02/13 | H5N1: Human link to virus is studied
- Thread starter PCViking
- Start date
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Sunday 12 February 2006
JAJI, Nigeria: Authorities in Nigeria are investigating whether a deadly bird flu strain discovered in this West African country last week has spread to humans after several people were reported ill, the health minister said yesterday.
Health officials are investigating "one or two cases of reported illnesses" among humans which could be due to bird flu, though none has been confirmed so far, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said.
Lambo said the investigation was being conducted in the northern state of Kaduna, where the H5N1 strain of the virus was reported for the first time in Africa last week, and the commercial capital, Lagos. He gave few details, but said he expected the probe to finish later yesterday with results released to the public today.
It is difficult for people to catch bird flu, and no human H5N1 cases have been recorded in Africa. But experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a strain that passes easily from human to human.
Authorities say at least 100,000 birds have died so far.
Yesterday, veterinary officials in Jaji destroyed chickens at farms suspected to have been infected with the fatal bird flu strain, slashing their necks, dumping them in pits and setting them ablaze.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=135194&Sn=WORL&IssueID=28329
Human link to virus is studied
JAJI, Nigeria: Authorities in Nigeria are investigating whether a deadly bird flu strain discovered in this West African country last week has spread to humans after several people were reported ill, the health minister said yesterday.
Health officials are investigating "one or two cases of reported illnesses" among humans which could be due to bird flu, though none has been confirmed so far, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said.
Lambo said the investigation was being conducted in the northern state of Kaduna, where the H5N1 strain of the virus was reported for the first time in Africa last week, and the commercial capital, Lagos. He gave few details, but said he expected the probe to finish later yesterday with results released to the public today.
It is difficult for people to catch bird flu, and no human H5N1 cases have been recorded in Africa. But experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a strain that passes easily from human to human.
Authorities say at least 100,000 birds have died so far.
Yesterday, veterinary officials in Jaji destroyed chickens at farms suspected to have been infected with the fatal bird flu strain, slashing their necks, dumping them in pits and setting them ablaze.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=135194&Sn=WORL&IssueID=28329
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Europe moves to contain bird flu outbreaks.
13/02/2006. ABC News Online
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1568056.htm]
Last Update: Monday, February 13, 2006. 7:01am (AEDT)
Europe moves to contain bird flu outbreaks
European officials are acting to contain outbreaks of a potentially deadly bird flu that were confirmed over the weekend in European Union (EU) members Greece and Italy, as well as in Bulgaria.
The European Commission also announced a dead swan in new EU member Slovenia was found to have a H5-type bird flu virus, and further tests were being done to determine if it was the deadly H5N1 strain.
The H5N1 strain, which has killed some 90 people so far, mostly in Asia, was confirmed in wild migrating swans in Greece, Italy and Bulgaria where government officials immediately implemented strict precautionary measures outlined by the EU.
Italian health officials held a crisis meeting Sunday after the discovery of the virus in 21 dead swans in three southern regions of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily.
The dead swan in Slovenia was located in Koblerjev Zaliv, a small locality near the north-eastern city of Maribor, the country's veterinary institute says.
Slovenia was also in close contact with authorities in neighbouring Austria as its surveillance area crosses the Slovian-Austrian border, the statement from the EU executive says.
Greek poultry farmers sought to reassure the public stressing that the bird flu cases near the northern city of Salonika concerned three wild swans and not farm poultry.
The EU commission so far has given a measured response, announcing that pre-planned measures were being put in place ahead of meetings on the issue Thursday and Friday.
Romania, which has been battling the H5N1 bird flu for months, says preliminary tests detected the H5 virus at a 29th site in Tropaisar, near the eastern city of Constanta.
The new poultry deaths were not yet confirmed as H5N1.
It also says two boys aged four and seven, who had been suffering from the normal human flu when they visited their grandparents' farm where the H5 flu was reported, had been sent to an infectious diseases hospital nearby.
Four people in Turkey and one in Kurdish Iraq have been confirmed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to have died from the H5N1 bird flu strain, the only deaths outside of South-East Asia and China.
Slovenia joined Greece and Italy in adopting a set of EU measures to prevent the spread of the killer disease.
These include establishing a three-kilometre protection zone around the area where the infected birds were discovered, as well a wider surveillance zone with a 10-kilometre radius of the outbreak.
Within the protection zone, poultry must be kept indoors, moving the birds is banned unless they are being taken direct to the slaughterhouse and the dispatch of meat outside the zone is forbidden unless the products have undergone EU food controls.
This implies that meat comes from healthy animals in registered farms and is "subject to ante- and post-mortem checks by vets in the slaughterhouse," the EU statement said.
Bulgaria, which wants to join the European Union next year, says it is also taking all precautionary measures to protect its people from an outbreak of bird flu after a confirmed case of H5N1 was found in a wild swan in the north-west of the country.
Some authorities and ornithologists fear that more birds may be infected with the lethal avian flu as swans fleeing an exceptionally severe European winter have migrated to southern Europe.
The avian influenza crisis will be reviewed by the EU's Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health which meets Thursday and Friday.
- AFP
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Nigeria ignores bird flu precautions as two sick children are tested
DANIEL BALINT-KURTI, Associated Press Writer
February 12, 2006 1:35 PM
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Nigeria ignored international recommendations for stopping bird flu, keeping poultry markets open on Sunday and letting people move their birds around most of the country unrestricted.
Officials were awaiting word on whether the virus already had infected people in Africa's most populous nation. Test results were pending on two sick children near a farm where the H5N1 strain was first detected among poultry. Their families also were being tested.
Tope Ajakaiye, a spokesman for Nigeria's Agriculture Ministry, said there were no plans to close poultry markets or restrict the trade or movement of poultry as recommended by international organizations.
''We don't want to cause a situation where there will be much panic or alarm,'' Ajakaiye said.
Indonesia said Sunday that the World Health Organization had confirmed that two women there had died from the H5N1 bird flu strain. The two deaths are expected to bring Indonesia's official human death toll from the virus to 18.
A European Union laboratory was testing samples to determine if the strain that killed a swan in Slovenia near the Austrian border was H5N1.
On Sunday, Slovenian authorities imposed strict controls in the area. Poultry there will be isolated, tested for the virus and killed if infected.
Italy and Greece put similar measures in place Saturday after the H5N1 strain was found for the first time inside the European Union.
Austria's southern border province of Carinthia on Sunday also introduced strict controls of livestock and food from Slovenia.
Meanwhile, experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived Saturday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, with protective clothing for 200 Nigerian health officials who will slaughter birds, said Nigerian Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello.
Two officials from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also arrived to help determine a plan of action with local authorities.
Bird flu has killed at least 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003 and ravaged poultry stocks across Asia, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 140 million birds, according to a Feb. 9 WHO report.
Health officials fear the H5N1 strain will evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a pandemic. Most human cases of the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.
Sub-Saharan Africa, with about 600 million of the world's poorest people, is particularly ill-suited to deal with a health crisis. With weak and impoverished governments in regions where many people keep chickens for food, experts say mass killings to help control bird flu will be hard to carry out properly.
Health authorities worry the virus may have already spread undetected elsewhere in Africa.
The virus has been confirmed at five farms in northern Nigeria, killing at least 100,000 birds. Nigeria has about 130 million people and 140 million poultry.
Bird farms across northern Nigeria are under quarantine, said Junaidu Maina, director of Nigeria's livestock department, though he did not say how many of Nigeria's 36 states were under the order. Health officials said that on Monday they plan to screen workers on infected farms.
Neighboring Benin and Niger have banned poultry imports from Nigeria, where authorities visited northern bird farms Saturday to destroy chickens believed to be infected.
Protective clothing and hygienic practices to reduce the chance of infection were spotty or absent.
At one farm, veterinary officials slashed chickens' necks, dumped them in pits and set them on fire. Nearby, police armed with automatic weapons finished off a group of 180 ostriches after running out of bullets a day earlier.
Only one of four veterinary workers destroying birds at another farm wore protective clothing.
Those taking part in the culling were sprayed with disinfectant beforehand. Six farmworkers in Kano used their bare hands to load dead chickens into wheelbarrows and dump them a pit to be burned.
----
Associated Press writer Dulue Mbachu in Kaduna contributed to this report.
AP-WS-02-12-06 1635EST
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=564680950064482172
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
today's thread post #4 said:
I first took note of Avian Influenza during the SARS scare... There was a flare-up in the Netherlands and I remember thinking what the hell is this! It's been an news interest of mine since. There has been a lot of interesting commentary... and specualtion, and of course prophesy! But, the past half year has been like watching a disaster novel unfold.
Now, with the above posted article... I've seen what I have found to be the most disturbing of all articles I have posted to date. These poor hungry people in Sub-Saharan Africa... who are fighting starvation and AIDS, will now get to deal with BF. This IMHO will be the nightmare incubatrion point of H5N1 H2H meets AIDS. Saddly because it's a political backwater, and TPTB don't want us thinking about BF,as it might effect commerce... this story will be on the back page of the MSM.
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Couple hospitalized in Indonesia with suspected bird flu
Monday 13 February 2006
JAKARTA (AFX) - A married couple showing symptoms of bird flu have been
hospitalised after telling doctors they became ill after coming into contact
with chickens that suddenly died near their home, a hospital official said.
If the couple, aged 28 and 22 years old, test positive for the H5N1 virus,
they would become Indonesia's fifth cluster case of infection, said Sardikin
Giriputro, head of Jakarta's Sulianti Saroso hospital where the couple are being
treated.
The couple was transferred to Jakarta Sunday after being treated for
respiratory problems and high fever in the west Java town of Cirebon the
previous day, a hospital official there said.
Giriputro said Indonesia have four confirmed cluster cases -- infections of
people who were related or living close together -- the highest in the world.
"But we cannot yet determine whether there has been transmission between
members of a cluster," he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 18 bird flu fatalities in
Indonesia since July 2005. At least seven other people have been confirmed
infected.
vt-bs/lod/zr
http://freeserve.advfn.com/news_Cou...donesia-with-suspected-bird-flu_14167278.html
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Romania Reports Bird Flu in Black Sea Village
2006-02-13 11:27:18 CRIENGLISH.com
Romanian authorities identified an H5 subtype of the bird flu virus on Sunday in a southeast village near the Black Sea, the state Rompres news agency reported.
The case was detected after dozens of domestic fowls and chicks died on a farm in the village of Topraisar in Constanta County.
Two children, aged seven and four, were also reported to be suffering from mild respiratory problems and taken to hospital.
Local authorities have sent samples of the virus to the national laboratory in Bucharest for verification.
Topraisar was being sealed off for quarantine, with villagers receiving medical checkups and vaccinations.
Rompres also reported that the three dead hens found last Tuesday in the village of Cetate, Dolj County, close to the border with Bulgaria, had proven to be killed by the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, which can also infect human beings.
The report came one day after the Agriculture Ministry confirmed the H5 bird flu virus had been found in poultry in the Danube Delta village of Jurilovca.
The virus was detected in preliminary tests Thursday, causing the culling of thousands of birds.
Since the first outbreak of bird flu in October 2005, the epidemic has spread to nearly 30 villages across Romania. No human case has been reported in the country so far.
(Source: Xinhua)
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/706/2006/02/13/48@50153.htm
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Where Has Bird Flu Been Found So Far, Globally?
Main Category: Flu/Bird Flu/SARS News
Article Date: 12 Feb 2006 - 14:00pm (UK)
Since 2003 Bird flu (avian flu) has spread from VietNam all the way across the globe to Nigeria (west Africa) and Italy (well into the European Union). Over 150 million birds have died. The number of human deaths is also going up, about 90 people have so far died as a result of bird flu infection.
Bird flu has been detected in the following countries since 2003 (alphabetical order):
-- Bulgaria
-- Cambodia
-- China
-- Croatia
-- Cyprus
-- Greece
-- Indonesia
-- Iraq
-- Italy
-- Japan
-- Kazakhstan
-- Kuwait
-- Laos
-- Malaysia
-- Mongolia
-- Nigeria
-- Romania
-- Russia
-- South Korea
-- Thailand
-- Turkey
-- UK (Pet parrot kept in quarantine at airport)
-- Ukraine
-- VietNam
(Whether or not it is prevalent in North Korea is hard to say as the government there has complete control over all information)
About half of all humans who have been infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus strain, the most lethal one, have died. Most of these deaths have taken place in south east Asia. It is likely to have a much lower death rate in developed countries, where health care services are better and swifter. Some antiviral drugs (e.g. Tamiflu), if administered to the patient within three days of symptoms appearing, is very effective in achieving a complete recovery. It is crucial that infected patients are treated swiftly.
Since the new year, there have been some human deaths in Turkey, raising concerns that perhaps the virus is starting to transmit among humans more easily. Authorities there, after extensive investigation, found that all deaths were among patients who had had constant contact with infected birds (meaning they got it from birds, not other humans).
The more humans the virus infects, the greater the chances are that it will mutate and become a human transmissible one (infect from human-to-human). If the H5N1 virus strain infects a human who has the normal flu it then has the opportunity to exchange genetic information with the human flu virus. It could pick up, from the human flu virus, the ability to spread among humans. Hopefully, when it does exchange genetic information, it may lose some of its present virulence (potency) - something experts think it very likely.
Countries with human cases of bird flu virus
Cambodia
Cases 4 Deaths 4
China
Cases 10 Deaths 7
Indonesia
Cases 25 Deaths 18
Iraq
Cases 1 Deaths 1
Thailand
Cases 22 Deaths 14
Turkey
Cases 21 Deaths 4
Vietnam
Cases 93 Deaths 42
Total
Cases 176 Deaths 90
(World Health Organisation)
Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=37604
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Two children tested for bird flu in Kano
Segun Olugbile, with agency reports
Doctors in Kaduna on Sunday tested blood samples from two sick children suspected of being Africa’s first human victims of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The children reportedly took ill last week on a poultry farm, a short distance away from Sambawa Farm in Jaji, which was quarantined after nearly 45,000 birds died of the flu.
A report by the Agence France Presse quoted Nasidi Yakubu, a director in the Federal Ministry of Health who was in the area to monitor the epidemic outbreak, as saying, “We’ve taken their samples, which are now undergoing some laboratory tests.”
Last week, Kaduna State officials said that two children whose father raised turkeys, geese and chickens close to Sambawa Farm, the scene of Nigeria’s first confirmed outbreak, had fallen ill and begun coughing up blood.
If they are confirmed as having been infected with the H5N1 avian influenza, they will become the first African victims of what international health experts fear could develop into a widespread epidemic.
The Kaduna and Kano State Governments have begun a mass slaughter of poultry to check the bird flu from spreading.
“The promise by the Federal Government of compensation to affected farmers has generated a good response,” said Shehu Bawa, head of an emergency team set up by the Kano State Government to contain the epidemic.
Angola and Mali have joined other African countries that imposed a ban on poultry imports from Nigeria.
The Angolan state news agency, Angop, quoted Filipe Vissesse, Director-General of Veterinary Services, as saying the Angolan government had stepped up security and monitoring at seaports, airports and border checkpoints.
Mali’s livestock ministry banned all poultry imports from Nigeria in a decree issued late on Friday.
Experts fear the H5N1 strain, which has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the Middle East since early 2003, could mutate into a form that can spread from human to human.
They fear this could cause a global flu pandemic that could kill millions, especially as Africa’s generally poor health systems would place the continent at far greater risk than other regions.
The Managing Director, Zartech Farms Nigeria Limited, Ibadan, Mr. Roger Aboujaoude, on Sunday asked Nigerians to cook their poultry products and meat to at least 70 degree centigrade before consumption to check the bird flu.
Aboujaoude said research by the World Health Organisation had shown that the ailment was not food-borne. According to him, it is safe to eat chicken if it is cooked to a temperature of at least 70 degree centigrade, as prescribed by the WHO.
He added that eggs too should be thoroughly cooked, while poultry products should only be purchased from certified sellers.
The PUNCH, Monday, February 13, 2006
http://www.punchng.com/main/article02
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Monday 13 February 2006
(updates with two more suspected cases)
JAKARTA (AFX) - Four people showing symptoms of bird flu have been
hospitalised in Indonesia, with doctors saying they became ill after coming into
contact with sick chickens, hospital officials said.
Three members of the same family were transferred to the Sulianti Saroso
hospital for infectious diseases in Jakarta on Sunday from the west Java town of
Cirebon, said hospital spokesman Ilham Patu.
He told Agence France-Presee that the three -- a married couple aged 28 and
22, and their two-year-old child -- were hospitalised in Cirebon on Saturday for
respiratory problems and high fever.
Patu said the fourth patient was a 50-year-old chicken seller in intensive
care at a hospital in the West Java capital of Bandung.
If the married couple and their child test positive for the H5N1 virus, they
would become Indonesia's fifth cluster case of infection, said Sardikin
Giriputro, the deputy chief of the Sulianti Saroso hospital.
Giriputro said Indonesia had four confirmed cluster cases, infections of
people who were related or living close together, the highest in the world.
"But we cannot yet determine whether there has been transmission between
members of a cluster," he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 18 bird flu fatalities in
Indonesia since July 2005. At least seven other people are confirmed to have
been infected.
vt-bs/sst/zr
http://freeserve.advfn.com/news_Cou...ith-suspected-bird-flu---UPDATE_14168778.html
Couple, 2 others hospitalized in Indonesia with suspected bird flu - UPDATE
(updates with two more suspected cases)
JAKARTA (AFX) - Four people showing symptoms of bird flu have been
hospitalised in Indonesia, with doctors saying they became ill after coming into
contact with sick chickens, hospital officials said.
Three members of the same family were transferred to the Sulianti Saroso
hospital for infectious diseases in Jakarta on Sunday from the west Java town of
Cirebon, said hospital spokesman Ilham Patu.
He told Agence France-Presee that the three -- a married couple aged 28 and
22, and their two-year-old child -- were hospitalised in Cirebon on Saturday for
respiratory problems and high fever.
Patu said the fourth patient was a 50-year-old chicken seller in intensive
care at a hospital in the West Java capital of Bandung.
If the married couple and their child test positive for the H5N1 virus, they
would become Indonesia's fifth cluster case of infection, said Sardikin
Giriputro, the deputy chief of the Sulianti Saroso hospital.
Giriputro said Indonesia had four confirmed cluster cases, infections of
people who were related or living close together, the highest in the world.
"But we cannot yet determine whether there has been transmission between
members of a cluster," he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 18 bird flu fatalities in
Indonesia since July 2005. At least seven other people are confirmed to have
been infected.
vt-bs/sst/zr
http://freeserve.advfn.com/news_Cou...ith-suspected-bird-flu---UPDATE_14168778.html
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>World: Bird Flu Continues To Spread, Raising Risk Of Human Pandemic</font>
By Jeremy Bransten
February 13 2006
<A href="http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/1647543d-eef0-4ed5-b8b1-53c7f641286d.html">www.rferl.org</a></center> </b>
<i>Scientists fear migratory birds could spread the virus to new areas in the spring</i>
(AFP)
<b>New outbreaks of bird flu (avian influenza) have been detected in several countries, including Azerbaijan, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, and Nigeria. The continued rapid spread of the disease and its appearance for the first time in Africa greatly worries scientists. It means containment efforts have been unsuccessful and the risk of a pandemic that could strike humans continues to grow.</b>
PRAGUE, 13 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Scientists' worst fears are being realized as bird flu continues to spread in Europe and has gained a new foothold in Africa.
On 10 February, Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace told a news conference in Rome that swans in several southern Italian regions had died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has proven potentially dangerous to humans.
"The news is that, even if there are continuous changes regarding the number of the dead animals, we were informed that about 17 dead swans were found in three Italian regions," Storace said. "The regions are Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily, where the disease is more diffused."
Greece's Agriculture Ministry also confirmed swan deaths in the north of the country from H5N1, meaning the virus has now breached the EU’s internal borders. In recent weeks, there have been outbreaks in Turkey, with several human deaths, as well as bird deaths in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.
Spring Migration Major Concern
The fact that swans are dying in Europe indicates a new wave of bird flu, carried by migratory fowl such as ducks, could be about to hit the continent, with the coming of spring. "It’s definitely of concern," explained Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.
"If we see what is happening in Europe at this moment, I think we have to be worried," Osterhaus added. "We see dead swans and we know that swans are highly susceptible [to H5N1]. And they share their ponds, the places where they swim, with other birds as well that are less susceptible, for instance ducks. And they might have actually infected the swans, so I think we have to be prepared in Europe, especially since the bird migration is about to start."
That migration will be in full force within a month, when hundreds of millions of birds return from their wintering grounds in Africa to Europe and parts of Asia.
Scientists have long worried that Africa could serve as a giant incubator for H5N1 over the winter months, with diseased migratory birds infecting each other as well as domestic fowl. And there are indications this is just what has happened.
African Incubation
In Nigeria, officials have confirmed outbreaks of the H5N1 strain on several farms. Two children have become ill and are being tested with suspected bird flu. Tens of thousands of birds have already been slaughtered.
But by all accounts, African authorities are poorly prepared to monitor or contain the outbreak. The Nigeria case could be "just the tip of the iceberg," according to John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary College in London. And this could threaten the rest of the world.
"I think Africa is a very unfortunate circumstance and an unfortunate development here because however you view it, most of those countries are not highly organized -- it's not their fault particularly, but they're not," Oxford told RFE/RL. "And therefore, there's an enhanced possibility of the virus jumping more from birds to humans. And the more it does that -- the more humans get infected -- the more chances there are of this rare, rare, rare mutation happening and then the virus taking off from human to human."
If that happens, a pandemic that could kill millions of people would have a chance of breaking out.
As Europeans ponder a potential crisis coming from Africa, the Erasmus Medical Center's Osterhaus said decisive steps must be taken at home before spring hits.
"The first to thing to do is to ensure that wild birds cannot have contact with our domestic poultry. I think that’s the most important thing. We in the Netherlands, already in September last year, brought virtually all free-range poultry indoors. I think that's an important measure. Several countries are considering that now, with the coming bird migration, and I think that’s an important thing. Vaccination [of fowl] is another thing. That's still being debated in the EU -- whether we could use it as a preventive measure," Osterhaus said. "That has not been decided yet."
EU officials have begun meeting in Brussels today to address the issue.
<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>World: Bird Flu Continues To Spread, Raising Risk Of Human Pandemic</font>
By Jeremy Bransten
February 13 2006
<A href="http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/1647543d-eef0-4ed5-b8b1-53c7f641286d.html">www.rferl.org</a></center> </b>
<i>Scientists fear migratory birds could spread the virus to new areas in the spring</i>
(AFP)
<b>New outbreaks of bird flu (avian influenza) have been detected in several countries, including Azerbaijan, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, and Nigeria. The continued rapid spread of the disease and its appearance for the first time in Africa greatly worries scientists. It means containment efforts have been unsuccessful and the risk of a pandemic that could strike humans continues to grow.</b>
PRAGUE, 13 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Scientists' worst fears are being realized as bird flu continues to spread in Europe and has gained a new foothold in Africa.
On 10 February, Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace told a news conference in Rome that swans in several southern Italian regions had died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has proven potentially dangerous to humans.
"The news is that, even if there are continuous changes regarding the number of the dead animals, we were informed that about 17 dead swans were found in three Italian regions," Storace said. "The regions are Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily, where the disease is more diffused."
Greece's Agriculture Ministry also confirmed swan deaths in the north of the country from H5N1, meaning the virus has now breached the EU’s internal borders. In recent weeks, there have been outbreaks in Turkey, with several human deaths, as well as bird deaths in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.
Spring Migration Major Concern
The fact that swans are dying in Europe indicates a new wave of bird flu, carried by migratory fowl such as ducks, could be about to hit the continent, with the coming of spring. "It’s definitely of concern," explained Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.
"If we see what is happening in Europe at this moment, I think we have to be worried," Osterhaus added. "We see dead swans and we know that swans are highly susceptible [to H5N1]. And they share their ponds, the places where they swim, with other birds as well that are less susceptible, for instance ducks. And they might have actually infected the swans, so I think we have to be prepared in Europe, especially since the bird migration is about to start."
That migration will be in full force within a month, when hundreds of millions of birds return from their wintering grounds in Africa to Europe and parts of Asia.
Scientists have long worried that Africa could serve as a giant incubator for H5N1 over the winter months, with diseased migratory birds infecting each other as well as domestic fowl. And there are indications this is just what has happened.
African Incubation
In Nigeria, officials have confirmed outbreaks of the H5N1 strain on several farms. Two children have become ill and are being tested with suspected bird flu. Tens of thousands of birds have already been slaughtered.
But by all accounts, African authorities are poorly prepared to monitor or contain the outbreak. The Nigeria case could be "just the tip of the iceberg," according to John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary College in London. And this could threaten the rest of the world.
"I think Africa is a very unfortunate circumstance and an unfortunate development here because however you view it, most of those countries are not highly organized -- it's not their fault particularly, but they're not," Oxford told RFE/RL. "And therefore, there's an enhanced possibility of the virus jumping more from birds to humans. And the more it does that -- the more humans get infected -- the more chances there are of this rare, rare, rare mutation happening and then the virus taking off from human to human."
If that happens, a pandemic that could kill millions of people would have a chance of breaking out.
As Europeans ponder a potential crisis coming from Africa, the Erasmus Medical Center's Osterhaus said decisive steps must be taken at home before spring hits.
"The first to thing to do is to ensure that wild birds cannot have contact with our domestic poultry. I think that’s the most important thing. We in the Netherlands, already in September last year, brought virtually all free-range poultry indoors. I think that's an important measure. Several countries are considering that now, with the coming bird migration, and I think that’s an important thing. Vaccination [of fowl] is another thing. That's still being debated in the EU -- whether we could use it as a preventive measure," Osterhaus said. "That has not been decided yet."
EU officials have begun meeting in Brussels today to address the issue.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><center>2006-02-13 15:02 GMT:
<font size=+1 color=brown><center>Greece confirms second H5N1 outbreak </font>
Article layout: raw
<A href="http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=5550903&subject=general&action=article">www.iii.co.uk</a></center></b>
ATHENS (AFX) - Greece has confirmed a second outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus, after tests on a dead goose from the Aegean Sea island of Skyros came back positive, an agriculture ministry official said. newsdesk@afxnews.com afp/vs
<B><center>2006-02-13 15:02 GMT:
<font size=+1 color=brown><center>Greece confirms second H5N1 outbreak </font>
Article layout: raw
<A href="http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=5550903&subject=general&action=article">www.iii.co.uk</a></center></b>
ATHENS (AFX) - Greece has confirmed a second outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus, after tests on a dead goose from the Aegean Sea island of Skyros came back positive, an agriculture ministry official said. newsdesk@afxnews.com afp/vs
geoffs
Veteran Member
Very interesting article in todays NY Times complete with several graphics;
Greetings Kill: Primer for a Pandemic
Joon Mo Kang
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 12, 2006
TO the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the "elbow bump."
Joon Mo Kang
If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine."
But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.
It has happened before, and not just in medieval Europe, where plague killed a third of the continent's serfs, creating labor shortages that shook the social order. In the United States, the norms of casual sex, which loosened considerably in the 1960's with penicillin and the pill, tightened up again in the 1980's after AIDS raised the penalty.
But influenza is more easily transmitted than AIDS, SARS or even bubonic plague, so the social revolution is likely to focus on the most basic goal of all: keeping other people's cooties at arm's length. The bump, a simple touching of elbows, is a substitute for the filthy practice of shaking hands, in which a person who has politely sneezed into a palm then passes a virus to other hands, whose owners then put a finger in an eye or a pen in a mouth. The bump breaks that chain. Only a contortionist can sneeze on his elbow.
Dr. Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has done the bump a few times already. When Ebola breaks out in Africa, he's usually on the team sent to fight it.
"I'll arrive on the tarmac and stick out a hand to say hello," Dr. Bell said, "and someone from the W.H.O. team will say: 'No, no, no, we don't do that. We do the elbow bump now.' "
In truth, he said, they do it mostly to set a good example. To stop an Ebola outbreak, visiting doctors must persuade villagers in Angola or the Congo basin to refrain from washing dead bodies and using their bare hands when nursing family members dying of hemorrhagic bleeding.
Those distancing measures would be easy to enforce in a pandemic in New York City. But other likely steps will strike at things New Yorkers are loath to give up. Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the deputy city health commissioner in charge of avian flu preparation, said his first move would probably be to ban Major League Baseball games, Broadway shows, movies, parades and other large gatherings.
Closing schools or shutting the subways might be even more effective, because children are much more efficient than adults at spreading flu, and subways are enclosed spaces where sneezes linger in the air — but doing that would be harder to pull off, Dr. Weisfuse said. "People talk about 'flu days' like snow days," he said, "and if it was just days or a week, that would be simple. But if it's weeks or months, that becomes another matter." Without mass transit, no one gets to work and the economy collapses, he pointed out, and many poor children depend on the free breakfasts and lunches they get at school.
An alternative is to limit people to necessary travel and to have them wear masks — a tricky thing.
Getting people to don masks in Asia is relatively simple, Dr. Bell said. Particularly in Japan, it is considered polite for anyone going to work with a cold to wear one. And in Asian cities full of soot and diesel exhaust, people often wear gauze masks on the street.
But in the United States, "we don't have a culture of courtesy mask use," he said, and people may feel foolish wearing them.
The government of Taiwan faced that problem three years ago during the SARS epidemic. It ordered everyone who had a cough or fever, or who cared for a family member or patients who did, to wear a mask if they ventured outdoors. The head of Taiwan's version of the Centers for Disease Control correctly noted that studies showed that masks do much more good if the sick wear them, keeping sneeze droplets in, than if the healthy do.
But masks were rare on the streets, and the mayor of Taipei, the capital city, decided to ignore the data and pay more attention to the psychology. The sick and exposed would never wear masks, he reasoned, if it marked them as disease carriers. So he simply issued a mayoral order: no one without a mask could ride the subway. The next day, everyone in Taipei was wearing them. Within a week, they had become a fashion item, printed with logos like the Nike swoosh, the Burberry plaid and the Paul Frank monkey.
Pictures of the 1918 flu epidemic include much evidence of that sort of mass psychology. In a photograph of ranks of Seattle police officers, all are wearing masks; in one of 45 Philadelphia gravediggers digging trenches for the dead, none wear them. In a photograph of dozens of beds in a military field hospital, almost all of the patients, doctors and nurses seem to have masks — but most in the foreground have pulled them down for the photographers. People act as the group acts.
When a disease seems far away, as avian flu still does, notions like mask fashion and elbow bumping sound like jokes. But when people start dying, panic ensues, and nothing seems too far-fetched to try. In the 1918 epidemic, Prescott, Ariz., outlawed handshaking. Some small towns tried to close themselves off, barricading their streets against outsiders and telling any citizen who left not to plan on coming back. In factories, common drinking cups gave way to a new invention: the paper cup.
Under pressure, people don't adopt only sensible precautions, they overreact, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. During the anthrax scare of 2001, he said, nervous citizens submitted 600,000 specimens of white powder to public laboratories. The samples included brownies with powdered sugar. Dr. Osterholm said he feared that public reactions would be out of sync with any epidemic; that people would get scared too early, then say the fear was overblown and dismiss it. Then, if a pandemic lasts for weeks, fatigue will set in. "We tend to be a just-in-time, crisis-oriented population," he said.
It is all in the timing, said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences. "In the middle of a major pandemic, with people dying, we're likely to see people hungry for clear instructions," he said. "What would backfire would be for you to say, 'Start bumping elbows now.' People would look at you as if you were from Mars."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12mcne.html
Greetings Kill: Primer for a Pandemic
Joon Mo Kang
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 12, 2006
TO the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the "elbow bump."
Joon Mo Kang
If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine."
But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.
It has happened before, and not just in medieval Europe, where plague killed a third of the continent's serfs, creating labor shortages that shook the social order. In the United States, the norms of casual sex, which loosened considerably in the 1960's with penicillin and the pill, tightened up again in the 1980's after AIDS raised the penalty.
But influenza is more easily transmitted than AIDS, SARS or even bubonic plague, so the social revolution is likely to focus on the most basic goal of all: keeping other people's cooties at arm's length. The bump, a simple touching of elbows, is a substitute for the filthy practice of shaking hands, in which a person who has politely sneezed into a palm then passes a virus to other hands, whose owners then put a finger in an eye or a pen in a mouth. The bump breaks that chain. Only a contortionist can sneeze on his elbow.
Dr. Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has done the bump a few times already. When Ebola breaks out in Africa, he's usually on the team sent to fight it.
"I'll arrive on the tarmac and stick out a hand to say hello," Dr. Bell said, "and someone from the W.H.O. team will say: 'No, no, no, we don't do that. We do the elbow bump now.' "
In truth, he said, they do it mostly to set a good example. To stop an Ebola outbreak, visiting doctors must persuade villagers in Angola or the Congo basin to refrain from washing dead bodies and using their bare hands when nursing family members dying of hemorrhagic bleeding.
Those distancing measures would be easy to enforce in a pandemic in New York City. But other likely steps will strike at things New Yorkers are loath to give up. Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the deputy city health commissioner in charge of avian flu preparation, said his first move would probably be to ban Major League Baseball games, Broadway shows, movies, parades and other large gatherings.
Closing schools or shutting the subways might be even more effective, because children are much more efficient than adults at spreading flu, and subways are enclosed spaces where sneezes linger in the air — but doing that would be harder to pull off, Dr. Weisfuse said. "People talk about 'flu days' like snow days," he said, "and if it was just days or a week, that would be simple. But if it's weeks or months, that becomes another matter." Without mass transit, no one gets to work and the economy collapses, he pointed out, and many poor children depend on the free breakfasts and lunches they get at school.
An alternative is to limit people to necessary travel and to have them wear masks — a tricky thing.
Getting people to don masks in Asia is relatively simple, Dr. Bell said. Particularly in Japan, it is considered polite for anyone going to work with a cold to wear one. And in Asian cities full of soot and diesel exhaust, people often wear gauze masks on the street.
But in the United States, "we don't have a culture of courtesy mask use," he said, and people may feel foolish wearing them.
The government of Taiwan faced that problem three years ago during the SARS epidemic. It ordered everyone who had a cough or fever, or who cared for a family member or patients who did, to wear a mask if they ventured outdoors. The head of Taiwan's version of the Centers for Disease Control correctly noted that studies showed that masks do much more good if the sick wear them, keeping sneeze droplets in, than if the healthy do.
But masks were rare on the streets, and the mayor of Taipei, the capital city, decided to ignore the data and pay more attention to the psychology. The sick and exposed would never wear masks, he reasoned, if it marked them as disease carriers. So he simply issued a mayoral order: no one without a mask could ride the subway. The next day, everyone in Taipei was wearing them. Within a week, they had become a fashion item, printed with logos like the Nike swoosh, the Burberry plaid and the Paul Frank monkey.
Pictures of the 1918 flu epidemic include much evidence of that sort of mass psychology. In a photograph of ranks of Seattle police officers, all are wearing masks; in one of 45 Philadelphia gravediggers digging trenches for the dead, none wear them. In a photograph of dozens of beds in a military field hospital, almost all of the patients, doctors and nurses seem to have masks — but most in the foreground have pulled them down for the photographers. People act as the group acts.
When a disease seems far away, as avian flu still does, notions like mask fashion and elbow bumping sound like jokes. But when people start dying, panic ensues, and nothing seems too far-fetched to try. In the 1918 epidemic, Prescott, Ariz., outlawed handshaking. Some small towns tried to close themselves off, barricading their streets against outsiders and telling any citizen who left not to plan on coming back. In factories, common drinking cups gave way to a new invention: the paper cup.
Under pressure, people don't adopt only sensible precautions, they overreact, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. During the anthrax scare of 2001, he said, nervous citizens submitted 600,000 specimens of white powder to public laboratories. The samples included brownies with powdered sugar. Dr. Osterholm said he feared that public reactions would be out of sync with any epidemic; that people would get scared too early, then say the fear was overblown and dismiss it. Then, if a pandemic lasts for weeks, fatigue will set in. "We tend to be a just-in-time, crisis-oriented population," he said.
It is all in the timing, said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences. "In the middle of a major pandemic, with people dying, we're likely to see people hungry for clear instructions," he said. "What would backfire would be for you to say, 'Start bumping elbows now.' People would look at you as if you were from Mars."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12mcne.html
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Panic as bird flu hits Italy</font>
By DANIEL THOMAS
February 13 2006
<A href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006070093,00.html">www.thesun.co.uk</a></center>
BIRD flu edged closer to Britain yesterday as new cases of the killer virus emerged across Europe.
Italian health bosses tried to quell panic after 22 swans were found dead in the south. </b>
Six have tested positive for the lethal H5N1 virus. Five more died 400 miles north around Venice.
Italy’s health minister Francesco Storace said: “I would appeal to the public not to panic.
“Do not touch dead birds. Report them to the nearest health office.”
Meanwhile, Austrian health officials are on full alert after another swan killed by bird flu was found six miles from their southern border in Maribor, Slovenia.
Both nations sent samples to the EU’s bird flu laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, to determine whether they are the H5N1 strain which has killed 83 people, mostly in the Far East.
Health experts fear a strain will develop which can move from human to human, putting millions at risk worldwide.
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Panic as bird flu hits Italy</font>
By DANIEL THOMAS
February 13 2006
<A href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006070093,00.html">www.thesun.co.uk</a></center>
BIRD flu edged closer to Britain yesterday as new cases of the killer virus emerged across Europe.
Italian health bosses tried to quell panic after 22 swans were found dead in the south. </b>
Six have tested positive for the lethal H5N1 virus. Five more died 400 miles north around Venice.
Italy’s health minister Francesco Storace said: “I would appeal to the public not to panic.
“Do not touch dead birds. Report them to the nearest health office.”
Meanwhile, Austrian health officials are on full alert after another swan killed by bird flu was found six miles from their southern border in Maribor, Slovenia.
Both nations sent samples to the EU’s bird flu laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, to determine whether they are the H5N1 strain which has killed 83 people, mostly in the Far East.
Health experts fear a strain will develop which can move from human to human, putting millions at risk worldwide.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><center>Sunday
12 February 2006, 15:27 GMT
<font size=+1 color=green>Italy fights to contain bird flu </font>
<A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4705818.stm">news.bbc.co.uk</a></center>
Infected wild swans have been found in southern Italy
Italian health officials have announced a range of emergency measures after the country's first discovery of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.
The health minister is holding a crisis meeting with regional officials. </b>
The virus was confirmed on Saturday in wild swans in the south, the same day a UK laboratory found cases of the virus in swans from Greece and Bulgaria.
On Sunday, Slovenia said it had discovered the H5 strain in a swan and had sent a sample to the UK for tests.
Protection zone
Bird flu
Italy will create a 3km (2 mile) protection zone around each outbreak site and a surveillance zone of 7 km.
It will also test samples of domestic birds inside the protection zone and separate poultry from contact with domestic birds.
Greece adopted similar measures on Thursday after dead swans were found near Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. A UK laboratory confirmed the H5N1 virus in the swans.
The same laboratory also found the deadly bird flu virus in wild swans from the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border.
Click here for a map of global bird flu outbreaks
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warned this week that bird flu could already have arrived in countries neighbouring Turkey, where outbreaks have hit 26 of its 81 provinces.
Slovenia case
The H5 case in Slovenia was found less than 10 km (6 miles) from the Austrian border, according to the European Commission.
Samples have already been sent to the UK laboratory for further tests to determine whether it is a variety of the deadly H5N1 strain.
Slovenian health officials say they are taking the same precautionary measures as the authorities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria.
A 3 km (2 mile) protection zone around the area where the swan was found has been established and a surveillance zone of 10 km has been put in place.
Slovenia has also been in touch with Austrian officials as the surveillance zone crosses the Slovenian-Austrian border.
Indonesian victims
Meanwhile, a World Health Organisation-sanctioned laboratory has confirmed two more human bird flu deaths in Indonesia.
Tests carried out on two women who died last week showed that they had the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The women, both in their 20s, were from the east Jakarta suburb of Bekasi.
This brings the number of Indonesian victims to 18.
On Friday, China confirmed a 20-year-old Hunan woman as its eighth victim.
And in Nigeria, health officials are investigating whether outbreaks in poultry in northern Nigeria have spread to humans.
Two children in the northern state of Kaduna were said to be ill. The H5N1 virus was detected there on Wednesday.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 90 people since early 2003, mostly in South-East Asia.
<B><center>Sunday
12 February 2006, 15:27 GMT
<font size=+1 color=green>Italy fights to contain bird flu </font>
<A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4705818.stm">news.bbc.co.uk</a></center>
Infected wild swans have been found in southern Italy
Italian health officials have announced a range of emergency measures after the country's first discovery of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.
The health minister is holding a crisis meeting with regional officials. </b>
The virus was confirmed on Saturday in wild swans in the south, the same day a UK laboratory found cases of the virus in swans from Greece and Bulgaria.
On Sunday, Slovenia said it had discovered the H5 strain in a swan and had sent a sample to the UK for tests.
Protection zone
Bird flu
Italy will create a 3km (2 mile) protection zone around each outbreak site and a surveillance zone of 7 km.
It will also test samples of domestic birds inside the protection zone and separate poultry from contact with domestic birds.
Greece adopted similar measures on Thursday after dead swans were found near Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. A UK laboratory confirmed the H5N1 virus in the swans.
The same laboratory also found the deadly bird flu virus in wild swans from the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border.
Click here for a map of global bird flu outbreaks
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warned this week that bird flu could already have arrived in countries neighbouring Turkey, where outbreaks have hit 26 of its 81 provinces.
Slovenia case
The H5 case in Slovenia was found less than 10 km (6 miles) from the Austrian border, according to the European Commission.
Samples have already been sent to the UK laboratory for further tests to determine whether it is a variety of the deadly H5N1 strain.
Slovenian health officials say they are taking the same precautionary measures as the authorities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria.
A 3 km (2 mile) protection zone around the area where the swan was found has been established and a surveillance zone of 10 km has been put in place.
Slovenia has also been in touch with Austrian officials as the surveillance zone crosses the Slovenian-Austrian border.
Indonesian victims
Meanwhile, a World Health Organisation-sanctioned laboratory has confirmed two more human bird flu deaths in Indonesia.
Tests carried out on two women who died last week showed that they had the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The women, both in their 20s, were from the east Jakarta suburb of Bekasi.
This brings the number of Indonesian victims to 18.
On Friday, China confirmed a 20-year-old Hunan woman as its eighth victim.
And in Nigeria, health officials are investigating whether outbreaks in poultry in northern Nigeria have spread to humans.
Two children in the northern state of Kaduna were said to be ill. The H5N1 virus was detected there on Wednesday.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 90 people since early 2003, mostly in South-East Asia.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Nigeria fears bird flu has spread to humans</font>
Sunday, February 12, 2006 Posted: 1736 GMT (0136 HKT)
<A href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/02/12/nigeria.flu.reut/index.html">edition.cnn.com</a></center>
• Health Library KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Nigerian health officials waited anxiously on Sunday for test results on two children feared to be the first Africans infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.</b>
The virus broke out in early January among poultry in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, but the H5N1 diagnosis was confirmed only last week and authorities are struggling to contain it as it spreads rapidly to farms across the north.
The father of the two children -- a 4-year-old boy and a baby boy of four months -- said they got a very high temperature and coughed up blood two weeks ago when all 250 of his geese, turkey and chickens died suddenly.
"The two of them were coughing and if they sneezed, blood came from their nose and throat," Isaac Achi said.
"I took them to the hospital, and they recovered. It happened when all the birds in our surroundings died. My wife also complained of chest pains," he said, adding that the elder boy was now back at school.
The Achi family home is close to a farm where the H5N1 virus was confirmed.
Health Ministry official Abdulsalam Nasidi visited the children on Sunday and took away a blood sample, which is to be analyzed at a specialist laboratory in nearby Plateau state.
People can catch the virus, which has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the Middle East since early 2003, from contact with infected birds, but it cannot yet be spread from one human to another.
But experts fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain may mutate into a form that can spread from human to human and cause a global flu pandemic that could kill millions. (Watch how bird flu is spreading across continents -- 2:08)
The outbreak of H5N1 in Nigeria is the first known appearance of the virus in Africa.
Although only four farms in three northern Nigerian states have confirmation of H5N1, officials believe more than 20 farms have been hit in Kano state alone.
Farmers in three other northern states have also reported mass deaths of poultry, local media reported.
Farmers have received little information on how to handle the disease and workers have been using their bare hands to dispose of thousands of sick birds, raising fears of a large number of human infections.
"This is an emergency situation and it is very important to stop the handling, trading and movement of birds," said Mohammed Belhoecine, Nigeria representative of the World Health Organization.
Trade in live birds continued in northern cities, although sellers in Kano complained of falling sales on Sunday.
"I used to sell 50 to 60 birds a day, but now can't sell more than four because of bird flu," said Ibrahim Maikanti, a chicken seller at Kano's Sabon Gari market.
As in most of sub-Saharan Africa, poultry are everywhere in Nigeria -- backyards, city streets, by the side of the road, in crowded markets, on buses. Most poultry is bought live and slaughtered at home.
The government has ordered suspect birds culled and suspect farms quarantined, but there has been only limited government action on the ground so far.
An Agriculture Ministry team set out from Kano city to slaughter chickens in three farms on Sunday and said 100,000 birds had been killed in the state so far.
"It's a colossal loss. In economic terms, the farmers are in a big mess," said Shehu Bawa, a ministry official.
<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Nigeria fears bird flu has spread to humans</font>
Sunday, February 12, 2006 Posted: 1736 GMT (0136 HKT)
<A href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/02/12/nigeria.flu.reut/index.html">edition.cnn.com</a></center>
• Health Library KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Nigerian health officials waited anxiously on Sunday for test results on two children feared to be the first Africans infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.</b>
The virus broke out in early January among poultry in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, but the H5N1 diagnosis was confirmed only last week and authorities are struggling to contain it as it spreads rapidly to farms across the north.
The father of the two children -- a 4-year-old boy and a baby boy of four months -- said they got a very high temperature and coughed up blood two weeks ago when all 250 of his geese, turkey and chickens died suddenly.
"The two of them were coughing and if they sneezed, blood came from their nose and throat," Isaac Achi said.
"I took them to the hospital, and they recovered. It happened when all the birds in our surroundings died. My wife also complained of chest pains," he said, adding that the elder boy was now back at school.
The Achi family home is close to a farm where the H5N1 virus was confirmed.
Health Ministry official Abdulsalam Nasidi visited the children on Sunday and took away a blood sample, which is to be analyzed at a specialist laboratory in nearby Plateau state.
People can catch the virus, which has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the Middle East since early 2003, from contact with infected birds, but it cannot yet be spread from one human to another.
But experts fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain may mutate into a form that can spread from human to human and cause a global flu pandemic that could kill millions. (Watch how bird flu is spreading across continents -- 2:08)
The outbreak of H5N1 in Nigeria is the first known appearance of the virus in Africa.
Although only four farms in three northern Nigerian states have confirmation of H5N1, officials believe more than 20 farms have been hit in Kano state alone.
Farmers in three other northern states have also reported mass deaths of poultry, local media reported.
Farmers have received little information on how to handle the disease and workers have been using their bare hands to dispose of thousands of sick birds, raising fears of a large number of human infections.
"This is an emergency situation and it is very important to stop the handling, trading and movement of birds," said Mohammed Belhoecine, Nigeria representative of the World Health Organization.
Trade in live birds continued in northern cities, although sellers in Kano complained of falling sales on Sunday.
"I used to sell 50 to 60 birds a day, but now can't sell more than four because of bird flu," said Ibrahim Maikanti, a chicken seller at Kano's Sabon Gari market.
As in most of sub-Saharan Africa, poultry are everywhere in Nigeria -- backyards, city streets, by the side of the road, in crowded markets, on buses. Most poultry is bought live and slaughtered at home.
The government has ordered suspect birds culled and suspect farms quarantined, but there has been only limited government action on the ground so far.
An Agriculture Ministry team set out from Kano city to slaughter chickens in three farms on Sunday and said 100,000 birds had been killed in the state so far.
"It's a colossal loss. In economic terms, the farmers are in a big mess," said Shehu Bawa, a ministry official.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>WHO calms bird flu fear in Iraq </font>
Web posted at: 2/13/2006 2:9:26
Source ::: AFP
<A href="http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=February2006&file=World_News200602132926.xml">www.thepeninsulaqatar.com</a></center>
BAGHDAD: The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday attempted to calm bird flu fear across Iraq which has made people flee from some regions while in other areas a massive culling of birds was being carried out.
"At this moment this is just an agricultural emergency and still I can say that not every chicken is infected with avian influenza," said Dr Sam Yingst, a member of a WHO team who came to Baghdad after touring the northern Kurdistan area where the disease broke out last month. </b>
Yingst, a veterinary virologist from Cairo, said the panic created by the first case had set off an extensive culling of poultry and birds across Iraq.
"At the moment the culling is extensive. Tens of thousands of birds have been killed in Arbil and around 200,000 in Sulaimaniyah," Yingst told reporters.
In January, a teenage girl from Sulaimaniyah's Raniya district was declared dead, with the cause being the deadly H5N1 virus. Her uncle, who died a few days later, was also a victim of the virus, according to an Iraqi official.
But yesterday, an Iraqi official said that the country had only one confirmed case of H5N1 — the girl from Raniya.
Ibtisam Aziz, spokeswoman of the government's Avian Influenza Technical Affairs Committee said the girl's uncle was still a suspect. There were also two other suspected cases in Sulaimaniyah and six in Amara. Aziz has been working with the WHO teams in Kurdistan to monitor the spread of the virus.
"There is only one confirmed case of H5N1 in Iraq and that was the girl from Sulaimaniyah's Raniya region," Aziz told reporters in Baghdad.
Among the six suspected cases in Amara, one was the pigeon breeder who died recently after weeks of fever. The others were his relatives who were still alive, she said.
Meanwhile several families from Samarra, 125km north of Baghdad, have left their homes after finding the bodies of birds which had died while migrating from the north and heading south.
<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>WHO calms bird flu fear in Iraq </font>
Web posted at: 2/13/2006 2:9:26
Source ::: AFP
<A href="http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=February2006&file=World_News200602132926.xml">www.thepeninsulaqatar.com</a></center>
BAGHDAD: The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday attempted to calm bird flu fear across Iraq which has made people flee from some regions while in other areas a massive culling of birds was being carried out.
"At this moment this is just an agricultural emergency and still I can say that not every chicken is infected with avian influenza," said Dr Sam Yingst, a member of a WHO team who came to Baghdad after touring the northern Kurdistan area where the disease broke out last month. </b>
Yingst, a veterinary virologist from Cairo, said the panic created by the first case had set off an extensive culling of poultry and birds across Iraq.
"At the moment the culling is extensive. Tens of thousands of birds have been killed in Arbil and around 200,000 in Sulaimaniyah," Yingst told reporters.
In January, a teenage girl from Sulaimaniyah's Raniya district was declared dead, with the cause being the deadly H5N1 virus. Her uncle, who died a few days later, was also a victim of the virus, according to an Iraqi official.
But yesterday, an Iraqi official said that the country had only one confirmed case of H5N1 — the girl from Raniya.
Ibtisam Aziz, spokeswoman of the government's Avian Influenza Technical Affairs Committee said the girl's uncle was still a suspect. There were also two other suspected cases in Sulaimaniyah and six in Amara. Aziz has been working with the WHO teams in Kurdistan to monitor the spread of the virus.
"There is only one confirmed case of H5N1 in Iraq and that was the girl from Sulaimaniyah's Raniya region," Aziz told reporters in Baghdad.
Among the six suspected cases in Amara, one was the pigeon breeder who died recently after weeks of fever. The others were his relatives who were still alive, she said.
Meanwhile several families from Samarra, 125km north of Baghdad, have left their homes after finding the bodies of birds which had died while migrating from the north and heading south.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>Bird flu turns Iraqi villagers into outcasts </font>
By Nadra Saouli
Agence France-Presse
Monday, February 13, 2006
<A href="http://www.jordantimes.com/mon/news/news9.htm">www.jordantimes.com</a></center>
SARKAPKAN — When a young girl and her uncle died in the peaceful settlement of Sarkapkan, in Kurdish Iraq, the news sparked panic and turned the villagers into outcasts regarded with a suspicion usually reserved for the plague-ridden. </b>
For the village, in the stunning mountainous Raniya region on the Iranian border, is home to the only two confirmed victims — 14-year-old Shanjin Abdel Qader and uncle Hamma Sur — of the avian flu virus in Iraq.
Most of it is now deserted.
"Sarkapkan? You really want to go there? But there's...," the young official in Raniya, the administrative centre of the region, trails off into silence — as if just mentioning the disease might bring it closer.
After all, the village is only 10 kilometres to the north.
At a distance of three kilometres, a police barrier halts all those who go in or out for them to undergo checks. Cars leaving are cleaned, particularly around the wheels, while the drivers themselves are treated to a blast of disinfectant.
"Just a simple precautionary measure, you've got nothing to fear," said the guard, who comes from Raniya and knows little about the village he guards.
Even in Raniya, though, he says no one dares admit they might be sick for fear of bringing the stigma down upon themselves.
When Hamma Sur died, the head of the local council decreed that the seven-day mourning ceremonies for the respected peshmerga (warrior) would be held in Raniya, rather than in the village of his birth, recalls Khaled Mustafa, a friend of the deceased.
The family raised an uproar and the ceremonies were repatriated to the Sarkapkan. In gratitude the family slaughtered eight cattle and distributed the food to the inhabitants.
Local clinic director Dr Aziz Hamma Abdallah speaks with bitterness about how the sick people he sends to Raniya are so poorly received.
"As soon as they say the word Sarkapkan, the corridors of the hospitals empty and the doctors are suddenly absent."
Yet since the death of the uncle and niece, not a single new case has been found in the village, though the doctor noted that many more people had come in for checkups.
"That's normal, people are worried," he said.
In Sarkapnan, the hen houses have disappeared and the empty spaces left behind have been disinfected.
The clinic, usually just open during the day, is now working 24 hours and a small laboratory will soon be installed in this village of just 1,100 people, said the doctor.
Yet for the most part, he says, the village's pariah status extended even to include the provision of medicine — not a single dose of anti-viral medication was sent there.
"Neither the doctors, nor the parents of the dead received any kind of preventative treatment," said the doctor.
Shanjin's father, Abdel Qader Ibrahim Rassul, complains that doctors "didn't prescribe them anything."
"When we went to the hospital, people just fled," he said with bitterness, adding that after his daughter died he burnt his 50 chickens.
"Shanjin didn't like chicken or meat, and yet she still died," said her mother, haltingly.
But she erupts in fury when asked about the doctors. "We had to go to the hospitals ourselves for blood tests," she said, because no one would come to the village to test them.
Doctors at Raniya hospital retort that the grieving family had refused to receive a medical team that came kitted out in protective suits and masks.
On Friday, the World Health Organisation delegation accompanied by the chief Kurdish health official of Sulaimaniyah, Mohammed Khushnow, visited the village to give their condolences and visit the dispensary. Delegation leader Dr Naeema Al Gasseer then went to inaugurate a hospital in Raniya reserved for the sick under quarantine.
<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>Bird flu turns Iraqi villagers into outcasts </font>
By Nadra Saouli
Agence France-Presse
Monday, February 13, 2006
<A href="http://www.jordantimes.com/mon/news/news9.htm">www.jordantimes.com</a></center>
SARKAPKAN — When a young girl and her uncle died in the peaceful settlement of Sarkapkan, in Kurdish Iraq, the news sparked panic and turned the villagers into outcasts regarded with a suspicion usually reserved for the plague-ridden. </b>
For the village, in the stunning mountainous Raniya region on the Iranian border, is home to the only two confirmed victims — 14-year-old Shanjin Abdel Qader and uncle Hamma Sur — of the avian flu virus in Iraq.
Most of it is now deserted.
"Sarkapkan? You really want to go there? But there's...," the young official in Raniya, the administrative centre of the region, trails off into silence — as if just mentioning the disease might bring it closer.
After all, the village is only 10 kilometres to the north.
At a distance of three kilometres, a police barrier halts all those who go in or out for them to undergo checks. Cars leaving are cleaned, particularly around the wheels, while the drivers themselves are treated to a blast of disinfectant.
"Just a simple precautionary measure, you've got nothing to fear," said the guard, who comes from Raniya and knows little about the village he guards.
Even in Raniya, though, he says no one dares admit they might be sick for fear of bringing the stigma down upon themselves.
When Hamma Sur died, the head of the local council decreed that the seven-day mourning ceremonies for the respected peshmerga (warrior) would be held in Raniya, rather than in the village of his birth, recalls Khaled Mustafa, a friend of the deceased.
The family raised an uproar and the ceremonies were repatriated to the Sarkapkan. In gratitude the family slaughtered eight cattle and distributed the food to the inhabitants.
Local clinic director Dr Aziz Hamma Abdallah speaks with bitterness about how the sick people he sends to Raniya are so poorly received.
"As soon as they say the word Sarkapkan, the corridors of the hospitals empty and the doctors are suddenly absent."
Yet since the death of the uncle and niece, not a single new case has been found in the village, though the doctor noted that many more people had come in for checkups.
"That's normal, people are worried," he said.
In Sarkapnan, the hen houses have disappeared and the empty spaces left behind have been disinfected.
The clinic, usually just open during the day, is now working 24 hours and a small laboratory will soon be installed in this village of just 1,100 people, said the doctor.
Yet for the most part, he says, the village's pariah status extended even to include the provision of medicine — not a single dose of anti-viral medication was sent there.
"Neither the doctors, nor the parents of the dead received any kind of preventative treatment," said the doctor.
Shanjin's father, Abdel Qader Ibrahim Rassul, complains that doctors "didn't prescribe them anything."
"When we went to the hospital, people just fled," he said with bitterness, adding that after his daughter died he burnt his 50 chickens.
"Shanjin didn't like chicken or meat, and yet she still died," said her mother, haltingly.
But she erupts in fury when asked about the doctors. "We had to go to the hospitals ourselves for blood tests," she said, because no one would come to the village to test them.
Doctors at Raniya hospital retort that the grieving family had refused to receive a medical team that came kitted out in protective suits and masks.
On Friday, the World Health Organisation delegation accompanied by the chief Kurdish health official of Sulaimaniyah, Mohammed Khushnow, visited the village to give their condolences and visit the dispensary. Delegation leader Dr Naeema Al Gasseer then went to inaugurate a hospital in Raniya reserved for the sick under quarantine.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Africa outbreak confirms health experts' worst fears</font>
By Elisabeth Rosenthal and Donald McNeil
February 13, 2006
<A href="http://smh.com.au/news/world/africa-outbreak-confirms-health-experts-worst-fears/2006/02/12/1139679479147.html">smh.com.au</a></center>
As EPIDEMICS go, it was a relatively small outbreak: 40,000 chickens died in mid-January on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria. No humans, apparently, were infected. But it was the outbreak many experts on avian flu had been dreading.</b>
It was the first time the fast-moving H5N1 virus had been reported in Africa. And while United Nations agencies are scrambling to form medical and veterinary response and surveillance teams, scientists say its appearance there is deeply worrisome for two reasons. First, the continent is ill prepared to deal with epidemics, whether human or animal. Second, the Nigerian outbreak comes only a month or two before birds begin migrating north from Africa to Europe, which has only just reported its first cases.
"These are horrendous developments, whether you're a human or if you're a bird," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary's College in London. "Everyone wondered what would happen if avian influenza came to Africa, but no one really prepared."
World health officials say they have not had the co-operation they needed from many poor countries, even those on the flight paths of migrating birds known to carry flu. They got laboratory samples weeks or months after problems began, so they worry that the disease is already much more widespread.
As late as last Monday, Nigerian veterinary officials were assuring the nation that the disease was not in their country. But Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, said there was strong evidence that bird flu took root in Nigeria "a few months ago".
While the outbreak took place on a commercial poultry farm, Lubroth said, the virus may well have been percolating for months in backyard flocks.
The problem of sluggish reporting is not limited to Africa. It was common in the early months of the outbreaks in Asia, in 2003. In Azerbaijan, which reported its first cases on Friday, bird flu was "picked up because of international pressure to come clean", Lubroth said.
Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation, said her agency suspected that there might be human cases of H5N1 flu in Africa but had no way to confirm that yet.
The New York Times
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Africa outbreak confirms health experts' worst fears</font>
By Elisabeth Rosenthal and Donald McNeil
February 13, 2006
<A href="http://smh.com.au/news/world/africa-outbreak-confirms-health-experts-worst-fears/2006/02/12/1139679479147.html">smh.com.au</a></center>
As EPIDEMICS go, it was a relatively small outbreak: 40,000 chickens died in mid-January on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria. No humans, apparently, were infected. But it was the outbreak many experts on avian flu had been dreading.</b>
It was the first time the fast-moving H5N1 virus had been reported in Africa. And while United Nations agencies are scrambling to form medical and veterinary response and surveillance teams, scientists say its appearance there is deeply worrisome for two reasons. First, the continent is ill prepared to deal with epidemics, whether human or animal. Second, the Nigerian outbreak comes only a month or two before birds begin migrating north from Africa to Europe, which has only just reported its first cases.
"These are horrendous developments, whether you're a human or if you're a bird," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary's College in London. "Everyone wondered what would happen if avian influenza came to Africa, but no one really prepared."
World health officials say they have not had the co-operation they needed from many poor countries, even those on the flight paths of migrating birds known to carry flu. They got laboratory samples weeks or months after problems began, so they worry that the disease is already much more widespread.
As late as last Monday, Nigerian veterinary officials were assuring the nation that the disease was not in their country. But Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, said there was strong evidence that bird flu took root in Nigeria "a few months ago".
While the outbreak took place on a commercial poultry farm, Lubroth said, the virus may well have been percolating for months in backyard flocks.
The problem of sluggish reporting is not limited to Africa. It was common in the early months of the outbreaks in Asia, in 2003. In Azerbaijan, which reported its first cases on Friday, bird flu was "picked up because of international pressure to come clean", Lubroth said.
Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation, said her agency suspected that there might be human cases of H5N1 flu in Africa but had no way to confirm that yet.
The New York Times
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
EU Farmers Facing Crashing Poultry Consumption
13 Feb 2006 As Greece, Italy and Bulgaria confirm the presence of the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus strain, European Union countries have upped their contingencies while poultry farmers throughout the continent look on in alarm.
Europe is bracing itself for the coming bird migratory season, which starts in Spring, when birds will start flying northwards from Nigeria, where bird flu is spreading fast.
Various parts of Italy have already reported poultry sales plunging by over 50%. One Italian poultry company said the scare alone could cost the European poultry industry over 1 billion Euros. Since Saturday, when bird flu was confirmed in Greece, poultry sales in that country have crashed by over 90%.
France says it may soon force all its farmers to keep their farmed poultry indoors. Germany will probably follow suit, also banning the sale of poultry in open markets. Every country in the European Union is carefully looking at what to do and most say they will probably bring forward their contingency plans.
Bulgaria depends heavily on poultry farming for employment. It is a major exporter of poultry to the EU. Tons of ‘foie gras' have been piling up in Bulgarian warehouses as orders melt away.
Romania, a major exporter of poultry to the USA has seen sales plummet. Bird flu was confirmed in several parts of the country a few months ago.
As the bird flu virus makes headway into the European Union, the region's massive veterinary and public health services will go into action. If anywhere can cope with the arrival of bird flu, it is probably the EU. There is virtually no ‘backyard poultry' in this region of Western Europe, government agencies are well prepared and have rehearsed for the arrival of bird flu. EU countries are well stocked up with antiviral drugs to treat human infections. Geographically, the region is vulnerable as it lies in the flight paths of migratory birds from Siberia and Africa (both areas have infected birds).
There are only four continents left that are H5N1 bird flu free: North America, South America, Australasia and Antarctica. Ornithologists say the Americas are in the best geographical position as few birds fly from Asia/Europe/Africa to the Americas (some do, but not many).
Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=37664#
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Bird flu makes its way around Europe
* Updated 17:03 13 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Debora MacKenzie
Five more countries have found the H5N1 bird flu virus in birds in the last three days. Its spread remains consistent with the movements of wild birds, although certain wild species are also becoming major victims of the virus, which is leaving a trail of dead swans across Eurasia.
On Friday, Azerbaijan reported that H5N1 had been confirmed in dead wild birds, including swans, from the Caspian Sea coast. The coast is a major wintering spot for migrants, including some duck species that summer in Siberia, where there were H5N1 outbreaks in summer 2005, and winter from the Caspian and Black Seas through Turkey and the Mediterranean down to northern Nigeria. The virus has appeared now in all those areas.
Large numbers of dead wild birds were reported along the Caspian coasts of Azerbaijan and neighbouring Iran in autumn. Iran announced in October that their dead ducks tested negative for avian flu. But die-offs continued in Azerbaijan until February, according to press reports, and under foreign pressure Azeri officials finally sent samples to the flu reference lab in Weybridge, UK, says Juan Lubroth, head of animal diseases at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
Chinese origin
Then on Saturday, Greece confirmed that it had found H5N1 in three dead swans on Thermaikos Gulf near the northern city of Thessaloniki. Greece is also expected to announce Monday that it found H5N1 on the Aegean Island of Skiros in a dead red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis) which conservation organisation Bird Life International describes as “globally endangered”.
Also on Saturday, Italy confirmed H5N1 in dead swans from the southern provinces of Puglia, Sicily and Calabria, where birds wintering near Venice had flown to escape a cold snap. Bulgaria confirmed H5N1 in dead swans from the Danube delta.
“From what I have seen of the genetic sequence, the Italian virus is identical to the one from Qinghai,” a strain first found in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in northwest China in spring 2004, says Lubroth. This strain has since appeared across Siberia, and in Mongolia, Turkey, Romania, Ukraine and Nigeria.
Megacity risk
Meanwhile, Slovenia has found an H5 flu strain in a dead swan near the Austrian border. It is expected to be confirmed as H5N1. Bird deaths in Armenia are also under suspicion.
“In Greece and Italy it is very clear wildlife introduced the virus,” says Lubroth. Without better understanding of which species carry it, and where, it is hard to be certain in other cases, he says. “We asked for money for this research two years ago.” Now the FAO hopes to radio-track birds and test water from bird habitats for the virus.
Meanwhile, H5N1 continues to spread in Nigeria, with reports of outbreaks in poultry now from eight states, possibly including the megacity of Lagos. People in Nigeria who had flu symptoms and were near dead birds are being tested, while in Greece several people who contacted dead wild birds are being tested.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8716
pixmo
Bucktoothed feline member
<table width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bordercolor="#000000" height="43"><tr><td bgcolor="D08153"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="4" color="#FFFFFF">Russia finds new H5N1 bird flu cases - minister
</font></b></font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#f5f5dc" height="2"><div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="2">Fair use policy applies
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13103252.htm</B>
MOSCOW, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Russia has found new cases of H5N1 bird flu in wild fowl in two regions in the south of the country, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday.
The virus was found in wild swans and ducks in two regions bordering the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the ministry said.
"Cold weather forces wild fowl to migrate over short distances, spreading the (bird) flu virus of group A, H5N1 strain," the ministry said in a statement.
"Recently, the virus has been found in wild swans and wild ducks in the littoral zone of the Krasnodar region and Dagestan."
The ministry's animal and plants health inspectorate, Rosselkhoznadzor, has sent veterinary experts to the region to monitor the situation.
Russia has been battling with bird flu in poultry since July, culling more than 600,000 domestic fowl.
No new cases of the virus have been found in Russia since the end of last year, but veterinaries warned migratory birds could bring the virus back in the spring.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain has killed at least 88 people since 2003 in Asia and the Middle East. No cases of human infection have been registered so far in Russia.
</font></font></div></td></tr></table>
</font></b></font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#f5f5dc" height="2"><div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="2">Fair use policy applies
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13103252.htm</B>
MOSCOW, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Russia has found new cases of H5N1 bird flu in wild fowl in two regions in the south of the country, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday.
The virus was found in wild swans and ducks in two regions bordering the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the ministry said.
"Cold weather forces wild fowl to migrate over short distances, spreading the (bird) flu virus of group A, H5N1 strain," the ministry said in a statement.
"Recently, the virus has been found in wild swans and wild ducks in the littoral zone of the Krasnodar region and Dagestan."
The ministry's animal and plants health inspectorate, Rosselkhoznadzor, has sent veterinary experts to the region to monitor the situation.
Russia has been battling with bird flu in poultry since July, culling more than 600,000 domestic fowl.
No new cases of the virus have been found in Russia since the end of last year, but veterinaries warned migratory birds could bring the virus back in the spring.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain has killed at least 88 people since 2003 in Asia and the Middle East. No cases of human infection have been registered so far in Russia.
</font></font></div></td></tr></table>
Shekulli: Albania Threatened by Bird Flu
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=128&newsid=82561&ch=0&datte=2006-02-13
13 February 2006 | 10:07 | FOCUS News Agency
Tirana. Albania is threatened by bird flu, Albanian newspaper Shekulli reported citing Deputy Minister of Environment Taulant Bino. He said that the danger comes from migratory birds near the lakes Shkodra, Ohrid and Prespa. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was registered in the last few days in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria.
Indonesia has most bird flu victims: WHO
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World...flu-victims-WHO/2006/02/14/1139679557808.html
February 14, 2006 - 6:49AM
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, has reported 18 human deaths from avian flu that have been confirmed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Seven of the confirmed Indonesian fatalities have been in 2006, making Indonesia the country with the most bird flu deaths so far this year.
China's Ministry of Health said last Friday a woman had died of bird flu in the central province of Hunan, the eighth person killed by the virus in the country.
The total number of deaths from the H5N1 bird flu virus stands at 91 since it re-emerged in late 2003.
Meanwhile in Africa, the deadly H5N1 bird flu has been spreading in Nigeria and authorities trying to prevent any human infections said it was proving difficult to persuade people not to eat dead poultry as they were too poor to throw it away.
In the European Union, where H5N1 was confirmed in wildbirds for the first time at the weekend, Greece was testing one man for possible bird flu and other countries reported a sharp fall in poultry sales as a result of the arrival of the virus.
At present, humans can only contract the virus through close contact with an infected animal. The Greek man undergoing tests is a hunter who killed three wild ducks a week ago.
Most Nigerians are unaware of bird flu and many have been handling sick and dead birds, heightening the risk of infection.
But officials are finding it difficult to persuade them to change their habits.
"I have been in the field and they say 'What are you telling us? We eat dead chickens and we have been doing that for centuries'," said Abdulsalam Nasidi, who is in charge of efforts to prevent bird flu from spreading to humans in Nigeria.
There have been no human cases of bird flu so far inNigeria but as well as the four confirmed cases of H5N1 in birds in three Nigerian states, authorities said there were now suspected outbreaks of bird flu in five other states, some of them hundreds of kilometres from where the original cases were detected.
Experts fear H5N1 may mutate into a form that can spread between people and cause a pandemic that could kill millions, and health officials are implementing measures such as bird culling and testing to try to stop the spread of the virus.
Government workers searched rural areas of Hong Kong,bringing tears of despair to bird owners as they enforced a ban on backyard fowl to try to stop bird flu taking hold in one of the world's most densely populated cities.
"Whoever says we cannot rear chickens should be damned,"sobbed Lau Sau-foong, who said she fainted twice from despair.
"I have treated those geese and chickens like my ownchildren. After I wake up each morning I will feed them. Tell me, aren't they torturing me mentally?"
The arrival of bird flu in the European Union promptedgovernments across the region to bolster their defences against the virus, while farmers braced for a plunge in poultry consumption.
Greek industry officials said sales had plunged 95 per cent since Saturday and an Italian farmers' group reported a drop of more than 50 per cent.
The poultry and egg industry in the EU isestimated to be worth 20 billion euros ($A32 billion).
German authorities said they might bring forward a ban on keeping poultry outside, Spain was reviewing its controls and Bulgaria cordoned off wetlands where infected birds had been found.
The Greek Health Ministry said one man was in quarantine pending results of tests for possible bird flu.
A 15-year-old boy had also been tested after developing flu-like symptoms, but the results were negative.
Russia and Bulgaria, which have already had confirmedoutbreaks, reported new cases of bird flu, while Romania said it had found more suspected cases.
Greece tests one person for possible infection
http://english.people.com.cn/200602/14/eng20060214_242580.html
ATHENS: Greece was testing a man for possible bird flu and other European countries reported further suspected cases in fowl yesterday, two days after the deadly H5N1 virus first appeared in wild birds in the European Union.
News on Saturday that Greece and Italy had found the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain in swans marked the arrival on EU soil of a virus that has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the Middle East since 2003 and led to the culling of millions of birds.
Some European countries reported sharp falls in poultry sales, while governments sought to reassure people that the threat of human infection was minimal.
The Greek Health Ministry said one man was in quarantine pending results of tests for possible bird flu. A 15-year-old boy had also been tested after developing flu-like symptoms, but the results were negative.
There have been no confirmed human cases of bird flu in the European Union and officials said they were unlikely.
Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace was heading to the affected regions of his country yesterday to show there was no need to worry.
"We are working very thoroughly so that citizens do not feel they are on their own in this affair," Storace said in the Sicilian town of Giarre.
Experts fear H5N1 may mutate into a form that can spread between people and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.
Industry officials in Greece said poultry sales had plunged 95 per cent since Saturday and an Italian farmers' group reported a drop of more than 50 per cent. The poultry and egg industry in the EU is estimated to be worth 20 billion euros (US$23.78 billion).
Romania raised custom duties on poultry to 70 per cent from 45 per cent for six months to protect domestic producers hit by declining consumption.
Romanian authorities said they had found suspected cases of bird flu in fowl near the Black Sea port of Constanta. Avian flu has been discovered in 29 villages throughout the country since the virus was first detected in the Danube delta in October.
Neighbouring Bulgaria, which reported a case of H5N1 in a swan on Saturday, said yesterday it had detected a new case of the H5 virus in a swan and expected tests to show it to be H5N1. Belgium's food agency said it was testing a dead swan found near the Dutch border for avian flu although it stressed that it was most likely to have died a natural death.
Bird flu experts from UN agencies arrived in Nigeria yesterday to help authorities step up their response to an outbreak of H5N1 in birds, the first reported cases in Africa.
Authorities have been slow to implement culling and quarantine measures that would help contain the outbreak and, although the H5N1 strain has been confirmed on only four farms, officials believe more have been hit.
No human cases have been discovered in Nigeria so far, although tests were being carried out on two children who developed flu-like symptoms at the same time as their parents' flock of fowl died suddenly. The children have since recovered.
Source: China Daily