus and other virologists fear that it could happen again.
Until 1997, virologists did not think avian strains could infect people directly. But when a doctor in Hong Kong sent Osterhaus serum from a three-year-old boy who had died of a mysterious respiratory disease there, to his surprise, he found H5N1. It was another first for his lab. He immediately alerted the WHO, and the Hong Kong authorities implemented a cull, killing 1.2m of the territory's chickens.
What worries Osterhaus is that while in 1997, only six of the 18 people hospitalised in Hong Kong with H5N1 died - a mortality rate of 33% - since then, the mortality rate has doubled, suggesting that the latest strain is more virulent. Then there are the reports of clustering, which suggest that it may also be becoming more infectious. However, Osterhaus points out that the cases may simply reflect the fact that family members are being directly exposed to the same infected poultry.
"The fact that we are seeing more clusters of human infections points in the direction of human transmission, but this should not be exaggerated. I think the bigger danger is that we will get a reassortment," says Osterhaus.
It could happen with H5N1, but it could also occur with another avian strain that scientists have yet to identify. Earlier this year, for instance, Osterhaus's colleagues discovered a new subtype of hemagglutinin - the protein spike which protrudes from the surface of the virus and enables it to invade animal cells - in black-headed gulls from Sweden. The discovery brings the number of hemagglutinin subtypes to 16. But had Erasmus not had an arrangement with ornithologists in Sweden to forward faecal samples from wild birds regularly, it would never have made the discovery.
A task force need not be that expensive. Osterhaus estimates the cost at less than $1.5m a year - a snip set against the $120m losses incurred by Vietnam and Thailand since the current H5N1 outbreak devastated their poultry industries.
The problem is that the WHO, FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health are already huge bureaucracies, and politicians may well decide that they already have sufficient resources to respond to the threat
That, argues Osterhaus, would be a mistake. He points out that after the 9/11 attacks, the US poured billions into combating the threat of bio-terrorism.
"That's fine, but we should not forget that the main bio-terrorist is nature herself," he says. "Flu is knocking on the door. It is only a matter of time."
Further reading
www.virology.nl
Home page for the Erasmus medical centre, Rotterdam, department of virology
www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en
World Health organisation updates on avian influenza
http://masl.to/?E2325422B
Influenza pandemic information from International SOS
http://masl.to/?O1722322B
UN food and agriculture organisation special report on avian influenza
www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN INFLUENZA/A_AI-Asia.htm
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
ICE
ioujc
MARANTHA!! Even so, come LORD JESUS!!!
Was very concerned when I saw the map showing the US as having influenza A (H5N1) in fowl.....BUT I DON'T think it is the same virus as in Asia....
FAIR USE APPLICATION
http://www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/avian-flu.html
(snip)In February 2004, different strains of avian flu were detected among several flocks of birds in the U.S. and state officials ordered the destruction of hundreds of thousands of birds. The avian influenza strain found in Delaware was (H7N2), in Pennsylvania the strain was (H2N2), and the (H5N2) strain was found in Texas. The strain found in Texas has been determined to be "highly pathogenic" to birds. However, the strain of avian influenza in Texas is not the same as the strain that is affecting Asia.1 There does not appear to be any connection between the illness in the flocks on the East Coast and the flock in Texas. Wild birds are the natural hosts for the virus. Avian flu viruses circulate among birds worldwide and are highly contagious among birds. It is also important to note that the United States annually imports an estimated 20,000 birds from countries with current avian influenza outbreaks, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.(snip)
And this one.....
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/avian/
Updated: Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 03:25 PM
FAIR USE APPLICATION
Febuary 4, 2004
(snip)An outbreak of avian influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, is affecting bird populations in countries throughout Asia. The outbreak is caused by the H5N1 subtype of influenza A. Human cases and deaths have occurred in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. There have been no cases of avian influenza in humans or poultry in the United States(snip)
FAIR USE APPLICATION
http://www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/avian-flu.html
(snip)In February 2004, different strains of avian flu were detected among several flocks of birds in the U.S. and state officials ordered the destruction of hundreds of thousands of birds. The avian influenza strain found in Delaware was (H7N2), in Pennsylvania the strain was (H2N2), and the (H5N2) strain was found in Texas. The strain found in Texas has been determined to be "highly pathogenic" to birds. However, the strain of avian influenza in Texas is not the same as the strain that is affecting Asia.1 There does not appear to be any connection between the illness in the flocks on the East Coast and the flock in Texas. Wild birds are the natural hosts for the virus. Avian flu viruses circulate among birds worldwide and are highly contagious among birds. It is also important to note that the United States annually imports an estimated 20,000 birds from countries with current avian influenza outbreaks, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.(snip)
And this one.....
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/avian/
Updated: Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 03:25 PM
FAIR USE APPLICATION
Febuary 4, 2004
(snip)An outbreak of avian influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, is affecting bird populations in countries throughout Asia. The outbreak is caused by the H5N1 subtype of influenza A. Human cases and deaths have occurred in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. There have been no cases of avian influenza in humans or poultry in the United States(snip)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1492511,00.html
Flying Dutchman mans the species barrier
A dynamic professor dubbed the virus hunter believes that bird flu is the greatest threat to mankind. He tells Mark Honigsbaum how the world should fight back
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
To reach Albert Osterhaus's office on the 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam you negotiate several biohazard laboratories, two corridors lined with deep freezes and a pair of old-fashioned egg incubators. Finally, you reach a room decorated with posters of seals and cats, and are ushered into the professor's presence by one of three secretaries he employs to manage his increasingly hectic schedule.
Like the viruses he chases for a living, Osterhaus is continually on the move, and the demands on his time are constantly multiplying. Three weeks ago he was in China and Vietnam to meet officials from the World Health Organisation. The week before that, it was India. This week, he is back in his office to check on the progress of research projects - and to make time to talk to the Guardian.
A veterinarian turned virologist, Osterhaus is an authority on several viruses that have crossed the species barrier. In 1998, he showed that the canine distemper virus was responsible for the mass deaths of Siberian seals in Lake Baikal. The following year, he identified influenza B - a strain of flu that normally infects only humans - in seals off the coast of the Netherlands. Then, in April 2003, at the height of the panic over Sars (severe acquired respiratory syndrome) in Hong Kong, he showed that the disease was caused by a coronavirus that normally resides in civet cats and other carnivorous animals (Osterhaus beat rival labs in the US and Germany to the proof by fast-tracking approvals to conduct live virus trials).
But the virus which increasingly occupies his time these days, and the one that he believes poses the greatest threat to mankind, is the avian influenza virus, H5N1.
On his trip to Vietnam, the World Health Organisation presented data about how cases of H5N1 were multiplying in members of the same family group, a process known as clustering. This could indicate that the virus, which has prompted mass culling of poultry throughout south-east Asia, is becoming infectious among people.
The following week, Nature reported that the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was struggling to get serum samples from people and poultry infected with the latest strains of the virus forwarded to its labs for analysis. Then, no sooner had he returned to Rotterdam last weekend, the Chinese reported that 178 wild geese had been found dead at a research centre in a western province, Qinghai - also victims of H5N1.
"It's another worrying finding," he says. "Normally, these viruses don't kill wild birds. They only heat up when they pass from wild birds to poultry. It could be that we haven't looked at the mortality in wild birds closely enough. Or it could be a spill back from domestic poultry."
The more pressing concern, however, is the threat H5N1 poses to people. Since the start of the current outbreak in south-east Asia in 2003, there have been more than 90 human infections and 54 deaths. If H5N1 were to become a super-spreader like Sars, then infections could leap round the world in a matter of days, triggering a global pandemic.
Indeed, such is the concern among Osterhaus and his colleagues at Holland's National Influenza Centre that he is now calling for the WHO and FAO to join forces with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and establish a global task force to combat the virus.
In a leading commentary for today's edition of Nature, Osterhaus argues that while Vietnam, Hong Kong and other south-east Asian states have taken steps to cull infected poultry and contain human outbreaks, the responses at a national level have been patchy and ad hoc. In particular, the failure to forward serum samples to WHO reporting labs quickly enough means that the true incidence of infections may be underestimated.
One of the task force's roles, argues Osterhaus, would be to ensure that farm workers with the greatest exposure to the virus are properly monitored and that adequate virological and clinical data are collected, including detailed post mortem reports. Animal health experts recruited by the task force should also survey poultry and other domestic birds for all sub-types of the virus. Osterhaus would also like to see better monitoring of wild bird populations, the natural reservoir of influenza A viruses.
"We need much more data on influenza in wild birds because that's where it comes from," he says. "But at the same time we also need better data on outbreaks in poultry and better reporting from labs so that we can get the sequences out and know if and in what direction the virus is mutating. And we need these data sets to be linked, from humans to birds, so that we can build up a repository of information. At the moment all we have is a series of snapshots."
Osterhaus argues that nothing can stop a global influenza pandemic. On average, pandemics occur every 30 years and are as inevitable as the tides. However, just as the United Nations is now establishing listening posts to provide an early warning of another tsunami, so the global flu task force could provide an equivalent early warning system.
According to Osterhaus, the task force would come under the umbrella of the WHO's flu pandemic preparedness plan and include virologists, epidemiologists and other specialists from the fields of animal and human health, as well as ecologists, agriculturists and experts in translating science into policy.
The result, write Osterhaus and his colleagues in Nature, is that when people begin to fall ill, "outbreak management teams can be formed and targeted at a specific outbreak".
To do nothing is not an option. The mortality rate from H5N1 is already high, but as the virus mutates, it could become more pathogenic. Some experts estimate conservatively that within a few months, close to 30 million people would be hospitalised and a quarter would die.
"Although these estimates are speculative, they are among the more optimistic predictions of how the next flu pandemic might unfold," warns Osterhaus in Nature.
In five accompanying commentaries, other experts, including Antony S Fauci of the US National Institute of Health, and Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, also argue that time is running out and that if more money is not poured into vaccine research, the world could be heading not just for a pandemic, but economic disaster too.
This is not the first time experts have issued such dire warnings. In 1957 and again in 1967, avian influenzas crossed the species barrier, triggering the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics. But though those pandemics, caused by H1 and H2 strains of the virus, claimed about 1 million lives worldwide, their impact was not nearly as great as the 1918 Spanish influenza, a pandemic which may have killed as many as 50 million people. And while Sars triggered scares in 2003, there were only 1,000 deaths - a mortality rate of just 10%.
What makes Osterhaus think H5N1 is different?
Osterhaus pauses, surveying the pictures of seals and cats pinned to his walls - a secretary placed them there as a reminder of Osterhaus's previous life as a vet. "We know the virus kills different mammalian species, not just humans but cats and tigers, and we know that the virus spreads easily in other animals and is highly pathogenic if they are infected in the right way," he says.
"We also know that the virus has a high fatality rate. For some reason, it is not transmitting efficiently from human to human at present. However, if that were to happen, either through mutation or reassortment, it would be a big worry."
Osterhaus's is a powerful voice. "He's very dynamic. He's always on the move. We call him the flying Dutchman," says John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary Medical School in London. "As a trained vet he can deal with the interface between animal and human viruses. He's got experience on both sides of the fence, which is a tremendous advantage in this field. He's really a superstar."
In Holland, Osterhaus is known as the virus hunter because of his instinct for smelling out new viruses. After qualifying as a vet, he obtained a PhD in virology from Utrech University in 1978. He then joined the Netherlands' National Institute of Public Health and Environment where in between producing vaccines, he began studying animal viruses. Besides seals, Osterhaus has found new viruses in dolphins, African wild dogs, lions, finches and cats. Then, in 2001, he isolated the human metapneumovirus. The cause of respiratory disease in young children and people with compromised immune systems, hMPV is actually an old virus; Osterhaus has found antibodies for it in serum samples from patients from the 1950s, but until 2001 no one had realised people were infected with it.
Osterhaus's discoveries enabled him to assemble his own team at Erasmus in association with the hospital's virology department, funding his research through a combination of grants, commercial trials and patent agreements with biotech companies. The result was that when in 2003 the WHO approached Osterhaus to work on Sars, he was in the perfect position.
The problem was that many of the serum samples from patients in Hong Kong contained both hMPV and the coronavirus. The only way to prove which was the primary cause of disease was to conduct live tests for each virus separately in animals. Side-stepping the hospital's animal ethics panel, Osterhaus appealed directly to a senior civil servant in the Dutch ministry of health and got clearance to experiment on macaque monkeys. His resulting proof that the cause was the coronavirus enabled the WHO to contain the outbreak faster.
Osterhaus's unconventional methods drew criticism from animal welfare activists and led to a reprimand from the Dutch parliament. But he insists that he did the right thing, and points out that the Netherlands has since amended its laws governing animal experiments. Osterhaus was subsequently knighted.
The irony is that when Klaus Stohr, the head of the WHO's influenza programme, first approached his lab to conduct the trials, Osterhaus nearly turned him down. In the winter of 2003, Dutch poultry farms were infected with a deadly plague. The virus responsible, H7N7, had already led to the death of a 57-year-old veterinarian and Osterhaus's team were seeing cases of conjunctivitis in farm workers and chicken cullers, a sure sign that they were also infected with the virus. With Holland in the grip of a winter flu epidemic, caused by the most common human strain of the virus, H3, Osterhaus feared that there was a risk of double infections.
Normally, avian influenza strains infect only bird populations or are not highly pathogenic in people and other animals. But virologists believe that pigs and sometimes people can be infected with avian and human influenza strains at the same time, providing a "mixing bowl", which allows the viruses to swap genes. Such a reassortment may have been behind the virulence of the 1918 flu, and is the reason why Osterhaus and other virologists fear that it could happen again.
Until 1997, virologists did not think avian strains could infect people directly. But when a doctor in Hong Kong sent Osterhaus serum from a three-year-old boy who had died of a mysterious respiratory disease there, to his surprise, he found H5N1. It was another first for his lab. He immediately alerted the WHO, and the Hong Kong authorities implemented a cull, killing 1.2m of the territory's chickens.
What worries Osterhaus is that while in 1997, only six of the 18 people hospitalised in Hong Kong with H5N1 died - a mortality rate of 33% - since then, the mortality rate has doubled, suggesting that the latest strain is more virulent. Then there are the reports of clustering, which suggest that it may also be becoming more infectious. However, Osterhaus points out that the cases may simply reflect the fact that family members are being directly exposed to the same infected poultry.
"The fact that we are seeing more clusters of human infections points in the direction of human transmission, but this should not be exaggerated. I think the bigger danger is that we will get a reassortment," says Osterhaus.
It could happen with H5N1, but it could also occur with another avian strain that scientists have yet to identify. Earlier this year, for instance, Osterhaus's colleagues discovered a new subtype of hemagglutinin - the protein spike which protrudes from the surface of the virus and enables it to invade animal cells - in black-headed gulls from Sweden. The discovery brings the number of hemagglutinin subtypes to 16. But had Erasmus not had an arrangement with ornithologists in Sweden to forward faecal samples from wild birds regularly, it would never have made the discovery.
A task force need not be that expensive. Osterhaus estimates the cost at less than $1.5m a year - a snip set against the $120m losses incurred by Vietnam and Thailand since the current H5N1 outbreak devastated their poultry industries.
The problem is that the WHO, FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health are already huge bureaucracies, and politicians may well decide that they already have sufficient resources to respond to the threat
That, argues Osterhaus, would be a mistake. He points out that after the 9/11 attacks, the US poured billions into combating the threat of bio-terrorism.
"That's fine, but we should not forget that the main bio-terrorist is nature herself," he says. "Flu is knocking on the door. It is only a matter of time."
Further reading
www.virology.nl
Home page for the Erasmus medical centre, Rotterdam, department of virology
www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en
World Health organisation updates on avian influenza
http://masl.to/?E2325422B
Influenza pandemic information from International SOS
http://masl.to/?O1722322B
UN food and agriculture organisation special report on avian influenza
www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN INFLUENZA/A_AI-Asia.htm
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
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Flying Dutchman mans the species barrier
A dynamic professor dubbed the virus hunter believes that bird flu is the greatest threat to mankind. He tells Mark Honigsbaum how the world should fight back
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
To reach Albert Osterhaus's office on the 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam you negotiate several biohazard laboratories, two corridors lined with deep freezes and a pair of old-fashioned egg incubators. Finally, you reach a room decorated with posters of seals and cats, and are ushered into the professor's presence by one of three secretaries he employs to manage his increasingly hectic schedule.
Like the viruses he chases for a living, Osterhaus is continually on the move, and the demands on his time are constantly multiplying. Three weeks ago he was in China and Vietnam to meet officials from the World Health Organisation. The week before that, it was India. This week, he is back in his office to check on the progress of research projects - and to make time to talk to the Guardian.
A veterinarian turned virologist, Osterhaus is an authority on several viruses that have crossed the species barrier. In 1998, he showed that the canine distemper virus was responsible for the mass deaths of Siberian seals in Lake Baikal. The following year, he identified influenza B - a strain of flu that normally infects only humans - in seals off the coast of the Netherlands. Then, in April 2003, at the height of the panic over Sars (severe acquired respiratory syndrome) in Hong Kong, he showed that the disease was caused by a coronavirus that normally resides in civet cats and other carnivorous animals (Osterhaus beat rival labs in the US and Germany to the proof by fast-tracking approvals to conduct live virus trials).
But the virus which increasingly occupies his time these days, and the one that he believes poses the greatest threat to mankind, is the avian influenza virus, H5N1.
On his trip to Vietnam, the World Health Organisation presented data about how cases of H5N1 were multiplying in members of the same family group, a process known as clustering. This could indicate that the virus, which has prompted mass culling of poultry throughout south-east Asia, is becoming infectious among people.
The following week, Nature reported that the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was struggling to get serum samples from people and poultry infected with the latest strains of the virus forwarded to its labs for analysis. Then, no sooner had he returned to Rotterdam last weekend, the Chinese reported that 178 wild geese had been found dead at a research centre in a western province, Qinghai - also victims of H5N1.
"It's another worrying finding," he says. "Normally, these viruses don't kill wild birds. They only heat up when they pass from wild birds to poultry. It could be that we haven't looked at the mortality in wild birds closely enough. Or it could be a spill back from domestic poultry."
The more pressing concern, however, is the threat H5N1 poses to people. Since the start of the current outbreak in south-east Asia in 2003, there have been more than 90 human infections and 54 deaths. If H5N1 were to become a super-spreader like Sars, then infections could leap round the world in a matter of days, triggering a global pandemic.
Indeed, such is the concern among Osterhaus and his colleagues at Holland's National Influenza Centre that he is now calling for the WHO and FAO to join forces with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and establish a global task force to combat the virus.
In a leading commentary for today's edition of Nature, Osterhaus argues that while Vietnam, Hong Kong and other south-east Asian states have taken steps to cull infected poultry and contain human outbreaks, the responses at a national level have been patchy and ad hoc. In particular, the failure to forward serum samples to WHO reporting labs quickly enough means that the true incidence of infections may be underestimated.
One of the task force's roles, argues Osterhaus, would be to ensure that farm workers with the greatest exposure to the virus are properly monitored and that adequate virological and clinical data are collected, including detailed post mortem reports. Animal health experts recruited by the task force should also survey poultry and other domestic birds for all sub-types of the virus. Osterhaus would also like to see better monitoring of wild bird populations, the natural reservoir of influenza A viruses.
"We need much more data on influenza in wild birds because that's where it comes from," he says. "But at the same time we also need better data on outbreaks in poultry and better reporting from labs so that we can get the sequences out and know if and in what direction the virus is mutating. And we need these data sets to be linked, from humans to birds, so that we can build up a repository of information. At the moment all we have is a series of snapshots."
Osterhaus argues that nothing can stop a global influenza pandemic. On average, pandemics occur every 30 years and are as inevitable as the tides. However, just as the United Nations is now establishing listening posts to provide an early warning of another tsunami, so the global flu task force could provide an equivalent early warning system.
According to Osterhaus, the task force would come under the umbrella of the WHO's flu pandemic preparedness plan and include virologists, epidemiologists and other specialists from the fields of animal and human health, as well as ecologists, agriculturists and experts in translating science into policy.
The result, write Osterhaus and his colleagues in Nature, is that when people begin to fall ill, "outbreak management teams can be formed and targeted at a specific outbreak".
To do nothing is not an option. The mortality rate from H5N1 is already high, but as the virus mutates, it could become more pathogenic. Some experts estimate conservatively that within a few months, close to 30 million people would be hospitalised and a quarter would die.
"Although these estimates are speculative, they are among the more optimistic predictions of how the next flu pandemic might unfold," warns Osterhaus in Nature.
In five accompanying commentaries, other experts, including Antony S Fauci of the US National Institute of Health, and Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, also argue that time is running out and that if more money is not poured into vaccine research, the world could be heading not just for a pandemic, but economic disaster too.
This is not the first time experts have issued such dire warnings. In 1957 and again in 1967, avian influenzas crossed the species barrier, triggering the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics. But though those pandemics, caused by H1 and H2 strains of the virus, claimed about 1 million lives worldwide, their impact was not nearly as great as the 1918 Spanish influenza, a pandemic which may have killed as many as 50 million people. And while Sars triggered scares in 2003, there were only 1,000 deaths - a mortality rate of just 10%.
What makes Osterhaus think H5N1 is different?
Osterhaus pauses, surveying the pictures of seals and cats pinned to his walls - a secretary placed them there as a reminder of Osterhaus's previous life as a vet. "We know the virus kills different mammalian species, not just humans but cats and tigers, and we know that the virus spreads easily in other animals and is highly pathogenic if they are infected in the right way," he says.
"We also know that the virus has a high fatality rate. For some reason, it is not transmitting efficiently from human to human at present. However, if that were to happen, either through mutation or reassortment, it would be a big worry."
Osterhaus's is a powerful voice. "He's very dynamic. He's always on the move. We call him the flying Dutchman," says John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary Medical School in London. "As a trained vet he can deal with the interface between animal and human viruses. He's got experience on both sides of the fence, which is a tremendous advantage in this field. He's really a superstar."
In Holland, Osterhaus is known as the virus hunter because of his instinct for smelling out new viruses. After qualifying as a vet, he obtained a PhD in virology from Utrech University in 1978. He then joined the Netherlands' National Institute of Public Health and Environment where in between producing vaccines, he began studying animal viruses. Besides seals, Osterhaus has found new viruses in dolphins, African wild dogs, lions, finches and cats. Then, in 2001, he isolated the human metapneumovirus. The cause of respiratory disease in young children and people with compromised immune systems, hMPV is actually an old virus; Osterhaus has found antibodies for it in serum samples from patients from the 1950s, but until 2001 no one had realised people were infected with it.
Osterhaus's discoveries enabled him to assemble his own team at Erasmus in association with the hospital's virology department, funding his research through a combination of grants, commercial trials and patent agreements with biotech companies. The result was that when in 2003 the WHO approached Osterhaus to work on Sars, he was in the perfect position.
The problem was that many of the serum samples from patients in Hong Kong contained both hMPV and the coronavirus. The only way to prove which was the primary cause of disease was to conduct live tests for each virus separately in animals. Side-stepping the hospital's animal ethics panel, Osterhaus appealed directly to a senior civil servant in the Dutch ministry of health and got clearance to experiment on macaque monkeys. His resulting proof that the cause was the coronavirus enabled the WHO to contain the outbreak faster.
Osterhaus's unconventional methods drew criticism from animal welfare activists and led to a reprimand from the Dutch parliament. But he insists that he did the right thing, and points out that the Netherlands has since amended its laws governing animal experiments. Osterhaus was subsequently knighted.
The irony is that when Klaus Stohr, the head of the WHO's influenza programme, first approached his lab to conduct the trials, Osterhaus nearly turned him down. In the winter of 2003, Dutch poultry farms were infected with a deadly plague. The virus responsible, H7N7, had already led to the death of a 57-year-old veterinarian and Osterhaus's team were seeing cases of conjunctivitis in farm workers and chicken cullers, a sure sign that they were also infected with the virus. With Holland in the grip of a winter flu epidemic, caused by the most common human strain of the virus, H3, Osterhaus feared that there was a risk of double infections.
Normally, avian influenza strains infect only bird populations or are not highly pathogenic in people and other animals. But virologists believe that pigs and sometimes people can be infected with avian and human influenza strains at the same time, providing a "mixing bowl", which allows the viruses to swap genes. Such a reassortment may have been behind the virulence of the 1918 flu, and is the reason why Osterhaus and other virologists fear that it could happen again.
Until 1997, virologists did not think avian strains could infect people directly. But when a doctor in Hong Kong sent Osterhaus serum from a three-year-old boy who had died of a mysterious respiratory disease there, to his surprise, he found H5N1. It was another first for his lab. He immediately alerted the WHO, and the Hong Kong authorities implemented a cull, killing 1.2m of the territory's chickens.
What worries Osterhaus is that while in 1997, only six of the 18 people hospitalised in Hong Kong with H5N1 died - a mortality rate of 33% - since then, the mortality rate has doubled, suggesting that the latest strain is more virulent. Then there are the reports of clustering, which suggest that it may also be becoming more infectious. However, Osterhaus points out that the cases may simply reflect the fact that family members are being directly exposed to the same infected poultry.
"The fact that we are seeing more clusters of human infections points in the direction of human transmission, but this should not be exaggerated. I think the bigger danger is that we will get a reassortment," says Osterhaus.
It could happen with H5N1, but it could also occur with another avian strain that scientists have yet to identify. Earlier this year, for instance, Osterhaus's colleagues discovered a new subtype of hemagglutinin - the protein spike which protrudes from the surface of the virus and enables it to invade animal cells - in black-headed gulls from Sweden. The discovery brings the number of hemagglutinin subtypes to 16. But had Erasmus not had an arrangement with ornithologists in Sweden to forward faecal samples from wild birds regularly, it would never have made the discovery.
A task force need not be that expensive. Osterhaus estimates the cost at less than $1.5m a year - a snip set against the $120m losses incurred by Vietnam and Thailand since the current H5N1 outbreak devastated their poultry industries.
The problem is that the WHO, FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health are already huge bureaucracies, and politicians may well decide that they already have sufficient resources to respond to the threat
That, argues Osterhaus, would be a mistake. He points out that after the 9/11 attacks, the US poured billions into combating the threat of bio-terrorism.
"That's fine, but we should not forget that the main bio-terrorist is nature herself," he says. "Flu is knocking on the door. It is only a matter of time."
Further reading
www.virology.nl
Home page for the Erasmus medical centre, Rotterdam, department of virology
www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en
World Health organisation updates on avian influenza
http://masl.to/?E2325422B
Influenza pandemic information from International SOS
http://masl.to/?O1722322B
UN food and agriculture organisation special report on avian influenza
www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN INFLUENZA/A_AI-Asia.htm
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
Special reports
Bird flu
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ICE
Fuzzychick
Membership Revoked
goatlady2 said:
Jumped, an understatement........Prep........ and pray is what I feel, not alone in that feeling.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1492463,00.html
Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic'
Expert warns estimate of 7.5m global deaths is optimistic
Mark Honigsbaum
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
A leading scientist warned yesterday that the avian flu virus is on the point of mutating into a pandemic disease and says that current estimates that such a pandemic could cause 7.5m deaths may understate the threat.
His warnings come as experts writing in today's edition of Nature voice concerns about the world's inability to manufacture sufficient vaccines for a pandemic and warn of the impact that the virus - H5N1 - could have on the global economy.
In an accompanying editorial Nature argues that so far such warnings have "fallen on deaf ears". It backs a call by Prof Osterhaus and his colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre, in Rotterdam - one of the world's leading virus research labs - for a global taskforce to strengthen agencies on the ground.
There have been 90 human infections in south-east Asia , from which 54 people have died. But while culling and the vaccination of poultry appears to have slowed outbreaks in Thailand and other parts of south-east Asia, this year Vietnam has seen a worrying number of human infections in the same family groups. According to Prof Osterhaus such clustering could mean the virus is becoming more efficient at infecting humans - a precondition for a pandemic.
Another concern are reports which emerged from China last weekend that H5N1 was responsible for the deaths of 178 migratory geese at a wildfowl reserve in the western province of Qinghai earlier this month. Prof Osterhaus says the geese's deaths could be another indication that the virus is mutating and becoming more virulent. The problem is that countries such as China and Vietnam are not providing animal and human health officials with enough data, leaving scientists in the dark.
According to the WHO, within a few months of the pandemic 30 million people would need to be hospitalised, and a quarter could be expected to die. In his Nature commentary, Prof Osterhaus describes current estimates that a pandemic could infect 20% of the world's population and cause 7.5m deaths as "among the more optimistic predictions of how the next pandemic might unfold".
Such pandemic viruses emerge every 30 years or so. The most virulent was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which is believed to have claimed 40 million lives worldwide. By contrast the 1957 Asian flu pandemic and 1968 Hong Kong flu claimed less than one million lives each. Prof Osterhaus wants the WHO, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health to set up global teams of vets, medics, virologists and agriculturalists to respond rapidly to outbreaks.
His comments are backed by the other experts in Nature, who also criticise the WHO and international efforts to develop vaccines against H5N1 and other strains of avian influenza.
According to Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, antiquated vaccine manufacturing systems mean that countries like the US are unable to protect their populations against annual flu strains, let alone pandemic ones.
ICE
Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic'
Expert warns estimate of 7.5m global deaths is optimistic
Mark Honigsbaum
Thursday May 26, 2005
The Guardian
A leading scientist warned yesterday that the avian flu virus is on the point of mutating into a pandemic disease and says that current estimates that such a pandemic could cause 7.5m deaths may understate the threat.
His warnings come as experts writing in today's edition of Nature voice concerns about the world's inability to manufacture sufficient vaccines for a pandemic and warn of the impact that the virus - H5N1 - could have on the global economy.
In an accompanying editorial Nature argues that so far such warnings have "fallen on deaf ears". It backs a call by Prof Osterhaus and his colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre, in Rotterdam - one of the world's leading virus research labs - for a global taskforce to strengthen agencies on the ground.
There have been 90 human infections in south-east Asia , from which 54 people have died. But while culling and the vaccination of poultry appears to have slowed outbreaks in Thailand and other parts of south-east Asia, this year Vietnam has seen a worrying number of human infections in the same family groups. According to Prof Osterhaus such clustering could mean the virus is becoming more efficient at infecting humans - a precondition for a pandemic.
Another concern are reports which emerged from China last weekend that H5N1 was responsible for the deaths of 178 migratory geese at a wildfowl reserve in the western province of Qinghai earlier this month. Prof Osterhaus says the geese's deaths could be another indication that the virus is mutating and becoming more virulent. The problem is that countries such as China and Vietnam are not providing animal and human health officials with enough data, leaving scientists in the dark.
According to the WHO, within a few months of the pandemic 30 million people would need to be hospitalised, and a quarter could be expected to die. In his Nature commentary, Prof Osterhaus describes current estimates that a pandemic could infect 20% of the world's population and cause 7.5m deaths as "among the more optimistic predictions of how the next pandemic might unfold".
Such pandemic viruses emerge every 30 years or so. The most virulent was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which is believed to have claimed 40 million lives worldwide. By contrast the 1957 Asian flu pandemic and 1968 Hong Kong flu claimed less than one million lives each. Prof Osterhaus wants the WHO, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health to set up global teams of vets, medics, virologists and agriculturalists to respond rapidly to outbreaks.
His comments are backed by the other experts in Nature, who also criticise the WHO and international efforts to develop vaccines against H5N1 and other strains of avian influenza.
According to Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, antiquated vaccine manufacturing systems mean that countries like the US are unable to protect their populations against annual flu strains, let alone pandemic ones.
ICE
Fuzzychick
Membership Revoked
Folks this pup has gone Human to Human....need I say more than prep and take care of faimily...this really s*****, but It has come to pass...Love and peace Fuzzy 
China in denial over foot and mouth cull
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1490778,00.html
China in denial over foot and mouth cull
Attempt to hide slaughter echoes response to bird flu and Sars
Jonathan Watts in Dabailou village
Tuesday May 24, 2005
The Guardian
In the idyllic setting of the Beijing countryside a short drive north of the Great Wall, a secret slaughter is taking place.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of cows have been killed in Dabailou village since the start of the month in a frantic attempt to stem one of China's worst foot and mouth disease scares.
But instead of warning the nation's farmers and turning the village into a quarantine area, the authorities have mounted a botched attempt to cover up the news.
In the wake of recent outbreaks of Sars and bird flu, Beijing promised to be more open in its reporting of disease control. But the domestic public and international authorities have been told nothing of the cull in this small village in the heart of north China's dairy industry.
According to residents, between 500 and 2,000 cows have been slaughtered since the pathogen was found in local cattle stocks at the end of last month.
Local roads are cordoned off and guarded by police and wardens wearing armbands. They refuse to explain why entry is denied.
Chinese journalists know about the outbreak, but the central government's propaganda department has forbid den them to publish or broadcast the news.
Earlier this year a similar ban was slapped on reports about foot and mouth in pigs - which pose the biggest risk of infection to other animals - in 10 provinces. After the devastation of chicken and duck flocks during the avian flu outbreak last year, the government will not want to lose its pork and beef export industries, which are together worth $230m (about £126m).
Officials at the agriculture ministry told the South China Morning Post they were unaware of the outbreak in Dabailou. The spokesman's office could not be reached for comment.
Senior officials in Jiuxian township, which has jurisdiction over the village and at least two other affected villages, claimed ignorance.
"I haven't heard anything," said Si Yanzhong, vice general secretary of the town. "Who would report such a thing?"
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said it had not been notified of any outbreak near Beijing.
Amid widespread speculation that the epidemic has swept more than a dozen provinces, the Chinese government made its first ever report of foot and mouth to the international body earlier this month. But it said the disease, which is highly contagious and deadly for cattle but harmless for humans, had been found only in cows in the eastern cities of Tai'an and Wuxi, both far from the capital and not reliant on cattle farming.
In Dabailou, which is a big dairy centre, locals were astonished that word about the infection in their community had not spread further afield.
"Haven't you heard?" said a shopkeeper, explaining why there was no milk for sale. "They've had to kill 1,000 local cows because of Asia-one type foot and mouth disease." She said the cull had taken place around the time of the Labour Day holiday on May 1.
Peasants working in the field of Houluzhuang, a neighbouring village, told a similar story. "They killed more than 500 head of cattle about 10 days ago. The carcasses are all buried in a field," said one man.
The only semi-denial came from a dairy worker, who was cleaning his milk truck. "I don't know anything about problems with the cows here," he said.
But a few kilometres outside the police cordons cattle farmers said they had been informed of the nearby outbreak. "It's no big deal," said a woman tending half a dozen black-and-white dairy cows. "Our animals are safe because they have not had any contact with the ones with foot and mouth in Dabailou. In any case, they have all been vaccinated."
Locals said the disease was now under control. But at the road blocks there were no precautions, such as disinfectant trays for boots and tyres, to prevent the disease being carried by humans or vehicles. Police even tell visitors how to circumvent the cordons by taking back roads.
Given the threat to livelihoods of a wider cull, the reluctance of village officials and farmers to report the outbreak is understandable, but there are concerns about the response of higher authorities.
"Sars and bird flu led to improvements and promises of more openness, but there are big questions about the reporting system. China is still far from transparent. There are too many disincentives for officials and farmers to report problems," said an international health expert.
But although foot and mouth poses no risks to humans, a botched cover-up could worsen the sense of public distrust and panic - as well as the risk of infection - as it did during the Sars controversy two years ago.
ICE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1490778,00.html
China in denial over foot and mouth cull
Attempt to hide slaughter echoes response to bird flu and Sars
Jonathan Watts in Dabailou village
Tuesday May 24, 2005
The Guardian
In the idyllic setting of the Beijing countryside a short drive north of the Great Wall, a secret slaughter is taking place.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of cows have been killed in Dabailou village since the start of the month in a frantic attempt to stem one of China's worst foot and mouth disease scares.
But instead of warning the nation's farmers and turning the village into a quarantine area, the authorities have mounted a botched attempt to cover up the news.
In the wake of recent outbreaks of Sars and bird flu, Beijing promised to be more open in its reporting of disease control. But the domestic public and international authorities have been told nothing of the cull in this small village in the heart of north China's dairy industry.
According to residents, between 500 and 2,000 cows have been slaughtered since the pathogen was found in local cattle stocks at the end of last month.
Local roads are cordoned off and guarded by police and wardens wearing armbands. They refuse to explain why entry is denied.
Chinese journalists know about the outbreak, but the central government's propaganda department has forbid den them to publish or broadcast the news.
Earlier this year a similar ban was slapped on reports about foot and mouth in pigs - which pose the biggest risk of infection to other animals - in 10 provinces. After the devastation of chicken and duck flocks during the avian flu outbreak last year, the government will not want to lose its pork and beef export industries, which are together worth $230m (about £126m).
Officials at the agriculture ministry told the South China Morning Post they were unaware of the outbreak in Dabailou. The spokesman's office could not be reached for comment.
Senior officials in Jiuxian township, which has jurisdiction over the village and at least two other affected villages, claimed ignorance.
"I haven't heard anything," said Si Yanzhong, vice general secretary of the town. "Who would report such a thing?"
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said it had not been notified of any outbreak near Beijing.
Amid widespread speculation that the epidemic has swept more than a dozen provinces, the Chinese government made its first ever report of foot and mouth to the international body earlier this month. But it said the disease, which is highly contagious and deadly for cattle but harmless for humans, had been found only in cows in the eastern cities of Tai'an and Wuxi, both far from the capital and not reliant on cattle farming.
In Dabailou, which is a big dairy centre, locals were astonished that word about the infection in their community had not spread further afield.
"Haven't you heard?" said a shopkeeper, explaining why there was no milk for sale. "They've had to kill 1,000 local cows because of Asia-one type foot and mouth disease." She said the cull had taken place around the time of the Labour Day holiday on May 1.
Peasants working in the field of Houluzhuang, a neighbouring village, told a similar story. "They killed more than 500 head of cattle about 10 days ago. The carcasses are all buried in a field," said one man.
The only semi-denial came from a dairy worker, who was cleaning his milk truck. "I don't know anything about problems with the cows here," he said.
But a few kilometres outside the police cordons cattle farmers said they had been informed of the nearby outbreak. "It's no big deal," said a woman tending half a dozen black-and-white dairy cows. "Our animals are safe because they have not had any contact with the ones with foot and mouth in Dabailou. In any case, they have all been vaccinated."
Locals said the disease was now under control. But at the road blocks there were no precautions, such as disinfectant trays for boots and tyres, to prevent the disease being carried by humans or vehicles. Police even tell visitors how to circumvent the cordons by taking back roads.
Given the threat to livelihoods of a wider cull, the reluctance of village officials and farmers to report the outbreak is understandable, but there are concerns about the response of higher authorities.
"Sars and bird flu led to improvements and promises of more openness, but there are big questions about the reporting system. China is still far from transparent. There are too many disincentives for officials and farmers to report problems," said an international health expert.
But although foot and mouth poses no risks to humans, a botched cover-up could worsen the sense of public distrust and panic - as well as the risk of infection - as it did during the Sars controversy two years ago.
ICE
Fuzzychick
Membership Revoked
D.M., ir's going to cost a pretty penny to keep us healthcareprofessionells safe.......Ain't going to happen......FuzzyDustMusher said:We just had our yearly manditory classes to recertify in all those routine nursey things. The latest info on the N95 masks is that they are effective until moisture gets in the filter material. Normal breathing that is about half an hour.
If you expect to use them as you primary barrier --GET LOTS OF THEM.
DM
outnumbered10
Sleep? What is that?
CS mentions that this flu is just 3 plane rides away- that is precisely what I took a week ago flying internationally- and as I mentioned elsewhere, ran into plenty of Asian folks. If this has been covered already, please forgive me, but what are the symptoms of this flu strain?
If anyone knows, please share, this would be very important information to have.
TIA, ON10
If anyone knows, please share, this would be very important information to have.
TIA, ON10
KateCanada
Inactive
outnumbered10 said:
Here's a good article on symptoms:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no7/04-0415.htm
snip
The clinical signs and symptoms of avian influenza H5N1 may be more protean than originally described. During the 1997 epidemic in Hong Kong, patients exhibited fever, headache, malaise, myalgia, sore throat, cough, and rhinitis (5,8). Although uncommon, conjunctivitis and gastrointestinal symptoms were also reported (5,8). In the 2004 epidemic in Vietnam, prominent clinical signs and symptoms of avian influenza H5N1 were those of a severe influenza syndrome with fever, cough, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. Of note, diarrhea was present in 7 (70%) of 10 patients along with lower respiratory symptoms (9). The preliminary clinical features of avian influenza H5N1 in the 2004 epidemic in Thailand included fever, cough, sore throat, rhinorrhea, myalgia, and shortness of breath (10). Laboratory findings of patients with severe avian influenza H5N1 are undistinguishable from those of patients with prevailing human influenza; findings include leukopenia, lymphopenia, impaired liver function, prolonged clotting times, and renal impairment (5,8–10). To our knowledge, this patient has the first reported case of H5N1 with fever and gastrointestinal symptoms but no respiratory symptoms.
As of this submission, 22 patients in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand have confirmed cases of avian influenza H5N1. Twenty-three (67%) of 34 infected patients have died. The death rate of H5N1 was 33% (6 of 18 patients) in Hong Kong in 1997, 73% (15 of 22 patients) in Vietnam in 2004, and 67% (8 of 12 patients) in Thailand in 2004. Risk factors associated with severe disease and poor outcome of H5N1 included older age, being symptomatic for a longer period before admission, pneumonia, leukopenia, and lymphopenia (8). Patients <5 years of age had mild disease compared with hospitalized adults (8). However, all cases of H5N1 from Thailand occurred in pediatric patients, except for our patient and one previously reported patient (10). No H5N1 patients in Thailand had underlying or concomitant disease (10).
Avian influenza (H5N1) can be isolated by conventional viral culture methods (1). Several reports suggested that rapid influenza tests, H5-specific RT-PCR, and real-time RT-PCR could aid a rapid diagnosis (1,2,11,13,14). However, rapid diagnostic tests for influenza have low sensitivity, which may limit their usefulness to reliably detect H5N1, especially if illnesses are diagnosed later in their clinical course (1), as in our patient. Thus, clinical findings and a history of poultry exposure may be more helpful in identifying patients with H5N1 infection than the result on rapid diagnostic tests for influenza.
Data are limited on human-to-human transmission of avian influenza H5N1. Whether H5N1 could be efficiently transmitted from human to human is a matter of concern. In a matched case-control study of 15 patients with H5N1, exposure to live poultry in the week before symptom onset was significantly associated with H5N1 disease, while traveling, eating or preparing poultry products, and recent exposure to persons with respiratory illness had no significant association (15). A cohort study conducted among persons infected with H5N1 to detect anti-H5 antibody among their household and social contacts suggests that human-to-human transmission might have occurred through close physical contact with H5N1-infected patients, whereas social exposure to an infected person was not associated with H5N1 infection (16).
Bird flu plan calls for Honolulu airport screening
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Bird flu plan
calls for airport
screening
Hawaii officials want
to test people arriving
at Honolulu Airport
By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com
As nations prepare for a possible avian flu virus pandemic, state and federal health officials are working on a proposal to screen travelers who arrive at Honolulu Airport with influenza-like illness.
The state Health Department began developing the proposal a few months ago with the federal quarantine office at the airport, said Dr. Paul Effler, state epidemiologist.
"I think we're ahead of the curve and other jurisdictions, just because we're cognizant that our air travel is potentially a risk," Effler said.
A study by Northwestern University researchers released yesterday ranked Hawaii 24th among 3,883 communities as the world's most vital air travel hubs. More importantly, the study placed Honolulu in the top 1 percent of the world's major places to watch during a contagious disease outbreak.
The officials want to screen people arriving with illnesses that primarily could be influenza, including avian flu or other pathogenic strains of influenza, Effler said.
They sent the proposal to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Quarantine Division in Atlanta four weeks ago, Effler said.
"My response from CDC quarantine (this week) was that we were forward thinking and they wanted to support us."
He said details haven't been sorted out and the officials plan to discuss the idea by telephone tomorrow.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization urged countries to prepare for a possible avian flu virus pandemic.
The virus has killed 100 million birds in eight Asian countries and caused human infections and deaths in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The WHO said there is evidence that the avian virus H5N1 may be infecting people more readily and some strains may be developing resistance to one of only two antiviral drugs that work against it.
Effler noted that international arrivals are under federal jurisdiction and the state Health Department must work within existing quarantine law to screen travelers for influenza.
"Our goal is to provide them access to testing, to make quick diagnostic decisions and identify avian flu or other pathogenic illnesses."
Airplane pilots, as well as ship captains, are required under quarantine protocols to identify people arriving who are ill and have a condition that may warrant quarantine, Effler said.
"We're trying to add a component of providing laboratory support for that so we get a diagnosis sooner than later."
He said he would prefer to collect specimens or do a rapid test on site, but more definitive testing to determine avian flu must be done in a certified laboratory.
"We want to make sure any tests are done accurately."
But he said, "The goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible" so travel isn't affected.
The Health Department has developed a statewide surveillance system to look for infectious diseases. The department alerted doctors and other health care providers last fall to watch for symptoms of the potentially deadly avian flu. No cases have been reported.
The system was in place when severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, emerged as a threat in 2003. Four suspected cases were reported but weren't confirmed.
State Department of Health
www.state.hi.us/health/
http://starbulletin.com/print/?fr=/2005/05/25/news/story2.html
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Bird flu plan
calls for airport
screening
Hawaii officials want
to test people arriving
at Honolulu Airport
By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com
As nations prepare for a possible avian flu virus pandemic, state and federal health officials are working on a proposal to screen travelers who arrive at Honolulu Airport with influenza-like illness.
The state Health Department began developing the proposal a few months ago with the federal quarantine office at the airport, said Dr. Paul Effler, state epidemiologist.
"I think we're ahead of the curve and other jurisdictions, just because we're cognizant that our air travel is potentially a risk," Effler said.
A study by Northwestern University researchers released yesterday ranked Hawaii 24th among 3,883 communities as the world's most vital air travel hubs. More importantly, the study placed Honolulu in the top 1 percent of the world's major places to watch during a contagious disease outbreak.
The officials want to screen people arriving with illnesses that primarily could be influenza, including avian flu or other pathogenic strains of influenza, Effler said.
They sent the proposal to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Quarantine Division in Atlanta four weeks ago, Effler said.
"My response from CDC quarantine (this week) was that we were forward thinking and they wanted to support us."
He said details haven't been sorted out and the officials plan to discuss the idea by telephone tomorrow.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization urged countries to prepare for a possible avian flu virus pandemic.
The virus has killed 100 million birds in eight Asian countries and caused human infections and deaths in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The WHO said there is evidence that the avian virus H5N1 may be infecting people more readily and some strains may be developing resistance to one of only two antiviral drugs that work against it.
Effler noted that international arrivals are under federal jurisdiction and the state Health Department must work within existing quarantine law to screen travelers for influenza.
"Our goal is to provide them access to testing, to make quick diagnostic decisions and identify avian flu or other pathogenic illnesses."
Airplane pilots, as well as ship captains, are required under quarantine protocols to identify people arriving who are ill and have a condition that may warrant quarantine, Effler said.
"We're trying to add a component of providing laboratory support for that so we get a diagnosis sooner than later."
He said he would prefer to collect specimens or do a rapid test on site, but more definitive testing to determine avian flu must be done in a certified laboratory.
"We want to make sure any tests are done accurately."
But he said, "The goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible" so travel isn't affected.
The Health Department has developed a statewide surveillance system to look for infectious diseases. The department alerted doctors and other health care providers last fall to watch for symptoms of the potentially deadly avian flu. No cases have been reported.
The system was in place when severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, emerged as a threat in 2003. Four suspected cases were reported but weren't confirmed.
State Department of Health
www.state.hi.us/health/
http://starbulletin.com/print/?fr=/2005/05/25/news/story2.html
Pa. has a flu plan - but it's top secret
By Marian Uhlman
Inquirer Staff Writer
In New Jersey, the plan to combat a deadly flu pandemic is available over the Internet.
In Pennsylvania, it is closely guarded. Fewer than 25 copies have been distributed.
Pennsylvania officials say their decision is necessary to keep terrorists from gathering sensitive information with which to harm the public.
But New Jersey officials - and a number of national flu experts - say people should know what's in their state's plan so they can better survive a crisis. A pandemic could lead to quarantines and a fight over who should receive precious antiflu drugs. The more citizens know and support the plan, the more lives can be saved, experts say.
As public-health workers brace for an eventual new strain of influenza that could kill millions of people worldwide, a dispute has arisen whether government officials should divulge their plans. These are strategic blueprints that set up a management team, evaluate hospital capacity, and consider who would be vaccinated.
Top experts worry that an avian flu virus in Southeast Asia, or another strain, could lead to a pandemic. They fear that the nation has not adequately planned for anticipated shortages in vaccines, antiviral drugs, medical staff and even food.
In contrast to a typical flu season, during which about 36,000 people die in the United States, the toll from a pandemic could number in the hundreds of thousands.
Because of the threat, federal, state and local governments have been drawing up response plans. In August, the federal government released a draft of a national pandemic plan for public comment.
The trend among states is also to make the plans available, according to a recent survey by the Trust for America's Health, a Washington nonprofit organization.
But Pennsylvania officials say their pandemic plan includes sensitive details - such as phone numbers and vaccination storage sites - that could devastate response efforts if the information got into the wrong hands.
"We are walking on a knife's edge," said Adrian R. King Jr., director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. "We want to act in good faith to give information. At the same time, we have an obligation for operational security."
State officials are discussing the development of a "reader-friendly" version of the plan for the public, said Troy Thompson, a Pennsylvania Health Department spokesman.
New Jersey's state epidemiologist, Eddy Bresnitz, said a flu plan could be written without exposing sensitive information.
An updated New Jersey plan, still in draft form, is not yet on the Web site, but will be when it is done later this year. It sets up a command center and suggests sending crisis counselors to morgues, funeral homes and pediatric units. It calls for the monitoring of pharmacy sales to assess disease activity.
The plan describes what needs to be done before a pandemic occurs, such as identifying available medical staff. And it considers one of the most potentially contentious problems: Who should be vaccinated, given limited supplies? The groups include health-care workers, emergency-service workers, and people at high risk from disease.
The state also asks for feedback from a 130-member advisory council, with members ranging from school officials to police, Bresnitz said. Pennsylvania has no community-wide advisory committee, officials said.
"Keeping the public in the dark about what we are doing is not the best approach," said Bresnitz, who would chair New Jersey's pandemic executive committee. "The better we educate the public in advance of a public-health crisis, the more likely they are to be receptive to policy decisions and response efforts during a crisis."
Michael Osterholm, a former bioterrorism special adviser to the Bush administration, agreed. "Every plan developed for pandemic flu response should be totally transparent to the general public," he said.
Richard Raymond, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, said plans need public input "to get buy-in and credibility" because of the difficult decisions involved.
"If we have a pandemic, we will have to invoke things like isolation and quarantine," said Raymond, Nebraska's chief medical officer. "Most Americans haven't seen that used since the 1950s."
In a study published last year that has implications for a flu pandemic, the New York Academy of Medicine found that many people would not follow protective instructions during two terrorist-attack scenarios. The study surveyed 2,545 people nationwide. It found that only two of five people would seek vaccination during a smallpox outbreak and only three of five would stay sheltered as long as they should during a dirty-bomb explosion.
Roz D. Lasker, the study's lead author, said planners are often worried about one thing while the public is concerned about something else. For instance, more people would worry about the safety of the smallpox vaccine than about catching the disease itself.
"It is not rocket-science stuff," she said. "There is so much to learn from the public."
Shelley Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, said state plans often lack detail. For example, she said, plans often call for a count of potential hospital beds. Such numbers need to be in the plans.
By contrast, she said, Britain has identified priority groups for antivirals and vaccines.
"We need to be having that debate today, not when we are inches away from a biological outbreak," Hearne said.
A 2003 draft of the Pennsylvania plan obtained by The Inquirer suggests it covers the same topics as the New Jersey plan.
But Pennsylvania officials declined to give The Inquirer a copy of the current plan.
They developed it with the help of roughly two dozen health experts, officials said. They said the Department of Health circulated the plan among other state agencies and received good reviews from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state's ability to respond to a pandemic is "far superior" to what it was five years ago, said Michael Huff, director of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Community Health Systems. He cited the state's response to the flu-vaccine shortage last fall as evidence that Pennsylvania can mobilize health providers, redirect vaccine supplies, and reach local groups.
Others feel the state needs to do more. The public should be able to access the plan, said Joanne McGreevy, a staffer for State Sen. Jane C. Orie (R., Allegheny), vice chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee.
"Let them know way ahead of time, so it if it occurs, they know what to do," she said.
Estimated Impact of a Flu Pandemic
Trust for America's Health uses a U.S. Health and Human Services computer model to estimate the effects of a pandemic flu contracted by 35 percent of the U.S. population. The estimates include:
89,000 to 207,000 deaths.
314,000 to 734,000 hospitalizations.
18 million to 42 million outpatient visits.
20 million to 47 million additional illnesses
$71.3 billion to $166.5 billion economic impact.
In Pennsylvania, there would be an estimated 12,686 deaths and 52,573 hospitalizations.
In New Jersey, there would be an estimated 7,924 deaths and 33,970 hospitalizations.
SOURCE: Trust for America's Health
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/time...76.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
By Marian Uhlman
Inquirer Staff Writer
In New Jersey, the plan to combat a deadly flu pandemic is available over the Internet.
In Pennsylvania, it is closely guarded. Fewer than 25 copies have been distributed.
Pennsylvania officials say their decision is necessary to keep terrorists from gathering sensitive information with which to harm the public.
But New Jersey officials - and a number of national flu experts - say people should know what's in their state's plan so they can better survive a crisis. A pandemic could lead to quarantines and a fight over who should receive precious antiflu drugs. The more citizens know and support the plan, the more lives can be saved, experts say.
As public-health workers brace for an eventual new strain of influenza that could kill millions of people worldwide, a dispute has arisen whether government officials should divulge their plans. These are strategic blueprints that set up a management team, evaluate hospital capacity, and consider who would be vaccinated.
Top experts worry that an avian flu virus in Southeast Asia, or another strain, could lead to a pandemic. They fear that the nation has not adequately planned for anticipated shortages in vaccines, antiviral drugs, medical staff and even food.
In contrast to a typical flu season, during which about 36,000 people die in the United States, the toll from a pandemic could number in the hundreds of thousands.
Because of the threat, federal, state and local governments have been drawing up response plans. In August, the federal government released a draft of a national pandemic plan for public comment.
The trend among states is also to make the plans available, according to a recent survey by the Trust for America's Health, a Washington nonprofit organization.
But Pennsylvania officials say their pandemic plan includes sensitive details - such as phone numbers and vaccination storage sites - that could devastate response efforts if the information got into the wrong hands.
"We are walking on a knife's edge," said Adrian R. King Jr., director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. "We want to act in good faith to give information. At the same time, we have an obligation for operational security."
State officials are discussing the development of a "reader-friendly" version of the plan for the public, said Troy Thompson, a Pennsylvania Health Department spokesman.
New Jersey's state epidemiologist, Eddy Bresnitz, said a flu plan could be written without exposing sensitive information.
An updated New Jersey plan, still in draft form, is not yet on the Web site, but will be when it is done later this year. It sets up a command center and suggests sending crisis counselors to morgues, funeral homes and pediatric units. It calls for the monitoring of pharmacy sales to assess disease activity.
The plan describes what needs to be done before a pandemic occurs, such as identifying available medical staff. And it considers one of the most potentially contentious problems: Who should be vaccinated, given limited supplies? The groups include health-care workers, emergency-service workers, and people at high risk from disease.
The state also asks for feedback from a 130-member advisory council, with members ranging from school officials to police, Bresnitz said. Pennsylvania has no community-wide advisory committee, officials said.
"Keeping the public in the dark about what we are doing is not the best approach," said Bresnitz, who would chair New Jersey's pandemic executive committee. "The better we educate the public in advance of a public-health crisis, the more likely they are to be receptive to policy decisions and response efforts during a crisis."
Michael Osterholm, a former bioterrorism special adviser to the Bush administration, agreed. "Every plan developed for pandemic flu response should be totally transparent to the general public," he said.
Richard Raymond, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, said plans need public input "to get buy-in and credibility" because of the difficult decisions involved.
"If we have a pandemic, we will have to invoke things like isolation and quarantine," said Raymond, Nebraska's chief medical officer. "Most Americans haven't seen that used since the 1950s."
In a study published last year that has implications for a flu pandemic, the New York Academy of Medicine found that many people would not follow protective instructions during two terrorist-attack scenarios. The study surveyed 2,545 people nationwide. It found that only two of five people would seek vaccination during a smallpox outbreak and only three of five would stay sheltered as long as they should during a dirty-bomb explosion.
Roz D. Lasker, the study's lead author, said planners are often worried about one thing while the public is concerned about something else. For instance, more people would worry about the safety of the smallpox vaccine than about catching the disease itself.
"It is not rocket-science stuff," she said. "There is so much to learn from the public."
Shelley Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, said state plans often lack detail. For example, she said, plans often call for a count of potential hospital beds. Such numbers need to be in the plans.
By contrast, she said, Britain has identified priority groups for antivirals and vaccines.
"We need to be having that debate today, not when we are inches away from a biological outbreak," Hearne said.
A 2003 draft of the Pennsylvania plan obtained by The Inquirer suggests it covers the same topics as the New Jersey plan.
But Pennsylvania officials declined to give The Inquirer a copy of the current plan.
They developed it with the help of roughly two dozen health experts, officials said. They said the Department of Health circulated the plan among other state agencies and received good reviews from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state's ability to respond to a pandemic is "far superior" to what it was five years ago, said Michael Huff, director of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Community Health Systems. He cited the state's response to the flu-vaccine shortage last fall as evidence that Pennsylvania can mobilize health providers, redirect vaccine supplies, and reach local groups.
Others feel the state needs to do more. The public should be able to access the plan, said Joanne McGreevy, a staffer for State Sen. Jane C. Orie (R., Allegheny), vice chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee.
"Let them know way ahead of time, so it if it occurs, they know what to do," she said.
Estimated Impact of a Flu Pandemic
Trust for America's Health uses a U.S. Health and Human Services computer model to estimate the effects of a pandemic flu contracted by 35 percent of the U.S. population. The estimates include:
89,000 to 207,000 deaths.
314,000 to 734,000 hospitalizations.
18 million to 42 million outpatient visits.
20 million to 47 million additional illnesses
$71.3 billion to $166.5 billion economic impact.
In Pennsylvania, there would be an estimated 12,686 deaths and 52,573 hospitalizations.
In New Jersey, there would be an estimated 7,924 deaths and 33,970 hospitalizations.
SOURCE: Trust for America's Health
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/time...76.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Before we panic
2 big changes need to occur with H5N1 before it has the POTENTIAL to unleash a pandemic. It must more easily transmit from bird to human - it's trying to do that now. The hemagglutinen spike is mutating to fit HUMAN receptor sites. That doesn't happen purposefully, it just... happens. But once it does & that new viral line becomes established in avians, expect a higher rate of human infections.
Next it must transmit BETWEEN humans more efficiently. That seems to be happening in fits & starts but unless those successful viral lines are transmitted in an unbroken & expanding change, it can fizzle there.
Okay once those adaptations happen, conditions have to be right for pandemic. The mutated virus must have access to at least ONE human who will become sinfected & in turn infect other humans - at first it may be one at a time. John infects Sarah, infects Kyle infects Marika infects Stefan... etc. Once it gets to the point where more than oner person is infected by someone, the chances of pandemic statistically double. It's hard to imagine the virus would NOT have the chance to infect many others, then off to the races we go.
What we don't know is this... as it gains in the ability to be transmitted H-H, how nasty will it remain? What unknown factors may have to be met before it can blossom from a snowball to an avalanche? I suspect there are some. After all, flu's been with us for over 2 thousand year, we suspect. We've only had one pandemic on teh scale of 1918-19. How many came dangerously close to making the final leap... then simply failed?
Where it starts or how it's spread hardly matters. Once it's 'out there' it's everyone's problem. Tell me how to keep an infected Chinese national out of Canada when he/she is completely asymptomatic? How do you keep them out of the US? What about an American national infected ther eon a business trip who brings it home while asymptomatic?
Vaccines? I've not had time to more than very quickly skim articles posted here since I left earlier but how do they know this will be effective & SAFE in humans? Did they vaccinate some of their nationals then expose them to H5N1? That's the only way they can offer success rates & safety data.
I expect since the initial report, things have changed & frnakly, I'm not making time to look - too tired but I wouldn't be surprised to read somewhere of 'thousands' sick & 'hundreds' dead. Stories generate their own momentum - not always with reason.
Once the SARS story was leaked out of China, more anon leaks were able to confirm various aspects until China was forced to admit it had a problem. Flu is FAR more easy to catch than SARS. If this is happening, it can't remain close hold.
2 big changes need to occur with H5N1 before it has the POTENTIAL to unleash a pandemic. It must more easily transmit from bird to human - it's trying to do that now. The hemagglutinen spike is mutating to fit HUMAN receptor sites. That doesn't happen purposefully, it just... happens. But once it does & that new viral line becomes established in avians, expect a higher rate of human infections.
Next it must transmit BETWEEN humans more efficiently. That seems to be happening in fits & starts but unless those successful viral lines are transmitted in an unbroken & expanding change, it can fizzle there.
Okay once those adaptations happen, conditions have to be right for pandemic. The mutated virus must have access to at least ONE human who will become sinfected & in turn infect other humans - at first it may be one at a time. John infects Sarah, infects Kyle infects Marika infects Stefan... etc. Once it gets to the point where more than oner person is infected by someone, the chances of pandemic statistically double. It's hard to imagine the virus would NOT have the chance to infect many others, then off to the races we go.
What we don't know is this... as it gains in the ability to be transmitted H-H, how nasty will it remain? What unknown factors may have to be met before it can blossom from a snowball to an avalanche? I suspect there are some. After all, flu's been with us for over 2 thousand year, we suspect. We've only had one pandemic on teh scale of 1918-19. How many came dangerously close to making the final leap... then simply failed?
Where it starts or how it's spread hardly matters. Once it's 'out there' it's everyone's problem. Tell me how to keep an infected Chinese national out of Canada when he/she is completely asymptomatic? How do you keep them out of the US? What about an American national infected ther eon a business trip who brings it home while asymptomatic?
Vaccines? I've not had time to more than very quickly skim articles posted here since I left earlier but how do they know this will be effective & SAFE in humans? Did they vaccinate some of their nationals then expose them to H5N1? That's the only way they can offer success rates & safety data.
I expect since the initial report, things have changed & frnakly, I'm not making time to look - too tired but I wouldn't be surprised to read somewhere of 'thousands' sick & 'hundreds' dead. Stories generate their own momentum - not always with reason.
Once the SARS story was leaked out of China, more anon leaks were able to confirm various aspects until China was forced to admit it had a problem. Flu is FAR more easy to catch than SARS. If this is happening, it can't remain close hold.
Story location: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1039843&tw=wn_wire_story
China hails bird flu fix amid prophesies of doom
Thursday, May 26, 2005 7:33 a.m. ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has developed vaccines that block the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and mammals, Xinhua news agency reported, as scientists in the west warned of a possible global pandemic killing millions.
Scientists fear that avian flu, which is infectious in birds but does not spread easily among humans, could mutate into a form more capable of passing from animals to people.
The H5N1 strain first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago and has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.
Global health officials fear it could mutate into a strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 and 40 million people.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 percent," Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, was quoted as saying in an overnight report.
China's Ministry of Agriculture had given its approval, and a sales permit, for the vaccines, Xinhua said, without mentioning whether the treatments had been evaluated outside the country.
The agency said supplies of the new vaccines had already been sent to far-flung western Qinghai province, where China has been scrambling to contain its first breakout since late 2004 after 178 geese were found dead of the H5N1 virus on May 4.
Health departments in the provincial capital Xining and prefectures around the province had been mobilized to prevent the spread of the disease, Xinhua quoted Ai Keyuan, an official with the provincial health bureau, as saying.
Local departments were being told how to dispose of bird droppings and hospitals in the affected county had opened separate departments for screening patients with fever and to observe people who had close contact with the birds.
"All hospitals have been told to set up a task force and put aside medication and facilities for the treatment of any avian flu cases that might be detected," Ai said.
The new vaccines also prevented the spread of avian flu from migratory birds to waterfowl, which could easily pass the disease to domesticated birds, Xinhua said.
China was willing to provide technical anti-epidemic support to other countries and poultry farms in Vietnam had begun experimenting with the Chinese vaccines, it said.
"Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, Wednesday in a special section of the journal Nature devoted to avian flu.
"There is a critical need for comprehensive medical and non-medical pandemic planning at the ground level that goes beyond what has been considered so far."
Scientists say any bird flu pandemic will likely start in Asia and could kill many millions.
New influenza strains have caused pandemics in the past, most recently in 1956-1957 and 1967-1968, killing a combined 4.5 million people.
China hails bird flu fix amid prophesies of doom
Thursday, May 26, 2005 7:33 a.m. ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has developed vaccines that block the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and mammals, Xinhua news agency reported, as scientists in the west warned of a possible global pandemic killing millions.
Scientists fear that avian flu, which is infectious in birds but does not spread easily among humans, could mutate into a form more capable of passing from animals to people.
The H5N1 strain first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago and has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.
Global health officials fear it could mutate into a strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 and 40 million people.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 percent," Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, was quoted as saying in an overnight report.
China's Ministry of Agriculture had given its approval, and a sales permit, for the vaccines, Xinhua said, without mentioning whether the treatments had been evaluated outside the country.
The agency said supplies of the new vaccines had already been sent to far-flung western Qinghai province, where China has been scrambling to contain its first breakout since late 2004 after 178 geese were found dead of the H5N1 virus on May 4.
Health departments in the provincial capital Xining and prefectures around the province had been mobilized to prevent the spread of the disease, Xinhua quoted Ai Keyuan, an official with the provincial health bureau, as saying.
Local departments were being told how to dispose of bird droppings and hospitals in the affected county had opened separate departments for screening patients with fever and to observe people who had close contact with the birds.
"All hospitals have been told to set up a task force and put aside medication and facilities for the treatment of any avian flu cases that might be detected," Ai said.
The new vaccines also prevented the spread of avian flu from migratory birds to waterfowl, which could easily pass the disease to domesticated birds, Xinhua said.
China was willing to provide technical anti-epidemic support to other countries and poultry farms in Vietnam had begun experimenting with the Chinese vaccines, it said.
"Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, Wednesday in a special section of the journal Nature devoted to avian flu.
"There is a critical need for comprehensive medical and non-medical pandemic planning at the ground level that goes beyond what has been considered so far."
Scientists say any bird flu pandemic will likely start in Asia and could kill many millions.
New influenza strains have caused pandemics in the past, most recently in 1956-1957 and 1967-1968, killing a combined 4.5 million people.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...0,7799120.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
COMMENTARY
A Snail-Like WHO Needs a Shakeup
By Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Ebola in Zaire.
May 25, 2005
When delegations from 192 nations gathered last week in Geneva for the 58th annual World Health Assembly, the buzz in the hallways had little to do with the agency that the assembly governs, the World Health Organization. Instead, everyone was talking about Bill Gates.
As the WHO director-general, Dr. Lee Jong-wook of South Korea, droned his way through the opening keynote speech, about 2,000 heads craned to see Gates take his seat in the United Nations' august Palais des Nations. Soon after, the Microsoft founder announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would increase its donations for research into "breakthrough" medicine from $200 million a year to $450 million and would up its support for the search for an AIDS vaccine by $400 million. He got a standing ovation from an awestruck, star-struck crowd.
It's hard not to cheer wildly. The Gates Foundation has given $4.2 billion to global health initiatives over the last 9½ years, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any global health effort based in the United States that isn't getting Gates' money directly or via a secondary agency. (Full disclosure: The foundation partially funds the Global Health Program, which I run at the Council on Foreign Relations.)
But although Gates' money sets the agenda for a great deal of public health policy, it's important to remember what it isn't doing and won't do — the job of the WHO and the World Health Assembly.
The Gates Foundation, which has to answer only to its board, is adamant about its decision to primarily fund the search for cures and new treatments, rather than broader efforts to fight disease. It's a controversial position. An article in the British medical journal the Lancet recently took Gates to task, suggesting that trying to combat malaria, for instance, without also addressing problems like hygiene and water delivery could backfire.
In contrast to the agile, focused — but unaccountable — Gates Foundation, the WHO is governed by its often-embattled member states and lumbers along at a snail's pace, burdened by an obvious lack of clarity about its mission.
The problem isn't money, although more would help. The core budget of the WHO is just $400 million, but it doesn't operate on that sum alone. More than 70% of its budget comes from wealthy-nation donors supporting specific programs, which brings real spending to about $1.5 billion a year. (Still not a big number; it's roughly the same as the annual budget of the New York City Department of Health.)
But because the WHO is so reliant on that wealthy-donor "soft money," its mission is swayed — in too many directions — by those countries' agendas, ideologies and pet projects. In a world of globalized health threats, this is nuts. The WHO has to be able to put its resources where its experts can empirically show they are most needed.
Last week alone there were 16 disease outbreaks in 13 countries, including deadly Ebola and Marburg viruses, polio, meningitis and, most ominous of all, avian flu. Scientists fear that it could mutate and cause a contagious killer pandemic.
Yet right now, the entire global alert and response operation for epidemics at the WHO is — brace yourself — five people, out of roughly 6,000 employees.
The Gates Foundation isn't going to deploy emergency response teams around the world, send scientists in spacesuits wading into Marburg outbreaks or lead a global response to pandemic flu. That's the WHO's job.
The delegates to the World Health Assembly have the power to remake the WHO. Instead of shifting personnel and funds from Geneva headquarters to regional offices, the WHO should establish a smart, mobile global health force, based in Geneva, that can respond to crises around the world. Wealthy nations should be urged — shamed — into funding it, for the sake of their own survival.
And instead of beefing up mini-WHO bureaucracies around the world, the agency should fix public health systems in poor countries — training personnel, funding labs and communication systems so that local healthcare workers can respond to new disease outbreaks.
Bill and Melinda Gates deserve a global standing ovation. But the delegates at the World Health Assembly cannot afford to be even temporarily blinded by Gates' star power and generosity. Could they hear what he said as they cheered?
"The world is failing billions of people," he warned. "There is no bigger test for humanity than the crisis of global health."
COMMENTARY
A Snail-Like WHO Needs a Shakeup
By Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Ebola in Zaire.
May 25, 2005
When delegations from 192 nations gathered last week in Geneva for the 58th annual World Health Assembly, the buzz in the hallways had little to do with the agency that the assembly governs, the World Health Organization. Instead, everyone was talking about Bill Gates.
As the WHO director-general, Dr. Lee Jong-wook of South Korea, droned his way through the opening keynote speech, about 2,000 heads craned to see Gates take his seat in the United Nations' august Palais des Nations. Soon after, the Microsoft founder announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would increase its donations for research into "breakthrough" medicine from $200 million a year to $450 million and would up its support for the search for an AIDS vaccine by $400 million. He got a standing ovation from an awestruck, star-struck crowd.
It's hard not to cheer wildly. The Gates Foundation has given $4.2 billion to global health initiatives over the last 9½ years, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any global health effort based in the United States that isn't getting Gates' money directly or via a secondary agency. (Full disclosure: The foundation partially funds the Global Health Program, which I run at the Council on Foreign Relations.)
But although Gates' money sets the agenda for a great deal of public health policy, it's important to remember what it isn't doing and won't do — the job of the WHO and the World Health Assembly.
The Gates Foundation, which has to answer only to its board, is adamant about its decision to primarily fund the search for cures and new treatments, rather than broader efforts to fight disease. It's a controversial position. An article in the British medical journal the Lancet recently took Gates to task, suggesting that trying to combat malaria, for instance, without also addressing problems like hygiene and water delivery could backfire.
In contrast to the agile, focused — but unaccountable — Gates Foundation, the WHO is governed by its often-embattled member states and lumbers along at a snail's pace, burdened by an obvious lack of clarity about its mission.
The problem isn't money, although more would help. The core budget of the WHO is just $400 million, but it doesn't operate on that sum alone. More than 70% of its budget comes from wealthy-nation donors supporting specific programs, which brings real spending to about $1.5 billion a year. (Still not a big number; it's roughly the same as the annual budget of the New York City Department of Health.)
But because the WHO is so reliant on that wealthy-donor "soft money," its mission is swayed — in too many directions — by those countries' agendas, ideologies and pet projects. In a world of globalized health threats, this is nuts. The WHO has to be able to put its resources where its experts can empirically show they are most needed.
Last week alone there were 16 disease outbreaks in 13 countries, including deadly Ebola and Marburg viruses, polio, meningitis and, most ominous of all, avian flu. Scientists fear that it could mutate and cause a contagious killer pandemic.
Yet right now, the entire global alert and response operation for epidemics at the WHO is — brace yourself — five people, out of roughly 6,000 employees.
The Gates Foundation isn't going to deploy emergency response teams around the world, send scientists in spacesuits wading into Marburg outbreaks or lead a global response to pandemic flu. That's the WHO's job.
The delegates to the World Health Assembly have the power to remake the WHO. Instead of shifting personnel and funds from Geneva headquarters to regional offices, the WHO should establish a smart, mobile global health force, based in Geneva, that can respond to crises around the world. Wealthy nations should be urged — shamed — into funding it, for the sake of their own survival.
And instead of beefing up mini-WHO bureaucracies around the world, the agency should fix public health systems in poor countries — training personnel, funding labs and communication systems so that local healthcare workers can respond to new disease outbreaks.
Bill and Melinda Gates deserve a global standing ovation. But the delegates at the World Health Assembly cannot afford to be even temporarily blinded by Gates' star power and generosity. Could they hear what he said as they cheered?
"The world is failing billions of people," he warned. "There is no bigger test for humanity than the crisis of global health."
ainitfunny
Saved, to glorify God.
Thanks Canada Sue. I respect and appreciate your efforts to stay on top of this emerging threat and your willingness to keep us informed.
China discloses more birds dead from avian flu; says humans not affected
03:21 PM EDT May 26
SHANGHAI, China (CP) - More migratory birds were found dead of avian flu in China than previously reported, a Chinese official said Thursday, after the government declared that no human cases had been detected.
Investigators found 519 dead wild geese and other birds in a nature reserve in the western province of Qinghai, said a report by Jia Youling, director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary Bureau, to the World Organization for Animal Health. Jia's secretary, who gave his surname as Sun, confirmed the report.
China previously reported 178 birds with the virus were found dead at the reserve. It ordered all three million chickens, ducks and other farm birds in Qinghai vaccinated and told the public to avoid nature reserves.
The Ministry of Health, in a statement Thursday, said authorities have found no evidence that the disease spread to humans or domestic poultry. The announcement reiterated what Chinese authorities recently told the World Health Organization in Geneva.
The statement followed unconfirmed claims circulating on websites that as many as 120 people had died of bird flu in China. A dangerous strain of the disease is known as H5N1.
"We've seen those reports about possible human H5N1 cases, and have requested more information from the Ministry of Health," said Maria Cheng, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Beijing.
Cheng said WHO was urging China to share virus samples from the dead birds to allow comparisons with other avian flu outbreaks. The group is also seeking more information on human exposure to the dead birds and on control measures being taken.
"We need to know what this virus is," said Julie Hall, a WHO expert in Beijing. "And we need to be reassured that the right precaution measures are taken to protect human health."
Cheng said: "It would be premature to consider this event over."
Local health officials in Qinghai have been screening all pneumonia and flu-like cases, setting up a network to share information, and urging local residents to take special precautions, the Ministry of Health said.
Consumption of birds found dead has been banned, it said.
People who had been in close contact with the birds were being closely monitored and authorities were sterilizing areas where the dead birds were found, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing local officials.
"All hospitals have been told to set up a task force and put aside medication and facilities for the treatment of any avian flu cases that might be detected," Xinhua quoted Ai Keyuan, an official with the provincial health bureau, as saying.
There have been concerns that China might not be forthcoming about cases of H5N1 infection in the country, given its failure to promptly report the emergence of the disease that became known as severe acute respiratory syndrome - or SARS - in late 2002 and early 2003.
Influenza authorities fear H5N1, which has become endemic in bird stocks in some parts of Southeast Asia, may acquire the ability to transmit easily to and among humans, sparking a flu pandemic.
In a separate report, Xinhua said researchers in northern China have developed two new vaccines capable of preventing the H5N1 strain of bird flu from spreading among birds, animals or humans.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 per cent, " Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, was quoted as saying.
The vaccine developed in Chen's lab has been sent to Qinghai and her institute is willing to provide technical help to other countries affected by bird flu, the report said.
However, officials at the WHO's office in Beijing said they believed Chen's research involved only birds, not humans, and that no animal or human clinical trials have been run on the vaccines.
The Xinhua report said China has also developed new technologies that can speed up the detection of the bird flu virus to 10 hours from the 72 hours required in the past.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050526/w052638.html
03:21 PM EDT May 26
SHANGHAI, China (CP) - More migratory birds were found dead of avian flu in China than previously reported, a Chinese official said Thursday, after the government declared that no human cases had been detected.
Investigators found 519 dead wild geese and other birds in a nature reserve in the western province of Qinghai, said a report by Jia Youling, director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary Bureau, to the World Organization for Animal Health. Jia's secretary, who gave his surname as Sun, confirmed the report.
China previously reported 178 birds with the virus were found dead at the reserve. It ordered all three million chickens, ducks and other farm birds in Qinghai vaccinated and told the public to avoid nature reserves.
The Ministry of Health, in a statement Thursday, said authorities have found no evidence that the disease spread to humans or domestic poultry. The announcement reiterated what Chinese authorities recently told the World Health Organization in Geneva.
The statement followed unconfirmed claims circulating on websites that as many as 120 people had died of bird flu in China. A dangerous strain of the disease is known as H5N1.
"We've seen those reports about possible human H5N1 cases, and have requested more information from the Ministry of Health," said Maria Cheng, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Beijing.
Cheng said WHO was urging China to share virus samples from the dead birds to allow comparisons with other avian flu outbreaks. The group is also seeking more information on human exposure to the dead birds and on control measures being taken.
"We need to know what this virus is," said Julie Hall, a WHO expert in Beijing. "And we need to be reassured that the right precaution measures are taken to protect human health."
Cheng said: "It would be premature to consider this event over."
Local health officials in Qinghai have been screening all pneumonia and flu-like cases, setting up a network to share information, and urging local residents to take special precautions, the Ministry of Health said.
Consumption of birds found dead has been banned, it said.
People who had been in close contact with the birds were being closely monitored and authorities were sterilizing areas where the dead birds were found, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing local officials.
"All hospitals have been told to set up a task force and put aside medication and facilities for the treatment of any avian flu cases that might be detected," Xinhua quoted Ai Keyuan, an official with the provincial health bureau, as saying.
There have been concerns that China might not be forthcoming about cases of H5N1 infection in the country, given its failure to promptly report the emergence of the disease that became known as severe acute respiratory syndrome - or SARS - in late 2002 and early 2003.
Influenza authorities fear H5N1, which has become endemic in bird stocks in some parts of Southeast Asia, may acquire the ability to transmit easily to and among humans, sparking a flu pandemic.
In a separate report, Xinhua said researchers in northern China have developed two new vaccines capable of preventing the H5N1 strain of bird flu from spreading among birds, animals or humans.
"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 per cent, " Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, was quoted as saying.
The vaccine developed in Chen's lab has been sent to Qinghai and her institute is willing to provide technical help to other countries affected by bird flu, the report said.
However, officials at the WHO's office in Beijing said they believed Chen's research involved only birds, not humans, and that no animal or human clinical trials have been run on the vaccines.
The Xinhua report said China has also developed new technologies that can speed up the detection of the bird flu virus to 10 hours from the 72 hours required in the past.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050526/w052638.html
Bird Flu Case Fatality Rates Exceed 60% in Qinghai China?
Recombinomics Commentary
May 26, 2005
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05260506/H5N1_Qinghai_CFR.html
>> In the meantime, no response has been received to recent allegations of the occurrence of human cases of avian influenza in Qinghai province. We repeat our request for official, 1st-hand information; alternatively, scientifically-based data from non-official, reliable sources. The rumors might be false; there is no way to verify them, or to prevent further dissemination of inaccurate data and their damaging consequences -- except by providing accurate data on avian influenza in animals and humans, according to international codes and in a timely manner. - Mod.AS] <<
The above commentary by ProMed emphasizes the need for reliable information from Gangcha County in Qinghai province. The descriptions of the human cases were quite detailed. Initial reports described the deaths of six tourist, points of orign, and names of four fatalities..
The report on the 18 locations in Gangcha County was also quite specific, including the number of infections and deaths for each region. The ratios of deaths to infections were striking (8/14, 6/15, 12/21, 11/14, 12/15, 6/13, 9/15, 8/11, 6/9, 3/5, 9/12, 7/9, 1/4, 3/5, 3/9, 1/4). Thus, the case fatality rates ranged from 25% to 78% based on all infected patients recovering. Since there were no reported discharges, the case fatality rates could go to 100%. This number and frequency of deaths in a region with confirmed H5N1 deaths of migratory birds demands a detailed explanation.
If these 121 deaths did not happen, some sort of explanation is required. If the deaths did happen, then more details on the cause of the deaths is required. Blanket denials will not end the rumors or spread of the information.
In addition to these 200 cases in Gangcha Country, there were small numbers of infections and deaths in surrounding communities.
The coincidence of the human cases and H5N1 bird flu deaths requires detailed disclosures, not news blackouts.. The Chinese media reports suggested additional deaths in Tibet, but many of the deaths were in the homes of residents. Thus, the range and extent of the reported deaths is quite alarming.
The largest confirmed cluster in Vietnam was a family of five in Haiphong. Some neighbors had symptoms and test results were not released, but the family of five recovered and deaths of neighbors were not reported. Even cases in southern Vietnam and Cambodia, where case fatality rates approach 100%, the clusters are limited to 2 or 3 family members.
In contrast, the cases in Gangcha Country represent large cluster with frequent death. The cause of this sudden increase in fatalities in the localized regions needs to be explained, even it were not associated with H5N1.
However, since the time and location matched the confirmed H5N1 infections in five species of waterfowl, the suspicion level is extremely high. The news and speculation will build and spread, until specifics are released.
Recombinomics Commentary
May 26, 2005
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05260506/H5N1_Qinghai_CFR.html
>> In the meantime, no response has been received to recent allegations of the occurrence of human cases of avian influenza in Qinghai province. We repeat our request for official, 1st-hand information; alternatively, scientifically-based data from non-official, reliable sources. The rumors might be false; there is no way to verify them, or to prevent further dissemination of inaccurate data and their damaging consequences -- except by providing accurate data on avian influenza in animals and humans, according to international codes and in a timely manner. - Mod.AS] <<
The above commentary by ProMed emphasizes the need for reliable information from Gangcha County in Qinghai province. The descriptions of the human cases were quite detailed. Initial reports described the deaths of six tourist, points of orign, and names of four fatalities..
The report on the 18 locations in Gangcha County was also quite specific, including the number of infections and deaths for each region. The ratios of deaths to infections were striking (8/14, 6/15, 12/21, 11/14, 12/15, 6/13, 9/15, 8/11, 6/9, 3/5, 9/12, 7/9, 1/4, 3/5, 3/9, 1/4). Thus, the case fatality rates ranged from 25% to 78% based on all infected patients recovering. Since there were no reported discharges, the case fatality rates could go to 100%. This number and frequency of deaths in a region with confirmed H5N1 deaths of migratory birds demands a detailed explanation.
If these 121 deaths did not happen, some sort of explanation is required. If the deaths did happen, then more details on the cause of the deaths is required. Blanket denials will not end the rumors or spread of the information.
In addition to these 200 cases in Gangcha Country, there were small numbers of infections and deaths in surrounding communities.
The coincidence of the human cases and H5N1 bird flu deaths requires detailed disclosures, not news blackouts.. The Chinese media reports suggested additional deaths in Tibet, but many of the deaths were in the homes of residents. Thus, the range and extent of the reported deaths is quite alarming.
The largest confirmed cluster in Vietnam was a family of five in Haiphong. Some neighbors had symptoms and test results were not released, but the family of five recovered and deaths of neighbors were not reported. Even cases in southern Vietnam and Cambodia, where case fatality rates approach 100%, the clusters are limited to 2 or 3 family members.
In contrast, the cases in Gangcha Country represent large cluster with frequent death. The cause of this sudden increase in fatalities in the localized regions needs to be explained, even it were not associated with H5N1.
However, since the time and location matched the confirmed H5N1 infections in five species of waterfowl, the suspicion level is extremely high. The news and speculation will build and spread, until specifics are released.
Birdflu could spread to NZ in just hours, says expert
26.05.05 12.40pm
New Zealand virologist Lance Jennings says the bird flu virus in Vietnam is beginning to adapt to humans and if it does, it could spread to New Zealand in a matter of hours.
Since the Asian H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus first emerged in China and Hong Kong eight years ago, it has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia. A new outbreak has just been reported in China.
Dr Jennings has just returned from Vietnam where he has been researching for the World Health Organisation.
The vaccine for poultry did not work for humans but a human vaccine was under trial in the United States, he said today.
Dr Jennings said if the virus adapted to pass between people, it would then move quickly, including being carried by air travellers.
"It would be spread around the world in a matter of hours. New Zealand would be at an equal threat as most other countries."
But Dr Jennings said New Zealand had appropriate systems and procedures in place.
"New Zealand is well prepared in terms of having a pandemic preparedness plan. We've had one since 1999," he told National Radio.
In China, the government has had to send millions of doses of bird flu vaccine for birds to a western province where migrating geese were found dead earlier this month.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10127602
26.05.05 12.40pm
New Zealand virologist Lance Jennings says the bird flu virus in Vietnam is beginning to adapt to humans and if it does, it could spread to New Zealand in a matter of hours.
Since the Asian H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus first emerged in China and Hong Kong eight years ago, it has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia. A new outbreak has just been reported in China.
Dr Jennings has just returned from Vietnam where he has been researching for the World Health Organisation.
The vaccine for poultry did not work for humans but a human vaccine was under trial in the United States, he said today.
Dr Jennings said if the virus adapted to pass between people, it would then move quickly, including being carried by air travellers.
"It would be spread around the world in a matter of hours. New Zealand would be at an equal threat as most other countries."
But Dr Jennings said New Zealand had appropriate systems and procedures in place.
"New Zealand is well prepared in terms of having a pandemic preparedness plan. We've had one since 1999," he told National Radio.
In China, the government has had to send millions of doses of bird flu vaccine for birds to a western province where migrating geese were found dead earlier this month.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10127602
Dr. Niman will be on the Jeff Rense radio program tonight at 10pm.
Here's his latest:
The key question about bird flu in Gangcha County, in Qinghai Province in China is what killed the 121 people this month. They had a case fatality rate above 60% and died around the same time as the 519 water fowl in the same area in and around the Qingahi Lake Nature Reserve.
Information on the age, gender, symptoms, and cause of death would put an end to the speculation, which is centered on a global pandemic significantly worse than the 1918 pandemic that killed 20-100 million people worldwide.
Prior to May 18, China hadn't reported any H5N1 in the entire country since last fall, so what China doesn't find is not important at this time.
Specific answers are required. The whole world is watching and negative data do not answer the key question - what killed 121 people in 18 townships in Gangcha County in Qinghai Province this month.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05260507/H5N1_Qinghai_121_Killed.html
******************************
A couple of things are starting to make me suspicious of China.
1. They are clearly lying about the 121 people dying because of this virus.
2. If you look on this thread you will find that the Chinese have announced that they have a "fix" for this virus.
3. No news media or reporters are allowed to visit the area nor are they given any information, not even WHO. Why? What are they afraid they'll discover?
These three things alone make me wonder if China may have been experimenting with viruses. Just thinking outloud here...
Here's his latest:
The key question about bird flu in Gangcha County, in Qinghai Province in China is what killed the 121 people this month. They had a case fatality rate above 60% and died around the same time as the 519 water fowl in the same area in and around the Qingahi Lake Nature Reserve.
Information on the age, gender, symptoms, and cause of death would put an end to the speculation, which is centered on a global pandemic significantly worse than the 1918 pandemic that killed 20-100 million people worldwide.
Prior to May 18, China hadn't reported any H5N1 in the entire country since last fall, so what China doesn't find is not important at this time.
Specific answers are required. The whole world is watching and negative data do not answer the key question - what killed 121 people in 18 townships in Gangcha County in Qinghai Province this month.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05260507/H5N1_Qinghai_121_Killed.html
******************************
A couple of things are starting to make me suspicious of China.
1. They are clearly lying about the 121 people dying because of this virus.
2. If you look on this thread you will find that the Chinese have announced that they have a "fix" for this virus.
3. No news media or reporters are allowed to visit the area nor are they given any information, not even WHO. Why? What are they afraid they'll discover?
These three things alone make me wonder if China may have been experimenting with viruses. Just thinking outloud here...
More dead birds found in China's Qinghai province
fair use...
China starting to own up on the numbers some?
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/05/26/birdflu050526.html
BEIJING - Chinese authorities say they have found no human cases of bird flu or unexplained pneumonia after the discovery that avian flu killed wild geese in the western province of Qinghai.
But officials have said many more migratory geese and other birds were found dead of bird flu than previously reported.
Authorities have ordered all three million chickens, ducks and other farm birds in Qinghai vaccinated and told the public to avoid nature reserves.
"The Chinese Healthy Ministry has required the bird flu area to strengthen its prevention and control work and conduct monitoring work to a human pneumonia case with unexplained cause, and the observation of people who worked in bird flu region," said Mao Quanan, of the Chinese Health Ministry.
"Flu and pneumonia with unexplained cause should be reported. All governments should also strengthen the spread of the anti-bird flu knowledge and raise the people's awareness of the bird flu," he said.
Investigators now say they have found more than 500 dead birds in the affected nature reserve. China previously reported fewer than 200 had been found.
"We need to know what this virus is," said World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Julie Hall. "How does it differ at all or is it very similar to viruses occurring in Vietnam and Thailand? And we need to be reassured that the right precaution measures are taken to protect human health."
fair use...
China starting to own up on the numbers some?
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/05/26/birdflu050526.html
BEIJING - Chinese authorities say they have found no human cases of bird flu or unexplained pneumonia after the discovery that avian flu killed wild geese in the western province of Qinghai.
But officials have said many more migratory geese and other birds were found dead of bird flu than previously reported.
Authorities have ordered all three million chickens, ducks and other farm birds in Qinghai vaccinated and told the public to avoid nature reserves.
"The Chinese Healthy Ministry has required the bird flu area to strengthen its prevention and control work and conduct monitoring work to a human pneumonia case with unexplained cause, and the observation of people who worked in bird flu region," said Mao Quanan, of the Chinese Health Ministry.
"Flu and pneumonia with unexplained cause should be reported. All governments should also strengthen the spread of the anti-bird flu knowledge and raise the people's awareness of the bird flu," he said.
Investigators now say they have found more than 500 dead birds in the affected nature reserve. China previously reported fewer than 200 had been found.
"We need to know what this virus is," said World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Julie Hall. "How does it differ at all or is it very similar to viruses occurring in Vietnam and Thailand? And we need to be reassured that the right precaution measures are taken to protect human health."
White Sunlight
Senior Member
I have travelled throughout China and can talk about the province of Qinghai and its people. I visited this province in the Fall of 2003 on a filming trip to film the Dali Lama's teacher and other living buddha's. We flew to the capital of Qinghai province, Xining, a busy place where there were many Muslims, Buddhist, Mongolians, Tibetians and nomads. The population of this city about one million people, but it is laid out in an area of over fifty miles. The downtown is busy and traffic is brisk there. Its a non-stop flight from Beijing and you travel over the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia to get there. The flight is about two and a half hours from Beijing. I have been in its back country and the living style there is not that sanitary compared to our standards. In the country side we slept on wooden beds in mud and wood constructed houses. We ate lamb everyday and the food was not as fresh as other places in China. The scenery was amazing, including some pyramid like formations deep in the province. There are five million people in this province and they are mostly concentrated in the east corner of the province. The great March of Mao and company touched the fringe of this province in the thirties. If this flu breaks out in any serious way it could hit Beijing in a short time and be world bound after that. I hope this helps.
Gingergirl
Veteran Member
White Sunlight said:
It always helps to have a first hand account. That's what the board is for.
THANKS!
Hong Kong reports surge in "flu-like illnesses"
Excerpt from "Newswrap", broadcast by Radio TV Hong Kong audio web site on 27 May
The Department of Health says the number of people treated for flu-like illnesses has risen in the last two weeks.
Figures from government outpatient clinics showed there were 11.4 flu cases per 1,000 consultations - up from 1.1 in the first two weeks of May. The numbers seeking treatment in private clinics also went up.
A consultant in community medicine at the Centre for Health Protection, Dr Thomas Tsang, said the number of flu cases in May appeared to be quite unusual, given the fact that the period between April and June was usually quiet. [passage omitted]
Excerpt from "Newswrap", broadcast by Radio TV Hong Kong audio web site on 27 May
The Department of Health says the number of people treated for flu-like illnesses has risen in the last two weeks.
Figures from government outpatient clinics showed there were 11.4 flu cases per 1,000 consultations - up from 1.1 in the first two weeks of May. The numbers seeking treatment in private clinics also went up.
A consultant in community medicine at the Centre for Health Protection, Dr Thomas Tsang, said the number of flu cases in May appeared to be quite unusual, given the fact that the period between April and June was usually quiet. [passage omitted]