02/01 | H5N1: Iraq battles with 12 human bird flu cases

Link for yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=184858

Iraq battles with 12 human bird flu cases​

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SULAIMANIYA: Officials in northern Iraq said yesterday they were treating 12 patients suspected of having bird flu as a World Health Organisation (WHO) team prepared to travel to the area to give urgent assistance. Iraq's health minister said on Monday the country feared it had its first human bird flu victim after preliminary test results showed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who died two weeks ago had the H5N1 virus.
WHO said it was urgently seeking further tests at a British laboratory to confirm the diagnosis and was dispatching a team of experts to help health officials in Iraq's largely autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.
The British laboratory will also assess samples from the girl's uncle, who had cared for her when she was ill and who himself died last week of a respiratory infection. "We have 12 patients in Sulaimaniya that have lung infections that we suspect may be the bird flu virus," Kurdistan's deputy prime minister, Imad Ahmed, told Reuters, referring to one of the region's largest cities.
The most serious was 54-year-old Mariam Qader, who came from the same village as the dead girl and is believed to be a distant relative of the victim. The village is close to Iraq's border with Turkey, where four children died from bird flu in recent weeks. "Until now we have culled more than 400,000 birds," Kurdistan's health minister, Mohammed Khashnow, said, adding that teams were concentrating on a swathe of territory between Sulaimaniya and the Turkish border to the north. "We gather the birds, put them in plastic bags and suffocate them and then bury them," he said. Poisoning with carbon dioxide is the generally approved method for culling large numbers of poultry.
The WHO team, composed of four experts in epidemiology and infection control, will leave on Wednesday for Jordan and should reach northern Iraq by the end of the week, WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said. "The purpose of the mission is to assess the situation on the ground. Experts from the (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation may also be joining the team," he added.
So far there have been no confirmed cases among poultry in Iraq, but local officials say the country's porous frontiers, a raging insurgency and general chaos in the aftermath of the US-led invasion will make it hard to control any epidemic. -Reuters

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/regional.asp?dismode=article&artid=755895286

Iraq Issues Warnings Over Bird Flu Virus​

Associated Press —


SULAIMINYAH, Iraq, 1 February 2006 — Health authorities went on high alert yesterday following Iraq’s first reported case of the deadly bird flu virus, culling hundreds of thousands of birds and warning farmers across the country to inspect their flocks. Five mobile hospitals with special equipment were due to arrive in northern Iraq last night, according to Health Minister Abdel Mutalib Mohammed. A 30-kilometer security cordon will be placed around the village where the disease appeared, he added.

The measures followed Monday’s announcement that a 15-year-old girl from northern Iraq who died Jan. 17 had contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. It was the first confirmed human case of H5N1 in the country. The prospect of a bird flu outbreak in Iraq is alarming because it is gripped by armed insurgency and lacks the resources of other governments in the region. Government institutions, however, are most effective in the Kurdish-run area where the girl lived.

The United States has offered assistance to Iraqi authorities to help deal with the outbreak, while a World Health Organization team of epidemiologists and clinicians was expected to arrive later in the week to start tests. “We are working with the government of Iraq and the World Health Organization to ensure that the necessary support for diagnosis and treatment of avian influenza is available as needed,” US Embassy spokeswoman Sylvia Blackwood said.

WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said health authorities are also investigating two more possible bird flue cases — the girl’s uncle who died Jan. 27 and a 54-year-old woman from the same region who has been hospitalized.

At least 21 cases of bird flu have been recorded in Turkey, raising fears the virus may have moved south.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions. A total of 85 people had died of the disease worldwide before the Iraq case was reported, according to WHO figures.

http://www.arabnews.com/services/pr...6&hl=Iraq Issues Warnings Over Bird Flu Virus

Wild birds die on mass scale in Crimean resort zone​

31.01.2006, 10.40


SIMFEROPOL, January 31 (Itar-Tass) - Over 300 dead wild ducks have been found in the resort zone of Ukraine’s Crimea over the past three days. “Expertise has confirmed the bird flu virus in dead birds from Alushta,” the city administration has reported.

A daily monitoring of beaches has been introduced in resort areas. Specialists examine the beaches several times a day. “Ukraine is on the list of risk zone countries, where a bird flu pandemic is possible after the spring migration of birds begin,” Health Minister Yuri Polyachenko said on Monday. According to him, Ukraine is getting ready for a possible pandemic.

The Ukrainian Health Ministry and the Ministry for Emergency Situations are developing a joint plan of actions for the case of an emergency situation. They hold joint exercises among other measures. Meanwhile, specialists are getting ready for the worst scenario, including the evacuation of people.

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2892934&PageNum=0

Cyprus president urges for calm after bird flu detected in north​

Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos on Tuesday urged for calm on the island after the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was detected in the Turkish Cypriot north.

Papadopoulos said that the Greek Cypriot government was taking all necessary measures to fight the disease and that there was no reason to panic.

"Although bird flu has been detected, for 20 days till now there has been no other incident either in the occupied Cyprus or in the government-controlled areas," he said.

He also said that the government did not intend to close the checkpoints to and from the Turkish-controlled north.

The European Commission announced on Sunday that the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 has been confirmed in one of two samples taken from northern Cyprus and has sent two bird flu experts to northern Cyprus to help and pin-down the deficiencies in preventing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, the British Bases in Cyprus have also taken a series of measures and established a surveillance zone to prevent the spread of bird flu on the island, British Bases Spokesman Captain Crispin Coates said here Tuesday.

He said measures have been taken in cooperation with the authorities of the Republic of Cyprus.

Coates told reporters that all vehicles are now disinfected and searched upon arriving at the crossing points manned by British soldiers along the dividing line between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish Cypriot north and that individuals are also checked and if necessary are also disinfected at the crossing points.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic line since 1974 when Turkey sent troops to take control of the norther third of the island following a Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece. Turkey currently maintains some 30,000 troops in the island's northern enclave.

Britain has retained two military bases in Cyprus when the island gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1960.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed so far about 80 people worldwide since its breakout in late 2003.

Experts fear that the deadly disease, currently jumping from birds to humans, might mutate into a human form that would become a global pandemic, killing millions.

Source: Xinhua

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200602/01/eng20060201_239640.html

12 suspected bird flu in Kurdistan​

Iraq: 1 hour, 37 minutes ago
Twelve people suspected of having the H5N1 strain of bird flu are being treated in Kurdistan in northern Iraq, according to officials. Iraqi authorities have begun culling poultry in the region and the World Health Organisation is sending a team of experts to the region. Iraqi officials say a teenage girl died of the strain two weeks ago.

http://www.ameinfo.com/76882.html

Did anyone watch the Senate Subcommittee hearings on this today on CSPAN? I caught the morning session with the CDC and asst. Sec of Health (who imho should be fired), but missed the afternoon session where they were to meet with American companies about manufacturing vaccines on CONUS. This is from memory, so feel free to correct me if you caught the broadcast...

The Senators were very firm with the CDC about stockpiling now masks, hypodermics, and all other medical equipment that we may need for an outbreak that we currently order from foreign manufacturers (mostly China), because they assume that post outbreak, foreign nations will stop shipments and keep the items for themselves. The Senators were upset with the CDC for not having enough masks already, and figuratively lit a fire under them to be ready in months instead of in years. On some supplies, the CDC had standing orders but our stock piles from those future orders would not be adequate until like 2008, and the senators want the CDC ready in case the outbreak comes later this year or next.

For the same reason, they insist that we manufacture vaccines on our own soil and not depend on any foreign nation, because the senators do not trust foreign nations to follow through with delivery post-outbreak. The secretary talked about vaccines from eggs and one other method, but not the RNA method used for hepB, etc, that can generate a vac within 2-4 months verses 14-16, or something like that. So the senators chewed him a new one, and the CDC lady basically stepped up to the plate and said that CDC/NIH was already exploring that option (research trials now) and they are committed to continuing to explore that, and if they discover a vac that way then they will have it developed.

The CDC has researchers on site at outbreak areas like China and Kurdistan, plus has a scientist in the Istanbul lab exploring with their scientists (way cool) that new strain in Turkey that seems to be most dangerous. Plus the CDC main also has cultures of that Istanbul strain here in the states that they are testing on tissue and animal models to first confirm that it has the effects reported by Turkey, and if so then to explore vaccine strategies.

The senator from Alaska was pissed because when they find sick birds, they have to ship them to Atlanta for testing and have to wait 3 friggin' months before they get the results of whether the birds have the virus or not. The CDC said that those birds are tested by the dept. of agriculture so she can't comment on the procedure, but that the CDC has been using part of the recent grant to develop testing sites in many states and Alaska is one of them so soon, if not now, Alaska will be able to use their local CDC lab to get fast results on the birds.

They talked about QUARANTINES at the borders, and the lady from the CDC said that they have been in meetings with homeland security and already have been granted the legal authority (the CDC has) to enforce quarantine at the borders, and that homeland security will fall under the CDC's command in such instances and provide for them law enforcement (or military? not sure...she may have just said "enforcement" and not specified if it was nat guard or what)...I dunno if the quarantine means a total shut down, or just random testing and MASH type tents, but it was interesting none the less, and I'm concerned for any of our board members who may be abroad when or if this virus goes pandemic, as they may have a hard time getting back in the country.

Really interesting, Data Junkie. Thanks.

Your welcome. I just remembered that they talked about Tamiflu as well. The CDC hopes to stockpile enough for 25% of our population, but doesn't expect to have that little amount until like 2012. It may have been sooner, as she mentioned a couple dates with % amounts up to the ideal 25%. Maybe 2008 was like 12% or 18% of the population covered by Tamiflu, but basically my feeling listening was that it doesn't sound to me like Tamiflu will be available to the general population in any significant quantity unless the senators can somehow con or bribe their way into getting it manufactured on CONUS, and these guys I think will if they can, as they were as serious as a heart attack, unlike the ass't sec of health who was ignorant and hostile to the committee.

Thanks JD, there's way more going on... TPTB prepping for BF, than we see slipping out into the MSM.

Bird Flu: Hoping for the Best, While Preparing for the Worst​

Wednesday, February 1st 2006

A discussion of the medical, societal, business, economic and financial effects of a global influenza pandemic.

Dr. Sherry Cooper is Global Economic Strategist and Executive Vice-President of the Toronto-based BMO Financial Group. A former economist at the US Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC, she served there as a special assistant to then US Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker. A frequent speaker and TV commentator, Dr Cooper is known for her ability to de-mystify the murky waters of economics and finance, and she ranks among the most influencial women in her adopted Canada. In 2002 she was named by Bloomberg News as the top gross domestic product forecaster for the US economy.

Over recent months Dr Cooper and her BMO colleagues have undertaken an intensive research project on the potential human and economic consequences of a global influenza pandemic evolving from the bird flu virus. She talks here with James Nelson about her resesrch findings and her call for action.

Q:The media has been full of claims and counter-claims on the likelihood of a global influenza pandemic evolving from the H5N1 avian virus (Bird Flu). You've researched this danger extensively. How do you read the situation?

The evidence suggests that virtually all countries are unprepared. The SARS outbreak was controlled relatively quickly, within months. If global governments could decrease exposure to infected animals, strengthen an early-warning system, and contain the spread of disease at the source, they could likely avert a potential avian-flu pandemic. But most experts, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), believe that the epidemic of avian flu among birds is too far gone to be eradicated, and that in some parts of Asia, it is nearly impossible to eliminate human and mammalian exposure to infected birds. Many birds are asymptomatic and still carry the desease, mostly wild migratory birds.

Quick detection, early treatment, containment, and preventative medications and vaccines are essential. This requires immediate global sharing of information and collaboration. Even now, these have significant economic implications. In the event of a pandemic, the economic effects could be colossal, affecting virtually all sectors and regions.

I don't claim expertise in the science of pandemics, but my research included discussions with many of the world's leading virologists, epidemiologists, and public health leaders, as well as representatives of the WHO, the US National Institutes of Science, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Health Canada. I have also met with medical officers and crisis-management leaders of many global financial institutions. The conclusion is that an influenza pandemic is likely, but no one knows when and where, or whether it will be a strain of H5N1, the avian flu. However, H5N1 is showing many characteristics consistent with the deadly 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed 50 - 100 million people, and that on a world population base of 1.75 billion.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) and Associate Director of the National Centre for Food Protection and Defense, is a noted authority on bioterrorism and pandemics. He has stated to me directly that he believes there is a 100 % probability of a global influenza-A pandemic. But he does not know when or where. While uncertain, he believes the next influenza-A pandemic will evolve from the bird virus H5N1. This is not good news.

Q:How deadly is the H5N1 virus?

The virus has mutated since the first bird cases were detected in southern China in 1996 - 1997, and has become far more virulent and deadly. It can kill infected chickens in less than one day, ducks in one to two days, and it has a very high death rate in humans, currently around 50 % in the affected regions. This is 10 times the case fatality rate of the horrific 1918 pandemic, although others might have recovered from the disease without ever being reported.

In the past four months, many thousands of wild migratory birds of multiple species have died. Before this, infected wild birds did not get sick en masse. So, the virus is continuing to evolve as a lethal pathogen and appears to be spreading globally. The more the virus extends its range, the greater the chance of mutation to allow easier human transmissibility.

Q:How bad does an epidemic have to become before it's clasified as a pandemic?

A pandemic is an epidemic that becomes very widespread and infects a whole region, a continent or-most likely with global travel-the world. Influenza pandemics are known to attack three or four times each century. They occur when a novel influenza strain emerges with specific characteristics: it is readily transmissible between humans; it is genetically unique so that the human population lacks a pre-existing immunity; and it is highly virulent. Each pandemic is unique, so the mortality rate of the next one can't be easily predicted.

At least 10 pandemics have been recorded in the past 300 years. The last one was in 1968, and it killed an estimated one-to-four million people worldwide. Earlier, there was also another mild episode in 1957, with roughly the same number of deaths.

The real killer-flu pandemic was in 1918, the so-called Spanish flu. It did not originate in Spain, although it did devastating damage there. In this pandemic an H1N1 strain infected 200 million to 1 billion people. According to a detailed country-by-country study published in the Bulletin of Medical History, an estimated 50 million to 100 million people died globally. Over the period from 1918 to 1920, roughly half the global population was infected in three separate waves, several months apart-the middle one being the worst. The fatality rate was about 3% of those infected, killing about 500,000 people in the USA and nearly 60,000 in Canada. This makes the Canadian death toll from SARS, at 44, seem almost trivial. Moreover, in 1918, the global population was only 1.75 billion. Today, the world's population is an estimated 6.4 billion.

The death rate was highest among young healthy adults, aged 20 to 40, and among pregnant women. The case-fatality rate among pregnant women ranged from 23% to 71%. If the woman survived, the fetus invariably did not.

Q:Among medical experts, what is the current consensus that the bird flu virus will mutate and

thus become transmissible from person to person, and at what human cost?

Dr Robert Webster of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis has studied flu viruses for 40 years and says he has never seen anything like this. In terms of being highly pathogenic it's probably the worst influenza virus he has ever seen or worked with. With the known deaths so far, many public health experts fear a catastrophe. Dr Webster and many others believe that the H5N1 virus, which isn't yet transmissible among humans "will learn to do it".

Estimates of potential human deaths vary widely. These estimates are highly contentious and subject to dispute. In late September, Dr David Nabarro, the newly appointed UN co-ordinator for global bird flu preparations, warned that a pandemic could kill up to 150 million people. The deaths come in waves, extending the crisis and raising the panic level. These death toll estimates, even the conservative ones, are staggering. They demand attention, action, coordination and response plans, now. As Canadian Press medical reporter Helen Branswell has pointed out, whatever the number of deaths the situation will be extremely difficult and economically colossal.

Q:So what can be done?

Dr Klaus Stöhr, project leader of the Global Pandemic Project at the World Health Organisation, says we have not been so close to a pandemic since 1968, and for the first time in history we are watching it unfold in slow motion. So detection, containment and prevention are critical.

But once a pandemic virus emerges it is too late to begin planning and collaboration. There will only be a window of 20 - 30 days between emergence and pandemic. Dr Stöhr suggests that antiviral prophylaxis of 80% of the surrounding population within 20 days would be required to slow or stem the spread of disease. It takes four or five days for the patient to become symptomatic and go to the hospital. In the interim, the virus is highly contagious and spearding fast.

Then it takes time for sampling, testing, diagnosis and field investigation. This relies on the ability of health officials across the region to spot the disease and report it quickly, a huge challenge given problems with health care and reluctance to disclose information in many countries. So, the intervention period is really only 10 - 14 days.

Q:What contingency plans should companies be making in order to be prepared for the worst?

The key continuity planning steps I view as essential for businesses, both large and small to follow, would include:

I'd first check to assure that existing contingency plans are applicable to a pandemic, in particular that core business activities can be sustained over several months.

Anticipate interuptions of essential governmental services like sanitation, water, power, and disruptions to the food supply.

Identify your company's essential functions and the individuals who perform them, since the absence of these people could seriously impair business continuity. Build in the training necessary to ensure their work can be done in the event of an absentee rate of at least 25 - 30 %.

Maintain a healthy work environment by ensuring adaquate air circulation and posting tips on how to stop the spread of germs at work. Promote hand and respiratory hygiene, and ensure easy availability of alcohol-based hand sanitiser products.

Determine which outside activities are critical to maintaining operations and develop alternatives in case they can't function normally. For example, what transportation systems are needed to provide essential materials? Does the business operate on " just in time" inventory or is there usually some reserve?

Establish or expand policies and tools that enable employees to work from home with appropriate security and network access to applications.

Expand online and self-service options for customers and business partners.

Be sure your workforce knows about the threat of pandemic flu and the steps the company is taking to prepare for it. In emergencies, employees are more inclined to listen to their employer, so clear and frequent communication is essential.

Update your sick leave and family medical leave policies and communicate with your workforce about the importance of staying away from the workplace if they become ill. Concern about lost wages is the bigest detarrent to self-quarantine.

Q:If a pandemic does strike, what other scenarios will companies need to confront?

In the case of a global pandemic, disruption is magnified by its pervasiveness. Supply chains are broken. People everywhere are frightened. Every business is in emergency mode. Financial markets are destabilised and some might not even operate for a period of time. Gold prices will jump as investors seek a financial haven. Central banks will add liquidity, but that only helps if bond markets are functioning, banks are making loans, and people are there to apply for those loans. While gold prices might rise, other commodity prices will fall as global growth slows, particularly in Asia. Clearly, the overall functioning of the global economy will be weak for some period of time, depending on the severity of the pandemic. Some experts suggest the pandemic could last for 12 - 18 months and hit most regions of the world.

Business would be confronted with, say, 25% absenteeism, maybe more, as many workers become ill, stay at home to take care of children or refuse to go to work, especially in heavily populated office towers. Business continuity planning is essential. Companies must help to protect exployees' health, and they will need to work with health officials to minimise disruption. But leaning on government won't be enough.

Many businesses are multi-national, under the auspices of numerous national, provincial and local governmental authorities. Already, many corporations are developing pandemic-specific emergency plans, focusing first on their Asian employees and businesses, and then on the rest of the world. Financial institutions and large corporations in the OECD are also making preparations, so bird flu is definitely now a threat on the business radar screen. Small businesses must also prepare, particularly those providing essential goods and services such as food, fuel, electricity and medical products.

But all of this is uncertain. If, when, and where still remain unknowable and, in many ways, imponderable. Putting actual numbers on the loss of life, productivity, growth and development is nothing more than a guessing game. It ranges from "dodged that bullet", to manageable, to bad, to disastrous, to catastrophic.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business_mag?id=132727729

Three in Hong Kong hospital amid bird flu fears - health officials​

Wednesday 1 February 2006

HONG KONG (AFX) - Three people have been admitted to hospital in Hong Kong
after eating chicken believed to have been infected with the H5N1 strain of bird
flu, officials said.

The three were placed in an isolation ward after it was discovered a chicken
they had eaten during a family feast had nested with an infected bird smuggled
in from China, the health department said.

mmc/sst/zr

http://freeserve.advfn.com/news_Thr...rd-flu-fears---health-officials_14019663.html

Thanks JD for your excellent reporting!! 3 months to test birds from Alaska....???? OK, this sounds like the incompetency that we had in NO. This is totally ridiculous and unacceptable......this makes us sound like a 3rd world country!

And.....for the Senate to have to urge the CDC to get more masks......that just shows how 'together' the CDC is......

....and the sheeple just keep on trusting their government .....

Does anyone see a potential disconnect between these two statements?

The senator from Alaska was pissed because when they find sick birds, they have to ship them to Atlanta for testing and have to wait 3 friggin' months before they get the results of whether the birds have the virus or not.

Click to expand...

But once a pandemic virus emerges it is too late to begin planning and collaboration. There will only be a window of 20 - 30 days between emergence and pandemic.

Click to expand...

Thanks for all the great information - I think.

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<B><center>Surveillance measures for avian flu extended
by di-ve news
<A href="http://www.di-ve.com/dive/portal/portal.jhtml;$sessionid$A1AQOJGWMHZHTQU4EWBCFEQ?id=217433&pid=3">www.di-ve.com</a>

<font size=+1 color=red>GWU requests meeting with Health Minister</font></center>
VALLETTA, Malta (di-ve news) -- February 1, 2006 -- 1640CET -- The Food and Veterinary Regulation Division within the Ministry for Rural Affairs and the Environment has informed the general public that the surveillance measures for avian influenza applied by Malta, which were to be applicable until the 31st January 2006, are being extended until the end of this year. </b>

Meanwhile, the General Workers' Union (GWU) has requested a meeting with Health Minister Louis Deguara to discuss the contingency plans that the Government has prepared to prevent an outbreak of avian flu, claiming that the Government is keeping everyone in the dark with regards its plans.

The union noted that such an outbreak would have serious economic and social effects, as work places and other entities where a concentration of people would normally gather would have to be kept closed for long periods of time.

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<B><center>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 1, 2006

E-mail this page
Subscribe CONTACT:
Emily Carlson
301-496-7301
<A href="http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/feb2006/nigms-01.htm">www.nih.gov</a>

<font size=+1 color=brown>New Teams Join Network to Model Pandemic Flu, Other Infectious Outbreaks</font></center>
Four new scientific teams joined an international research network developing computer-based simulations of pandemic flu and other infectious disease outbreaks, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a component of the National Institutes of Health, announced today. </b>

The network is part of the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS), an ongoing NIGMS effort to use computer modeling techniques to better understand the spread of contagious diseases and the potential impact of public health measures. The results could aid health officials and policymakers in developing preparedness plans for outbreaks that occur naturally or deliberately.

The new research groups will receive a total of approximately $7.8 million over the next five years and will collaborate with four existing MIDAS teams established in 2004.

“The MIDAS network has already demonstrated the power of applying computer models to the study of disease spread and the effects of various intervention strategies,” said Jeremy M. Berg, Ph.D., NIGMS director. “The new MIDAS teams expand the network’s spectrum of expertise and enhance its ability to develop robust models.”

In addition to the individual research projects described below, the new MIDAS teams will contribute to the network’s pandemic influenza modeling project. This project involves simulating outbreaks of a deadly flu strain in different regions of the world and then evaluating the effects of various intervention measures, such as vaccination or school closures, on containing or slowing disease spread.

The new MIDAS awards will support researchers at:

The University of California, Irvine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga. This group will analyze past transfers of flu from birds to people and model the effects of rapid pathogen evolution on strategies for disease surveillance, prediction, and control.


The Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the University of Hong Kong, the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, and the University of Washington in Seattle. This team will use mathematical models to explore mechanisms of transmission, evaluate public health measures, and design methods for monitoring the early stages of an outbreak in real time.


The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in Philadelphia and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. This team will develop spatial and temporal models of infectious animal diseases, particularly those like avian influenza that can cross species barriers to infect people.


Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, all in Boston; Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland; and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Argentina. This group will develop ways to identify new clusters of emerging infectious diseases and track antimicrobial resistance in hospitals and ambulatory settings. It also will optimize strategies for using patient care data from large health systems in infectious disease models.
To arrange an interview with NIGMS Director Jeremy M. Berg, Ph.D., contact the NIGMS Office of Communications and Public Liaison at 301-496-7301. For more information about MIDAS, visit http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Initiatives/MIDAS/.

NIGMS (http://www.nigms.nih.gov), a component of the National Institutes of Health, supports basic biomedical research that is the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Two birds smuggled illegally into Hong Kong have avian flu</font>

02/02/2006, 01:46:43
<A href="http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/s1560241.htm">www.radioaustralia.net.au</a></center>
The Hong Kong government says that two dead birds, a crested myna and a chicken, illegally brought over from mainland China, have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza.

The government says it will now cull all birds within five kilometres of the farm where the chicken died.</b>

It's also isolated for tests three people who ate a chicken which had been nesting with one of the birds smuggled into Hong Kong from China.

They are currently in hospital in an isolation ward.

The Hong Kong Government has also ordered all the city's walk-in aviaries be closed.

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<B><font size=+0 color=blue><center>OUR FUTURE AT MERCY OF DEADLY SUPERBUGS </font>

12:00 - 01 February 2006
<A href="http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=195917&command=displayContent&sourceNode=134241&contentPK=13941778&folderPk=78486">www.thisisnottingham.co.uk</a></center>
The Government says an outbreak of bird flu could kill 50,000 people in the UK. But there are much more dangerous enemies at large in the 'microbial world', argues Professor Richard James. JAMES KAY reports</b>

The director of the University of Nottingham's Centre for Biomolecular Sciences says we are already under attack from a far more dangerous enemy - and fighting a losing battle.

Hospital superbugs - including methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA - are close to rendering antibiotics "useless" and are now in danger of spreading into the community.

Prof James, also head of the university's School of Molecular Sciences, has been lecturing on the problems of antibiotic resistance and superbugs for 25 years.

During that time he has become increasingly pessimistic about the outcome of the race between human beings and their microbial foes.

He says the superbugs in our hospitals, some of which are MRSA, are responsible for about 5,000 deaths a year.

That is bad enough, but there is much worse news: we are now faced with the spread of community MRSA.

In 2004 the Nottingham City Primary Care Trust studied the number of MRSA-positive swabs taken from patients with wounds, ulcers and sores in care homes, health centres and doctors' surgeries across Nottingham, Hucknall and the boroughs of Gedling, Broxtowe and Rushcliffe.

More than 500 patients who had never been known to carry MRSA tested positive for the bacteria.

It seems a long time since the "golden age" of antibiotics, when experts claimed the problem of infectious disease was solved.

"Within 30 years there are pessimists like me, saying we've wasted the legacy of antibiotics for a whole variety of reasons - over-prescribing, misuse in agriculture, lack of realisation that bacteria wouldn't simply roll over," said Prof James.

"When you have increased regulation requirements, it costs an enormous amount of money - 800m - to develop a new drug."

You imagine pharmaceutical companies must be scrambling to develop the drugs so important to our survival?

Not so, says Prof James, and explains why.

The battle between antibiotics and bacteria is natural selection in fast forward: we speed up the superbugs' evolution.

He says: "The bacteria will become resistant and the antibiotics will become useless.

"That means pharmaceutical companies don't want to spend money developing new antibiotics.

"They can make more money out of Viagra and lifestyle drugs. So the bacteria become resistant to the drugs we do have, and this is where people start to talk about the post-antibiotic apocalypse. There will be no antibiotics left, fairly soon perhaps, and at that point we go back to the 1930s, where the only treatment for a disease like TB was fresh air. You live... or you die."

Prof James quotes a former head of research at pharmaceutical giant Glaxo SmithKline, who predicted in the mid-1990s that all antibiotics would be useless by 2002.

The timescale was wrong, but our supply of effective antibiotics is dwindling fast - for MRSA there is now only one: vancomycin.

Prof James says examples of vancomycin-resistant MRSA have already appeared in the US.

He says: "It's just a matter of time before community MRSA comes back into a hospital and acquires lots of antibiotic resistance - then we've got a really serious problem.

"If it becomes vancomycin-resistant, we're down to having no effective antibiotics left to treat something with a very high mortality rate."

Scientists at the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences are racing to find new ways to fight vancomycin-resistant MRSA before it spreads.

Prof James' team are also developing a test that can detect the presence of bacteria in hours - at the moment it takes two to three days.

He does not think that cleaner hospitals alone are the answer to halting the superbugs.

So what is required? For one thing, better-designed hospitals with more isolation wards, which would mean more staff and fewer visitors.

There would also have to be improved screening for MRSA and new drugs to treat it.

That would require a huge amount of money - and Prof James doesn't believe there is the political will to make it happen.

"It's just not high enough on the priority list of the NHS and politicians," he says.

So, if we continue in the current vein, spending between £60m to £80m a year on cleaning hospitals, and just a tiny fraction of that on funding research, what does the future hold?

"It's just a matter of time before we run out of antibiotics. Even worse, if there's a community superbug, we've got a really serious problem."

A Department of Health spokesman said the NHS took the problem of infection control seriously. He said: "We have made it clear to the NHS that infection control and basic hygiene should be at the heart of good management and clinical practice along with appropriate resources."

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<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>Bird flu pandemic could kill millions - WHO </font>

January 31 2006 at 11:49AM
<A href="http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1138682882677R131">www.int.iol.co.za</a></center>
Hong Kong - The bird flu strain found recently in a dead bird in Hong Kong was the same as that menacing poultry in China, a media report said on Tuesday, suggesting a possible source for the infection.

Researchers in the southern Chinese territory found the genetic make-up of the H5N1 virus in the dead magpie robin matched that of a strain that has killed mainland chickens.</b>

"The H5N1 genotype (in the Hong Kong bird) has been found before, not in Hong Kong but in poultry in other regions of China," University of Hong Kong microbiologist Guan Yi was quoted as telling the South China Morning Post English-language daily.

The report said researchers believed the robin had picked up the disease after mingling with mainland poultry flocks - a theory on a means of virus transmission that is finding increasing support among experts.

Robin had picked up the disease after mingling with mainland poultry flocks
Guan told the paper the strain was not the dominant one that has been found in mainland China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

The World Health Organisation has warned that a bird flu pandemic could kill millions of people worldwide.

Hong Kong has been at the forefront of research into the disease since the first reports of the virus mutating into a form lethal to humans in 1997, when it killed six people in the former British colony. - Sapa-AFP

Iraqi Teenager's Death of Bird Flu Suggests Rapid Spread ​

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 30, 2006

A 15-year-old girl has died of the bird flu in Iraq, health officials there and abroad said today, a finding that indicates that the virus has arrived in yet another country — one whose ability to control contagion is likely to be hampered by war.

The confirmation of the cause of the girl's death also suggests, officials said, that the disease may be spreading widely — and undetected — among birds in the countries of central Asia, which are poorly equipped to identify and report infections. Avian flu has never been reported in birds in Iraq.

As happened in Turkey earlier this month, the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird flu to a new part of the world became evident only through a human death. That is notable, and alarming to health officials, because bird flu rarely infects humans, and usually does so late in the course of an animal outbreak, after close contact with sick birds.

"We shouldn't be seeing human cases first, and this points to serious gaps in surveillance," a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Maria Cheng, said in Geneva. "But given the situation in Turkey, I don't think we'd be surprised to see isolated humans cases in surrounding areas."

The girl, Shengeen Abdul Qadr, died this month in Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, three days after touching a dead bird infected with the virus, the Iraqi health minister said today. The girl's uncle, who died last week, is also presumed to have succumbed to the disease, although test results are pending.

A serious bird flu outbreak has killed four people and hundreds of thousands of birds in the Kurdish part of neighboring Turkey over the past six weeks. Trade routes, traveled by truck and mules, crisscross national borders in a large ethnic Kurdish area, which includes portions of several countries.

Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome warned last week that bird flu had probably already spread from Turkey into neighboring countries — and specifically warned Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia to be on high alert. But until today, there was no hard evidence of such movement.

"We encouraged the countries to increase surveillance," said Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations food and agriculture agency in Rome. "But I'm not a policeman. What I can do is to ask governments to be more vigilant."

Mr. Lubroth, who is studying the spread of avian influenza, said that monitoring to detect the disease in animals was weak in much of the region and that governments needed to be more transparent — both in acknowledging outbreaks and in admitting when they lacked the capacity or money to detect the disease, which requires complicated laboratory testing.

For example, Dr. Rod Kennard, who is managing a year-old United Nations project to rebuild veterinary services in Iraq, said that the local government in Sulaimaniyah was monitoring commercial poultry flocks, "but they don't really have the ability to monitor what's going on in village flocks."

He said that "it is a really big question" whether a country in the throes of armed conflict could coordinate a response to a complicated problem like bird flu, although he noted that northern provinces were generally "not as troubled" as some of the areas in Central Iraq.

Kurdish authorities quarantined four villages today because of suspicion that birds in the area, and possibly people, might be infected. They said that 150 teams had moved through the areas destroying birds.

To contain bird flu outbreaks, sick birds must be rapidly identified and culled, along with any poultry in a surrounding safety zone. A slow start in Turkey allowed the disease to spread throughout the country, and the government is now struggling to contain 55 outbreaks in 15 provinces.

The Iraqi health minister, Dr. Abdul Mutaleb Mohamed Ali, appealed for help, noting that two other people in distant parts of Iraq had also been tested for bird flu. "We ask the international community to move fast and send our country technical assistance and health equipment," he said today.

At the moment, humans can only contract bird flu through close contact with infected poultry, and about 150 people worldwide have contracted the disease. But scientists worry that the virus may mutate and spread between humans, setting off a worldwide pandemic.

The test on samples from the Iraqi girl were performed at a lab in Cairo this weekend and samples are being sent to the official World Health Organization reference lab in England for confirmation. Because of this, the organization considers the result a "preliminary positive." But in Turkey all "preliminary positives" were all later confirmed.

Over the past few months, there have been occasional reports of large- scale bird deaths in both Iran and northern Iraq, places that veterinary officials had tagged as high risk because they are on bird migration routes. But H5N1 was never implicated.

In October, there were large-scale deaths on commercial farms in northern Iraq, Dr. Kennard said. Birds were tested and "we were told it was negative," he said, "but we're not entirely sure how reliable that is."

In most countries with serious bird flu outbreaks, including Turkey, the military has provided the manpower required to contain them, going door-to-door to find chickens to cull. That is not an option in Iraq.

Also, much of the trade in the region is informal and unregulated, so border control of animals is difficult.

Sabrina Tavernise and Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of the New York Times contributed from Kirkuk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-flu.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>Number Of Bird Flu Positive Cities Rises To 31</font>

Published: 1/31/2006
<A href="http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=106094">www.turkishpress.com</a></center>
ANKARA - Bird Flu National Coordination Center stated on Monday that the number of bird flu positive cities rose from 28 to 31.
The number of bird flu detected localities is 67, added the center.

Meanwhile, the number of bird flu suspected cities dropped from 27 to 26, and localities from 73 to 66. </b>

A total of 1,596,000 poultry have been culled across the country due to bird flu so far.

Sources told the A.A that (southwestern) Burdur, (central Anatolian) Eskisehir and (eastern) Malatya are the new cities where avian influenza was detected.