03/27 | Daily BF Thread: Cambodia's latest BF outbreak a 'serious' problem - WHO

Link to yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=191046

Since January, 2004 WHO has reported human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) in the following countries:

* East Asia and the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Indonesia
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* Europe & Eurasia:
o Azerbaijan
(see update)
o Turkey

* Near East:
o Iraq

For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Health Organization Web Site.

Updated March 21, 2006

Since December 2003, avian influenza A (H5N1) infections in poultry or wild birds have been reported in the following countries:

* Africa:
o Cameroon
o Niger
o Nigeria

* East Asia & the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Hong Kong (SARPRC)
o Indonesia
o Japan
o Laos
o Malaysia
o Mongolia
o Myanmar (Burma)
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* Europe & Eurasia:
o Albania
o Austria
o Azerbaijan
o Bosnia & Herzegovina (H5)
o Bulgaria
o Croatia
o Denmark (H5)
o France
o Georgia (H5)
o Germany
o Greece
o Hungary
o Italy
o Poland
o Romania
o Russia
o Serbia and Montenegro (H5)
o Slovak Republic
o Slovenia
o Sweden
o Switzerland
o Turkey
o Ukraine

* Near East:
o Egypt
o Iraq (H5)
o Iran
o Israel

* South Asia:
o Afghanistan
o India
o Kazakhstan
o Pakistan (H5)


For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Organization for Animal Health Web Site.

Updated March 21, 2006

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/current.htm

WHO, Avian Flu Timeline in .pdf: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/timeline.pdf

Cambodia

This article was originally posted in yesterday's thread Post #10, thanks JPD:

Cambodia's latest bird flu outbreak a 'serious' problem - WHO​

03.26.2006, 06:45 AM

PHNOM PENH (AFX) - The World Health Organization expressed 'great concern' over Cambodia's latest bird flu outbreak after three more suspected cases were hospitalised following last week's death of a child from H5N1.

'It's a great concern, it's a serious problem ... we have to take this as seriously as possible,' WHO representative Michael O'Leary told Agence France-Presse.

Three people -- one adult and two children -- are being treated for fever and respiratory problems at a hospital in the capital Phnom Penh, health officials said.

The suspected cases come from a village neighboring that of three-year-old Mon Vuthy, who died Tuesday after falling ill with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

She was the first bird flu death in Cambodia this year and the fifth since 2003.

Five other people who had contact with the suspected cases are also being tested, said Ly Sovann, head of the health ministry's department of infectious diseases.

It is unknown how the three might have become infected with the deadly virus, he said.

Agriculture ministry officials said tests are being done on poultry in the area, but no traces of H5N1 have been found so far in any birds, despite the deaths of hundreds in the area earlier this month.

This is particularly troubling, O'Leary said, because if the three people are found to have bird flu it would mean they had some exposure to birds that 'we are not aware of'.

Seven other villagers thought to have caught bird flu after the girl died tested negative for the virus, Ly Sovann said Saturday.

'All the seven suspected patients are negative ... all of them are better,' he said.

The seven, all from the girl's village, fell ill with fevers around the same time that the girl died.

Officials think the toddler became infected after playing with sick chickens in Phum Prich village in Kompong Speu province, 45 kilometers west of the capital.

Cambodia's last outbreak of bird flu in humans occurred in early 2005, while the virus has been found in ducks in eastern Kompong Cham province twice since February, triggering the slaughter of hundreds of birds.

http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2006/03/26/afx2622042.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/science...7,0,3102322,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
(fair use applies)

Spread of Bird Flu Has Experts Rethinking Containment
Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer
5:53 PM PST, March 26, 2006

The spread of avian influenza through at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks -- one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago -- is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

Since February, the virus has cut a swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds.

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks could contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere. Officials are hoping to buy a little more time to produce human vaccines and limit the potential economic damage.

"We cannot contain this thing anymore," said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., who has been studying the virus since it emerged in 1997. "Nature is in control."

Formally known as avian influenza A, or H5N1, the virus is rarely transmitted to humans.

There have been 186 human cases and 105 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of the deaths -- 29 -- have occurred this year.

Many fear the virus will mutate into a form that is easily transmitted among people, introducing a deadly flu strain unfamiliar to the human immune system.

Although the virus also could mutate into a harmless strain, scientists have found that it has infected domestic cats and a stone marten in Germany, increasing concerns over its ability to cross into mammals.

"Something generally disturbing is going on at the moment," Nabarro said. "It's certainly in the bird world, and it's pushing up against the human world in a serious way."

For most of its existence, H5N1 remained in Southeast Asia.

It first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six. The government ordered the culling of all chickens, ducks, quail, partridges and geese in the area to eliminate the disease.

"The slaughter of all poultry in Hong Kong did slow it down," Webster said. "We thought we had gotten rid of it for quite some time."

Four years later, the virus resurfaced. Tens of millions of chickens and ducks were killed in Thailand and Vietnam to contain the virus. The sale of chickens plummeted across the region, even though thoroughly cooking the meat destroys the virus.

The current outbreak of the virus into Europe and Africa traces its roots to the discovery last spring of thousands of dead migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in remote western China. The lake is a stopover for birds that ultimately mix with others that migrate through Europe, Africa and Asia.

Webster suspects that the virus mutated as it circulated around the birds at Qinghai Lake, allowing it to infect wild birds more easily and hitch a ride with them on their long travels.

The genetic fingerprints of the Qinghai strain have shown up in Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

"Each morning I sit down at the computer ... there's another country, another outbreak or another human case," said Nancy J. Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scientists say the migrating birds could arrive in North America this summer via bird pathways that enter through Alaska or northeastern Canada. There is no way to stop wild birds, and they can't all be killed.

"Once it's in migratory fowl, you really can't contain the movement of the disease," Cox said. "In an ideal world, we'd put the spark out, but that's in an ideal world."

With the fading hope of containment, governments are considering the controversial option of vaccinating poultry to limit the economic damage and reduce human exposure to the virus. Many countries have hesitated to vaccinate because some vaccinated birds could pick up the virus but not show any symptoms. Those seemingly healthy birds could sicken other birds or poultry workers.

Japan, Hong Kong and Germany, among others, have banned imports from countries that vaccinate their chickens, citing the risk of eating the meat despite the WHO's finding that there is no danger if the meat is properly cooked.

At the end of February, the European Union relaxed its stand against poultry vaccines and allowed France and the Netherlands to inoculate poultry in selected areas.

Russia also approved a mass vaccination program this month, after the government's efforts to cull more than 800,000 birds did not stop the outbreaks.

"There were reasons in the past not to vaccinate," said Henry L. Niman, the president of Pittsburgh-based Recombinomics Inc., a virus and vaccine research company. "Now there has been some rethinking of that, because nothing seems to be working very well."

Most U.S. chicken producers have yet to see the need to vaccinate their flocks, said Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, whose members produce about 95 percent of the broiler chickens in the United States.

Lobb said vaccinating chickens would be a logistical nightmare, and it would be easier to kill infected birds.

Work on a human vaccine is proceeding, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has begun stockpiling millions of doses of one version of a H5N1 vaccine now going through clinical trials.

That vaccine, which was derived from a strain of the virus circulating in Vietnam in 2004, is being produced by Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif. and French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur.

Researchers have begun work on another human vaccine derived from a more recent version of the virus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced this month. . That version is based on a strain harvested from Indonesia in 2005 and is more closely related to the strains in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The key now, said Cox of the CDC, is buying time to develop those vaccines and devise a strategy for using them effectively.

http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=11434
(fair use applies)

No evidence that bird flu death woman in Shanghai had contact with poultry - officials

Shanghai. January 27. INTERFAX-CHINA - No evidence has been found suggesting that a migrant worker who died in Shanghai from bird flu on March 21 had any direct contact with poultry, city authorities told Interfax today.

The Ministry of Health confirmed on March 24 that bird flu caused the death of the 29-year-old woman. Shanghai municipal Department of Health had initially said she developed symptoms of “coughing and fever?and died of unexplained pneumonia.

Director of the information office at Shanghai municipal Department of Health said there was insufficient evidence to prove the woman had direct contact with poultry, and that the cause of her infection remains under investigation.

"No abnormal condition has been found among the people who had close contact with the woman," he added.

The health administration in Shanghai says it has taken appropriate measures according to the city's bird flu response plan and people who have had close contact with the woman have been put under clinical observation in isolation.

The death toll of bird flu human infections in China now stands at 11, and the number to have contracted the infection 15.

Dai Ping from the Shanghai Agricultural Commission said there was no bird flu epidemic among poultry in the municipality

http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/hotnews/63h2411364079016.html
(fair use applies)

Cell Barrier Shows Why Bird Flu Not So Easily Spread Among Humans
Posted on: 03/24/2006

Although more than 100 people have been infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus, mostly from close contact with infected poultry, the fact that the virus does not spread easily from its pioneering human hosts to other humans has been a biomedical puzzle. Now, a study of cells in the human respiratory tract reveals a simple anatomical difference in the cells of the system that makes it difficult for the virus to jump from human to human.

The finding, reported in the journal Nature, is important because it demonstrates a requisite characteristic for the virus to equip itself to easily infect humans, the key development required for the virus to assume pandemic proportions.

The new report, by a research group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, describes experiments using tissue from humans that showed that only cells deep within the respiratory system have the surface molecule or receptor that is the key that permits the avian flu virus to enter a cell.

Flu viruses, like many other types of viruses, require access to the cells of their hosts to effectively reproduce. If they cannot enter a cell, they are unable to make infectious particles that infect other cells -- or other hosts.

"Our findings provide a rational explanation for why H5N1 viruses rarely infect and spread from human to human, although they can replicate efficiently in the lungs," the authors of the study write in the Nature report.

By looking at human tissues, Kawaoka's group noted that the cells in the upper portions of the respiratory system lacked the surface receptors that enable avian H5N1 virus to dock with the cell. Receptors are molecules on the surface of cells that act like a lock. A virus with a complementary binding molecule -- the key -- can use the surface receptor to gain access to the cell. Once inside, it can multiply and infect other cells.

"Deep in the respiratory system, (cell) receptors for avian viruses, including avian H5N1 viruses, are present," explains Kawaoka, who also holds an appointment at the University of Tokyo. "But these receptors are rare in the upper portion of the respiratory system. For the viruses to be transmitted efficiently, they have to multiply in the upper portion of the respiratory system so that they can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing."

The upshot of the new finding, says Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, is that existing strains of bird flu must undergo key genetic changes to become the type of flu pathogen most feared by biomedical scientists.

"No one knows whether the virus will evolve into a pandemic strain, but flu viruses constantly change," Kawaoka says. "Certainly, multiple mutations need to be accumulated for the H5N1 virus to become a pandemic strain."

The finding suggests that scientists and public health agencies worldwide may have more time to prepare for an eventual pandemic of avian influenza. Periodically, animal forms of influenza such as bird flu evolve to become highly contagious human pathogens.

Most scientists agree a pandemic of avian influenza will occur at some time. The worst-case scenario would be a form of influenza similar to the strain of 1918 that killed between 30 million and 50 million people globally.

The new work may also help scientists keep track of evolving strains of influenza and provide earlier warning of potential pandemics. For the H5N1 strain of flu virus to evolve to a pathogen easily transmissible from one human to another, changes need to occur in the virus' hemagglutinin surface protein -- a molecule embedded in the virus membrane -- to recognize human receptors, Kawaoka says.

"Mutations in the hemagglutinin for avian H5N1 viruses to recognize human receptors are needed for the virus to become a pandemic strain," Kawaoka explains.

Viruses isolated from humans infected with avian flu can thus be monitored in a way to provide more advance warning of a potential pandemic.

"Identification of H5N1 viruses with the ability to recognize human receptors would bring us one step closer to a pandemic strain," says Kawaoka. "Recognition of human receptors can serve as molecular markers for the pandemic potential of the isolates."

The new study was conducted in collaboration with Kyoko Shinya and Shinya Yamada of the University of Tokyo; Masahito Ebina of the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer; Masao Ono of Tohoku University; and Noriyuki Kasai of the Institute for Animal Experimentation in Japan.

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Another article on the Nature article:

http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1903131,00.html
(fair use applies)

Why bird flu doesn't spread
24/03/2006 13:08 - (SA)

New York - Why doesn't bird flu spread easily between people? Scientists think they've found a reason.

The virus prefers to infect cells in the lung instead of areas like the nose and windpipe, so it's not easily coughed or sneezed out into the air, new research says.

But that behaviour could change if the virus mutates. Experts say the new research doesn't indicate how likely the virus is to change genetically and unleash a worldwide outbreak of lethal flu. However, the work suggests one of the signs to watch for in new virus samples to help gauge the danger to humans.

The work, reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, comes from University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka with colleagues in Japan. Similar results, from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will be published online Thursday by the journal Science.

More than 180 people are known to have been infected with the bird flu virus H5N1. Virtually all are believed to have caught it from infected poultry. But scientists have long warned that the virus, which is prone to mutation, could transform itself into a version that spreads easily from person to person. That germ could touch off a pandemic.

Ordinary flu

Ordinary flu viruses spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, blasting out tiny droplets carrying the germ. For that to happen, the virus has to be perched in the right places to be ejected by a cough or sneeze. The new work suggests H5N1, by contrast, infects humans too low in the respiratory tract for that to occur.

Both research teams used human tissue removed from various parts of the respiratory tract - the region from the nose to the lung - to study where virus infection occurs.

Scientists already knew that bird flu viruses use a specific kind of docking site to enter cells they infect, while human flu viruses use a different one. Kawaoka's group found the bird virus docking site appears mostly on lung cells, while being rare on cells found in higher areas like the nose and windpipe. Those higher areas were dominated instead by the human-type docking site.

Kawaoka said that for H5N1 to become a pandemic virus, it would have to mutate in a way that lets it attach to the same docking site human viruses use. Other mutations would be needed as well, he said in a statement.

Robert M Krug of the University of Texas at Austin called Kawaoka's work an important observation, and said that if H5N1 begins to use the human virus docking site "we've got a lot to worry about." It's not clear whether that would be enough to produce a pandemic germ, he said.

James Paulson of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, stressed that other viral factors may be important in human-to-human transmission. But he said that once the virus has a foothold in a person, it may mutate to gain the abilities it needs to start spreading among people.

A nice thought by the authors HD, but it doesn't take into account if this puppy exchanges it's genetic info with an ordinary flu virus. That is the last link to make this thing H2H and then the SH*T will fly.

The thing about flu viruses is that they are ever changing and ever evolving, they don't just stay stagnant. If this exchanges it's genetic info with the lesser flus, the ease of transmissibility would become much like flu season, sneezing, coughing etc. That's the scarey thing we're all hoping doesn't occur. But it just takes one instance and a domino effect of infecting others to set this into action and then we're toast. Sorry if I'm sounding redundant here, just worked a double and it's still quite busy with flu cases.

Fuzzychick, I think that article (possibly between the lines) says the same thing as you do. ""Identification of H5N1 viruses with the ability to recognize human receptors would bring us one step closer to a pandemic strain," says Kawaoka."

For those who want to believe there's no threat, the article is calming. But if you know the science (like you do), and read it accordingly, what you say is in there too. Sometimes different articles report differently on the same report - some more positive and promising, some more gloomy - that's why I sometimes post multiple articles on the same study.

HD

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060327/44835365.html
(fair use applies)

40,000 vaccines to be sent to bird-flu regions in south Russia
12:09 | 27/ 03/ 2006


MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - An additional 39,600 vaccines will be sent to the southern regions in Russia hit by bird flu, an Emergency Situation Ministry spokesman said Monday.

The ministry representative said about 16 million vaccines had already been sent to 12 regions, and 8,295,903 fowl had been vaccinated since March 10, including 82,387 birds in the last 24 hours.

The potentially lethal H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus returned to southern Russia, a stopover for migrating birds, in February following outbreaks last year. A massive vaccination campaign was subsequently launched at local poultry farms in March in a bid to prevent an epidemic.

Over 1.3 million birds have died of bird flu or been culled in Russia in three outbreaks of bird flu since July 2005, but no human cases of the virus have been diagnosed in Russia.

Three sick Cambodians test negative for bird flu​

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP41728.htm

PHNOM PENH, March 27 (Reuters) - Three Cambodians suffering from fever and coughs tested negative for bird flu after a 3-year-old girl died of the virus last week, the head of the hospital treating them said on Monday.

"All three tested for bird flu showed negative," said Heng Taykry, director of Phnom Penh's Calmette Hospital, where the trio have been staying since being admitted with bird flu-like symptoms on Saturday.

A joint Cambodian-World Health Organisation (WHO) statement said the adult and two children had come into contact with dead poultry in their village in Kampong Speu province, around 40 miles (60 km) from Phnom Penh.

"The two children played with the dead poultry and the adult took the dead chickens to cook," said Ly Sovann, Cambodia's main bird flu surveillance official, before the test results came out.

He and WHO officials were not immediately available to confirm the test results.

Earlier on Monday, seven other Cambodians who had fallen sick last week in the same Kampong Speu village where the girl died all tested negative for H5N1.

The girl's death took the impoverished Southeast Asian nation's human toll to five since the virus first appeared in the region in late 2003.

According to WHO figures, 186 people worldwide are known to have been infected with H5N1 since 2003. Of those, 105 have died, including the Cambodian girl.

Czech Republic gets bird flu​

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Bird_flu/0,,2-10-1959_1905439,00.html

27/03/2006 11:40 - (SA)

Prague - The Czech Republic's first case of bird flu was reported on Monday.

The CTK news agency reported that a swan tested positive for the disease which has been spreading in Europe among wild birds, forcing tough restrictions on poultry farms and cross-border trade.

Czech Agriculture Minister Jan Mladek was expected to discuss the situation on Monday with reporters. A ministry spokesperson declined to confirm the CTK report but told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that "I wouldn't say it is wrong."

Until now avian flu has not been detected in the Czech Republic, even though infected wild birds have been found in each of its neighbours - Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Austria.

To date 11 European Union countries have reported at least one suspected or confirmed case of the Asian strain of avian influenza H5N1 in wild birds.

Last week Czech officials opened two new lab facilities to supplement a testing programme at SVU's national laboratory in Prague, where about 1 300 birds have tested negative in recent months. - Sapa-dpa

Heliobas Disciple said:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science...7,0,3102322,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
(fair use applies)

Spread of Bird Flu Has Experts Rethinking Containment
Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer
5:53 PM PST, March 26, 2006

The spread of avian influenza through at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks -- one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago -- is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

Since February, the virus has cut a swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds.

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks could contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere. Officials are hoping to buy a little more time to produce human vaccines and limit the potential economic damage.

"We cannot contain this thing anymore," said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., who has been studying the virus since it emerged in 1997. "Nature is in control."

Formally known as avian influenza A, or H5N1, the virus is rarely transmitted to humans.

There have been 186 human cases and 105 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of the deaths -- 29 -- have occurred this year.

Many fear the virus will mutate into a form that is easily transmitted among people, introducing a deadly flu strain unfamiliar to the human immune system.

Although the virus also could mutate into a harmless strain, scientists have found that it has infected domestic cats and a stone marten in Germany, increasing concerns over its ability to cross into mammals.

"Something generally disturbing is going on at the moment," Nabarro said. "It's certainly in the bird world, and it's pushing up against the human world in a serious way."

For most of its existence, H5N1 remained in Southeast Asia.

It first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six. The government ordered the culling of all chickens, ducks, quail, partridges and geese in the area to eliminate the disease.

"The slaughter of all poultry in Hong Kong did slow it down," Webster said. "We thought we had gotten rid of it for quite some time."

Four years later, the virus resurfaced. Tens of millions of chickens and ducks were killed in Thailand and Vietnam to contain the virus. The sale of chickens plummeted across the region, even though thoroughly cooking the meat destroys the virus.

The current outbreak of the virus into Europe and Africa traces its roots to the discovery last spring of thousands of dead migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in remote western China. The lake is a stopover for birds that ultimately mix with others that migrate through Europe, Africa and Asia.

Webster suspects that the virus mutated as it circulated around the birds at Qinghai Lake, allowing it to infect wild birds more easily and hitch a ride with them on their long travels.

The genetic fingerprints of the Qinghai strain have shown up in Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

"Each morning I sit down at the computer ... there's another country, another outbreak or another human case," said Nancy J. Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scientists say the migrating birds could arrive in North America this summer via bird pathways that enter through Alaska or northeastern Canada. There is no way to stop wild birds, and they can't all be killed.

"Once it's in migratory fowl, you really can't contain the movement of the disease," Cox said. "In an ideal world, we'd put the spark out, but that's in an ideal world."

With the fading hope of containment, governments are considering the controversial option of vaccinating poultry to limit the economic damage and reduce human exposure to the virus. Many countries have hesitated to vaccinate because some vaccinated birds could pick up the virus but not show any symptoms. Those seemingly healthy birds could sicken other birds or poultry workers.

Japan, Hong Kong and Germany, among others, have banned imports from countries that vaccinate their chickens, citing the risk of eating the meat despite the WHO's finding that there is no danger if the meat is properly cooked.

At the end of February, the European Union relaxed its stand against poultry vaccines and allowed France and the Netherlands to inoculate poultry in selected areas.

Russia also approved a mass vaccination program this month, after the government's efforts to cull more than 800,000 birds did not stop the outbreaks.

"There were reasons in the past not to vaccinate," said Henry L. Niman, the president of Pittsburgh-based Recombinomics Inc., a virus and vaccine research company. "Now there has been some rethinking of that, because nothing seems to be working very well."

Most U.S. chicken producers have yet to see the need to vaccinate their flocks, said Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, whose members produce about 95 percent of the broiler chickens in the United States.

Lobb said vaccinating chickens would be a logistical nightmare, and it would be easier to kill infected birds.

Work on a human vaccine is proceeding, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has begun stockpiling millions of doses of one version of a H5N1 vaccine now going through clinical trials.

That vaccine, which was derived from a strain of the virus circulating in Vietnam in 2004, is being produced by Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif. and French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur.

Researchers have begun work on another human vaccine derived from a more recent version of the virus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced this month. . That version is based on a strain harvested from Indonesia in 2005 and is more closely related to the strains in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The key now, said Cox of the CDC, is buying time to develop those vaccines and devise a strategy for using them effectively.

Click to expand...

Powerful article HD...

This weekend WD and I rented "The Stand"... Some days the news on BF is like watching 'Captain Tripps' in slow motion. We'de seen it years ago... but in light of current events, I'd suggest it as a 'must rent'...

What temps does the Bird Flu thrive at? (I'm sure it's been mentioned, but a refresher would be beneficial.)

As we enter the hotter months of the year here in the CONUS, Australia and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere head into their winter time. Is that why we didn't hear of BF in that region yet? Because they have been too warm? (Prayers for all of you in those areas...)

And if the virus was here in the States, would it go dormant, waiting for the colder months to return?


Thanks to all who keep the fires burning on this flu.

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimesNEW/basket7st/basket7st1143462877.aspx

Bird flu claims a life in Baghdad

Monday March 27, 2006 14:34 - (SA)

BAGHDAD - An Iraqi man has died from the suspected deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in Baghdad, while one member of his family has been admitted for tests on similar suspicions, a spokeswoman of the high-level committee to fight bird flu set up by the Iraqi government said.

The member of the family has been admitted to a hospital in Kamaliya neighbourhood of east Baghdad, the spokeswoman said, adding that samples of the two have been sent to Cairo for further analysis.

Earlier this year Iraq confirmed deaths of two people from the avian flu in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq, of which one was a teenage girl and the other her uncle.

http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/706/2006/03/27/48@67077.htm

Egypt Reports New Suspected Human Bird Flu Case

Egyptian Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali announced on Sunday that a new suspected case of human bird flu had been found in the country's Nile delta region, the Egyptian official MENA news agency reported.

Shaimaa Khairi el-Desoqi was being treated in a local hospital in the governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh, some 125 km north of Cairo.

The 18-year-old girl, who had come into contact with dead birds, started to show bird flu symptoms on Thursday, including high temperature, sore throat and muscle ache, according to the report.

Members of her family are currently being tested for the avian influenza virus.

The latest case brought to five the total number of suspected human bird flu cases in the populous north African country.

Egypt confirmed on March 18 that a woman who had been raising chickens at home died of H5N1 bird flu virus, the first human case of the lethal disease in the country.

The other patients either have recovered or are still under treatment in hospitals.

Egypt reported first case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in dead poultry on Feb. 17 and the government has since taken tough measures to curb the spread of the disease.

The deadly H5N1 strain has killed over 100 people worldwide since its outbreak in southeast Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most victims were infected after close contact with sick birds.

The virus currently can only jump from birds to humans, but scientists fear that it could mutate into a form capable of passing easily among humans and thus spark a global human flu pandemic which might kill millions.

UN expert stands by his dire warnings

By Donald G. McNeil Jr. The New York Times
MONDAY, MARCH 27, 2006

Dr. David Nabarro, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, has become gun-shy about making predictions - in particular, about if and when the H5N1 virus, now devastating bird populations around the world, will do the same to humans.

But Nabarro describes himself as "quite scared," especially since the disease has broken out of Eastern Asia and reached birds in Africa, Europe and India much faster than he expected it to.

"That rampant, explosive spread," he said, "and the dramatic way it's killing poultry so rapidly suggests that we've got a very beastly virus in our midst."

Nabarro, the former chief of crisis response for the World Health Organization, admits that he has been accused before of being an alarmist.

On his first day in his current job, he was quoted as saying that the avian flu could kill 150 million people.

In December 2004, when he was in charge of the health organization's response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, he warned that if help did not arrive quickly, cholera and malaria could kill twice as many people as the waves had just swept away.

In Darfur the same year, he said that 10,000 people a month were dying in refugee camps because the Sudanese government was rebuffing aid.

And earlier in 2004, he warned that Israeli roadblocks were endangering Palestinians who needed drugs for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Asked to reflect on those warnings, he answers: About Darfur, he was dead right; on the Palestinians, he was also right, but massive infusions of aid kept death rates down; and on the tsunami, he said, he made his dire forecast when only 40,000 people were believed dead, and the world's abundant generosity paid for the clean water and mosquito control that prevented the worst from coming true.

On avian flu, he notes, he predicted a range of 5 million to 150 million deaths - the same range the World Bank was using - but headline writers quoted only the higher figure.

And how many does Nabarro now say could die? "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows."

But he repeatedly said that he is more scared than he was when he took the job in September. In October, he predicted that the virus would reach Africa, where surveillance is so poor that deaths of chickens or humans could easily go undiagnosed for weeks. Last month, he was proved right.

The infection of millions more birds in many more countries "has led to an exponential increase of the load of virus in the world," he said. And influenza is a fast-mutating virus. Each infected bird and person is actually awash in minutely different strains, and it takes lengthy genetic testing to sequence each one - so if a pandemic strain were to appear, "it might be quite difficult for us to pick up that change when it happens."

To skeptics who doubt that the H5N1 strain will become a threat to humans because it has existed for 10 years without doing so, he counters that it had the same 10 years to move out of Southeast Asia, but it did not until last year, when it shot across half the globe.

The skepticism reminds him of his stint in East Africa in the 1980s. No one realized then how widespread the AIDS virus was, and it was unclear then whether it was transmitted by sex. Some experts argued that sex was such an inefficient method of disease transmission that it would never be much of a threat. It has now killed 20 million people and 40 million more are infected.

"We failed to give it the proper focus, right at the beginning," he said.

Like early AIDS, he said, avian flu has too many unanswered questions, like: Why did the disease, after years of smoldering in poultry, suddenly start hitchhiking in migratory birds? Why does the northern China strain - the one now spreading westward - cause so many false negatives in diagnostic tests? Why did so many people fall sick so quickly in Turkey?

"Bits of the puzzle are missing," he said. "In six months, will we be cursing ourselves for missing some key phenomena now?"

He said he fears that the virus will soon be endemic in birds everywhere, rendering containment fruitless and condemning the world to mounting a perpetual vigil for human outbreaks. Its movement into cats frightens him even more because humans routinely curl up with them.

Mutations making it less lethal to humans may, paradoxically, be bad news, he said. A disease that kills half of those it infects often burns out before it reaches new victims, while one that leaves 98 percent of its victims alive, as the 1918 flu did, rapidly reaches hundreds of millions because it has so many carriers.

As a public-health bureaucrat, the 56- year-old British doctor wants to come across as "honest, accurate, down-to- earth, someone who can translate complex facts in a way that makes emotional sense to those receiving them."

Still, there is something about his voice. Experience has made him wary of misquotation, so he chooses his words as carefully as a surgeon picks through his tray of instruments. But his enunciation is chilling - reminiscent of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, describing with slow, awful precision how a body was mutilated.

Even his lighthearted similes come across that way. An Oxford graduate and son of a prominent doctor, he knows the value of a yard chicken because he has worked in Nepal, northern Iraq and East Africa fighting malaria and malnutrition.

Each bird that lays eggs until it ends up in the pot, he said, "is a short-term savings account with a high rate of growth and a yield that no bank can match."

Culling ruins Third World farmers the same way canceling Social Security would devastate the American working class. It forces the poor to hide their flocks and thus protect the virus.

Nabarro rejects the word "gloomy" as a description of his outlook, but if he were an oncologist, his patients would flee.

He works out of rented UN offices in the Chrysler Building in New York and spends much of his time traveling. But that will end abruptly if the disease starts spreading to humans. There will be, he predicted, a "period of wonderment," while the authorities figure out whether the first cases are real, then borders will close, airports will shut down, and travelers everywhere will be stranded.

"Assuming I'm here, I'll just camp down, probably in the Secretariat, and stay there for 6 to 10 weeks," he said referring to the UN headquarters.

That means he will not be with his wife and five children, who are in Switzerland, where he was posted with the health organization, or in college in England. He has not stockpiled Tamiflu, the antivirus drug, for them or for himself, he said, although he does carry a box of it to show at meetings. They, too, will have to hunker down where they are.

"But they know the job I'm doing," he said. "They see me as I'm plotting the virus on maps."

The one aspect of his job that makes him more optimistic is that the world is waking up to the threat of bird flu. In January, Nabarro went to a summit in Beijing hoping to raise $1.2 billion for the fight. He got $1.9 billion. Still, that is just a beginning, he said.

"We spend billions to protect ourselves from threats that may not exist, from missiles, bombs and human combatants," he said. "But pathogens from the animal kingdom are something against which we are appallingly badly protected, and our investment in pandemic insurance is minute."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/27/news/worrier.php

Seabird said:

What temps does the Bird Flu thrive at? (I'm sure it's been mentioned, but a refresher would be beneficial.)

As we enter the hotter months of the year here in the CONUS, Australia and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere head into their winter time. Is that why we didn't hear of BF in that region yet? Because they have been too warm? (Prayers for all of you in those areas...)

And if the virus was here in the States, would it go dormant, waiting for the colder months to return?


Thanks to all who keep the fires burning on this flu.

Click to expand...

http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Resources.H5N1

H5N1 is known to survive…

Unfortunately there is no consensus at this time.

0 deg C/32 deg F = more than 30 days Poultry Health Services Ltd

4 deg C/39 deg F = 35 days WHO Factsheet

17 deg C/63 deg F = 207 days Persistence of avian influenza viruses in water maybe not be specifically H5N1

22 deg C/71 deg F = 4 days Poultry Health Services Ltd

28 deg C/82 deg F = 102 days Persistence of avian influenza viruses in water maybe not be specifically H5N1

37 deg C/98.6 deg F = 6 days WHO Factsheet


Seasonal influenza (not necessarily H5N1) viruses remain infectious after 24 to 48 hours on nonporous environmental surfaces and less than 12 hours on porous surfaces Survival of influenza viruses on environmental surfaces. J Infect Dis 1982 Jul;146(1):47-51Not specifically H5N1.

Remains viable under a wide variety of environmental conditions at 7–8 pH.

Anatoly Smirnov, director of the Research Institute on Veterinary Sanitation, Hygiene and Environment in Russia said…the virus lived 447 days in frozen birds, 300 days in eggs and 240 days in chicken plume in indoor temperatures.

Cambodia clears seven people of bird flu, remains on high alert​

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/...even_people_of_bird_flu_remains_on_high_alert

Phnom Penh - Cambodia remained on high alert but had cleared seven people previously feared to have been infected with bird flu in the wake of the nation's fifth human death from the virus last week, The World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday.

WHO epidemiologist Meg Miller said the seven people, who had either been in close contact with a toddler who died from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu on March 21, or with infected poultry, had all officially tested negative for the virus.

'They are all negative for H5N1. They all responded well to antibiotics and were treated in the village. They did not require hospitalization,' Miller said by telephone.

'We will continue to observe the area. What we like to do is keep an eye on the area from the time the case was first confirmed for a period of about two weeks,' she said, adding that it was too early to say the outbreak had been completely contained, although health officials were optimistic.

Health authorities said last Friday that 3-year-old Buon Sothy fell ill on March 15 and died six days later.

She had apparently been playing with sick poultry from her family's small flock of chickens before she fell ill, and subsequent tests conducted by the Pasteur Institute in Cambodia confirmed she had died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Miller said 45 people from the girl's commune of Moha Rainsey in the Kong Pisey district of Kampong Speu province, 40 kilometres from the capital, had undergone blood tests and that seven initially exhibited symptoms of fever and were closely monitored.

Locals initially said they suspected that the disease had reached the village, located far from any international border crossings, from chicken carcasses bought in Phnom Penh to grill and sell to travelers.

However, Miller said WHO had now almost positively discounted this theory and believed that the disease had been spread amongst local chickens.

All four previous confirmed human deaths from bird flu, or avian influenza, in Cambodia have been reported in areas bordering Vietnam, which has culled millions of poultry in an effort to contain outbreaks and has confirmed 42 human deaths.

The World Health Organization has confirmed 186 cases worldwide of the virus in humans since 2003, of which 104 have died. Originating in Asia, the disease is spreading with migrating birds to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Vietnam

Just wanted to throw this out. My father is going on vacation to Vietnam next week (no idea why). What would all of you do as far as containment when he returns. I am thinking I keep my kids away from him for at least a week after his return. Any other thoughts?

Hammer

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center><u>Natto Slime Emerges as Effective Weapon Against Flu Pandemic</font></u>

Date Posted: 3/27/2006
<A href="http://www.soyatech.com/bluebook/news/viewarticle.ldml?a=20060327-1">www.soyatech.com</a></center>
JIJI via NewsEdge Corporation : Tokyo5 (Jiji Press) -- Japanese researchers have developed a substance that blocks the infection of a deadly influenza using a slime on "natto" fermented soy beans.

The substance can be used as coating for face masks, air conditioner filters and various other items to prevent the spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza A, the researchers said.</b>

Major soy sauce maker Yamasa Corp., whose researchers participated in the study, is expected to commercialize the flu virus absorbent material, which can be mass produced at low cost as natto is an inexpensive everyday food in Japan, they said.

The team, led by Taiichi Usui, dean of Shizuoka University's Faculty of Agriculture, will report the finding on Sunday at an annual meeting of the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry that started on Saturday for a four-day run.

In their study, the researchers focused on hemagglutinin, or HA, a protein that is found on the surface of flu viruses and responsible for viral infection. The H5N1 strain has the subtype No. 5 of the HA glycoprotein.

Infection is caused by HA binding to a receptor protein on the surface of cells of host animals. Finding that each of the HA subtypes only binds to a receptor with a similar sugar chain structure, the researchers developed a fake receptor that specifically sticks to the H5 type before the virus reach the cells.

The decoy receptor was made by attaching sugar chains with polyglutamic acid taken from natto's slime. Experiments using dog's kidney cells proved the effectiveness of the receptor, the researchers said.

Birds, not humans, were very vulnerable to H5N1 infection because of the structural conformity between the HA subtype of the virus and receptors on the bird cell surface.

But a genetic mutation in the HA protein is feared of allowing the virus to easily infect humans, and leading to a global flu pandemic.

Takeomi Murata, Shizuoka University's associate professor who also took part in the study, said the development of a more powerful flu virus absorbent is under way.

The agent can be made into antiflu drops and sprays in the future if it is authorized as a drug, he noted.

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<B><center><font size=+0 color=red>Emergency Warning Issued</font>
<font size=+1 color=purple>for U.S Citizens to Stockpile Supplies for Bird Flu Pandemic </font>

<A href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/3/prweb364146.htm">www.prweb.com</a></center>
Experts feel that this new super-influenza strain could transform the world into a situation resembling the New Orleans catastrophe.

(PRWEB) March 27, 2006 -- Leading researchers have indicated that the bird flu virus is now just one mutation away from changing into a form that can be easily transmitted among humans. Once the virus mutates into an airborne form, there may be very little warning that a pandemic has begun. An airborne strain of the H5N1 virus would have the ability to spread across the globe in mere days.</b>

Experts feel that this new super-influenza strain could transform the world into a situation resembling the New Orleans catastrophe. All deliveries to stores, restaurants and gas stations would immediately cease because people would either be too sick or too scared to attend their jobs. This could cause enormous shortages in a matter of days. As seen during The Spanish Flu of 1918, people may face potential starvation in their homes.

In addition, people who depend on prescription medications will not be able to obtain refills as all deliveries to pharmacies will stop.

The best way to survive a Bird Flu pandemic, which could have a mortality rate as high as 50% for those infected, would be to minimize contact with other people. This would require people to stay in their homes for an extended period of time. Without adequate food and water, this can not be accomplished. A pandemic could last in upwards of 12 months.

Once the pandemic begins, you can expect a panic to ensue that will result in store shelves being emptied overnight. Once this happens, the stores will most likely not be restocked anytime soon. For those who are late in buying extra food and water in advance, they may find themselves in a very challenging situation.

If you would like more information on how to immediately prepare, there is a pandemic flu website that provides live help in answering your questions. This website has various different discussion forums designed to provide real time answers to your questions. Whether you would like the latest news on the quickly unfolding developments, or if you would like help in preparing, we recommend that you immediately visit this site at: www.Avianflutalk.com.

Media Contact:
Jim Henry
Media Resources
2461 E. Orangethorpe Ave.
Fullerton, CA 92831
Phone: (714) 965-5945

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<B><center>Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts
<font size=+1 color=green>The culling of flocks has failed to slow the rapid spread of the virus, due in North America this year. Vaccination of poultry is under - study.</font>

By Jia-Rui Chong
Times Staff Writer

March 27, 2006
<A href="http://www.newsday.com/news/health/la-sci-birdflu27mar27,0,6005262.story?coll=ny-leadhealthnews-headlines">www.newsday.com</a></center>
The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

Since February, the virus has cut a wide swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds.</b>

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks would contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, the strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere. Officials are hoping to buy a little more time to produce human vaccines and limit the potential economic damage.

"We cannot contain this thing anymore. Nature is in control," said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., who has been studying the virus since it emerged in 1997.

Formally known as avian influenza A, or H5N1, the virus is rarely transmitted to humans.

There have been 186 human cases and 105 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of the deaths — 29 — have occurred this year.

Many fear the virus will mutate into a form that is more easily transmitted among people, introducing a deadly flu strain unfamiliar to the human immune system.

Though the virus also could mutate into a harmless strain, scientists have recently found that it has infected domestic cats and a stone marten in Germany, increasing concerns over its ability to cross into mammals.

"Something generally disturbing is going on at the moment," Nabarro said. "It's certainly in the bird world, and it's pushing up against the human world in a serious way."

For most of its existence, H5N1 stewed in Southeast Asia.

It first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six. The government ordered the culling of all 1.6 million chickens, ducks, quail, partridges and geese in the area to eliminate the virus.

"The slaughter of all poultry in Hong Kong did slow it down," Webster said. "We thought we had gotten rid of it for quite some time."

Four years later, the virus resurfaced. Tens of millions of chickens and ducks were killed in Thailand and Vietnam to contain the virus. The sale of chicken plummeted across the region, even though thoroughly cooking the meat destroys the virus.

The outbreak of the virus in Europe and Africa is traced to the discovery last spring of thousands of dead migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in remote western China. The lake is a crucial stopover for many birds that ultimately mix with others that migrate through Europe, Africa and Asia.

Webster suspects that the virus mutated as it circulated among the birds at Qinghai Lake, allowing it to infect wild birds more easily and hitch a ride with them on their long travels.

The genetic fingerprints of the Qinghai strain have shown up in Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

"Each morning I sit down at the computer … there's another country, another outbreak or another human case," said Nancy J. Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It keeps us breathless," she said.

Scientists say the migrating birds could arrive in North America this summer via bird pathways that encompass Alaska and northeastern Canada.

There is no way to stop wild birds, and they can't all be killed.

"Once it's in migratory fowl, you really can't contain the movement of the disease," Cox said. "In an ideal world, we'd put the spark out, but that's in an ideal world."

With the fading hope of containment, governments are considering the controversial option of vaccinating poultry to limit economic damage and reduce human exposure to the virus.

Many countries have hesitated to vaccinate because some vaccinated birds could pick up the virus but not show any symptoms. Those seemingly healthy birds could sicken other birds or poultry workers.

Some experts suspect that the use of substandard poultry vaccines in China in the past helped H5N1 to circulate undetected there.

Japan, Hong Kong and Germany, among other areas, have banned imports from countries that vaccinate poultry, citing the risk of infected meat. The WHO has said there is no danger in eating infected meat if it is properly cooked.

At the end of February, the European Union relaxed its stand against poultry vaccines and allowed France and the Netherlands to inoculate poultry in selected areas.

Russia also approved a mass vaccination program this month, after the government's efforts to cull more than 800,000 birds did not stop the outbreaks.

"There were reasons in the past not to vaccinate," said Henry L. Niman, president of Recombinomics Inc., a virus and vaccine research company in Pittsburgh. "Now there has been some rethinking of that because nothing seems to be working very well."

Most U.S. chicken producers have yet to see the need to vaccinate their flocks, said Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, whose members produce about 95% of the broiler chickens in the United States.

Lobb said that vaccinating chickens would be a logistical nightmare, and that it would be easier to kill infected birds.

"If you're vaccinating, you're basically waiting for something to happen," he said. "We'd rather go out there and look for something to happen and if we find it, destroy the animals."

Work on a human vaccine is proceeding, and the CDC has begun stockpiling millions of doses of an H5N1 vaccine undergoing clinical trials.

That vaccine, which was derived from a strain of the virus circulating in Vietnam in 2004, is being produced by Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., and French drug maker Sanofi Pasteur.

Researchers have begun work on another human vaccine derived from a more recent version of the virus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced this month. That version is based on a strain harvested from Indonesia in 2005 and is more closely related to strains in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The key now, said Cox of the CDC, is buying time to develop vaccines and devise a strategy for using them effectively.

The Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Department has been brainstorming since April in anticipation of bird flu infections among city employees and their families.

"We're planning for an absenteeism rate as high as 30%," said Jim Sims, an emergency planner.

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<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Consider planning for bird flu</font>

David L. May
davidmay@fcchamber.org
<A href="http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060327/COLUMNISTS09/603270305/1046/BUSINESS">www.coloradoan.com</a></center>
Cranes are the oldest living bird species on the planet. For 60 million years their funky dances and eerie calls have haunted the flyways of the world.

On St. Patrick's Day, far from the world of green beer, my family was at the Platte River in central Nebraska gazing in awe at the spectacle of the annual crane migration.</b>

It's estimated that 600,000 cranes migrate along this central flyway each spring and fall. The land and sky were cluttered with cranes.

These migrations are much anticipated and heralded. The Nebraska press is replete with crane stories.

This year, however, some of the stories had a tone of low-grade dread. When the cranes return in the fall contagious disease experts expect the bird flu to come with them.

Avian influenza is a virus carried in the intestines of wild birds. Contagious, it can be passed on to domestic birds such as ducks, geese and chickens. And a subtype of Influenza A known as H5N1 can jump from birds to humans. Over the past several years more than 100 people worldwide have died from H5N1.

In a world with billions of people, 100 deaths do not even register statistically. Among public health officials, however, H5N1 in humans is ominous in that no vaccine exists to combat it. If the virus mutates so that it can pass easily from human to human, pandemic flu will flash around the globe.

This has happened with some regularity throughout history. In the past century, pandemic influenza outbreaks occurred in 1918, 1957, and 1968. The 1918 pandemic was the worst, killing an estimated 40 million to 50 million people worldwide including over 600,000 in the U.S.

My point here is not to be a herald of doom, but to offer a cautionary word for preparation.

Under the capable leadership of Dr. Adrienne LeBailly, director of the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment, a Larimer County pandemic influenza preparedness and response plan is being developed. Expect to hear more in the months ahead.

While the community develops its plans, I encourage you to begin thinking about your own planning. Consider whether your own family is prepared. If we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina it is that the most effective first response should be local and personal.

A severe pandemic flu in the U.S. means that every community will be in crisis mode. Nobody will be available from outside Northern Colorado to come to our rescue. And, county and city government resources will be meager. The best recourse is for you to take care of yourself and your family.

As well, make sure your business crisis plan is up-to-date, includes pandemic flu preparedness, and is understood by employees.

In certain circumstances, some types of businesses would be shut down. Will you be able to continue operations? Do you have the means to weather three months of diminished or no business? Great resources for your business and your family can be found at www.larimer.org/health/cd/pandemic_flu.htm.

With the return of migratory birds this fall, the U.S. will probably see H5N1 in the wild bird population. That in itself is no reason for panic. Only when the virus can jump efficiently from person to person will we have a huge problem.

But if that happens, it will be too late to prepare. Perhaps this crisis will not come soon, or be as severe as feared, but in this case it's truly better to be safe than sorry.

David L. May is president and CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. Send e-mail to davidmay@fcchamber.org

Urgent: Egypt suffers second human bird flu death​

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-03/28/content_4352539.htm

CAIRO, March 27 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian woman has died of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus on Monday, bringing to two the number of human bird flu fatalities so far in the populous north African country, a Health Ministry official said. Enditem

Egypt suspects fifth human case of bird flu​

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/109339.asp

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 27-Mar-2006 23:41 hrs

An Egyptian man stands next to the turkeys at Bab Omar Basha market in downtown Alexandria, in February 2006. Egypt said a teenager hospitalised in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

Egypt said a teenager hospitalised in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

The 18-year-old girl was in stable condition, Nasser Kamel, spokesman for the government's anti-bird flu committee, told AFP.

He added that further tests were still being carried out to determine if her symptoms proved a bird flu infection in the province north of Egypt.

Egypt has already confirmed four human cases of the deadly virus.

The only fatal victim so far has been Amal Mohammed Ismail, from Qaliubiya governorate, just north of Cairo. The other three people infected are no longer in danger, only one of them remains hospitalised.

Nineteen of Egypt's 26 governorates (provinces) have now been affected by bird flu after the virus spread to Mediterranean seaside province of Kafr al-Sheikh over the weekend.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu, its most aggressive form, has killed nearly 100 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and seen millions of birds slaughtered.

Egypt is on a major route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. — AFP
Egypt said a teenager hospitalised in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

The 18-year-old girl was in stable condition, Nasser Kamel, spokesman for the government's anti-bird flu committee, told AFP.

He added that further tests were still being carried out to determine if her symptoms proved a bird flu infection in the province north of Egypt.

Egypt has already confirmed four human cases of the deadly virus.

The only fatal victim so far has been Amal Mohammed Ismail, from Qaliubiya governorate, just north of Cairo. The other three people infected are no longer in danger, only one of them remains hospitalised.

Nineteen of Egypt's 26 governorates (provinces) have now been affected by bird flu after the virus spread to Mediterranean seaside province of Kafr al-Sheikh over the weekend.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu, its most aggressive form, has killed nearly 100 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and seen millions of birds slaughtered.

Egypt is on a major route for migratory birds, at the crossroads between Asia and Africa. — AFP

Research: Flu Virus Must Mutate To Spread​

March 27, 2006 10:42AM

"Our findings provide a rational explanation for why H5N1 viruses rarely infect and spread from human to human, although they can replicate efficiently in the lungs," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the study published in Nature.

Perhaps not by accident, cells that line the upper airways of humans lack the type of receptor that the deadly bird-flu virus requires to multiply and spread from person to person, two new research papers show. But the virus does readily attach to certain types of cells deep in the lungs, both in humans and in several mammal species that have also recently been victims of the H5NI avian-influenza virus.

The findings, reported in Thursday's editions of the journals Nature and Science, help explain why even though nearly 200 people have become infected with the bird-flu virus in eight countries since 2003, mostly from close contact with infected poultry, the virus has not been easily spread from an initial human host to other people.

"Our findings provide a rational explanation for why H5N1 viruses rarely infect and spread from human to human, although they can replicate efficiently in the lungs," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the study published in Nature.

He also teaches at the University of Tokyo.

The team found that only cells deep within the respiratory system have the surface molecule, or receptor, the flu virus needs to enter a cell. Flu viruses, like most viruses, need to enter and take over cells within their host to replicate and spread to still more cells.

Receptors are molecules on the surface of cells that act like a lock. A virus with a complementary binding molecule -- the key -- can use the surface receptor to gain access to the cell, and then make infectious particles that spread to other cells.

"Deep in the respiratory system, receptors for avian viruses, including H5N1, are present," Kawaoka said. "But these receptors are rare in the upper portion of the respiratory system. For the viruses to be transmitted efficiently, they have to multiply in the upper portion of the respiratory system, so that they can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing."

The second study -- published online by Science, carried out by a team at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands -- also found that avian flu attachment becomes progressively less dense in cells toward the windpipe and more dense in the cells that line the tiniest air sacs of the lungs.

This probably accounts for the viral pneumonia and accompanying immune system response surge that actually damages the lungs and shuts down oxygen exchange, contributing to the respiratory and multiple-organ failure responsible for almost all of the 103 reported deaths from H5N1 strains to date.

The Dutch team observed a similar pattern of virus attachment in the respiratory tracts of cats and ferrets, suggesting those animals serve as good models for human disease.

Bird-flu infections have been reported in cats in Germany and Austria, and in a marten (weasel) in Germany, in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organization.

The studies suggest the bird-flu strains rapidly moving around the globe through migratory fowl and affecting millions of domestic birds in dozens of countries still have to undergo key genetic changes to spark a feared human pandemic like the one that claimed as many as 100 million people in 1918-19.

And that could mean researchers and public-health agencies have a bit more time to prepare for such an eventual shift, if it happens at all.

"No one knows whether the virus will evolve into a pandemic strain, but flu viruses constantly change," Kawaoka said. "Certainly, multiple mutations need to be accumulated for H5N1 to become a pandemic strain."

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=123000033SCX

Heliobas Disciple said:

Fuzzychick, I think that article (possibly between the lines) says the same thing as you do. ""Identification of H5N1 viruses with the ability to recognize human receptors would bring us one step closer to a pandemic strain," says Kawaoka."

For those who want to believe there's no threat, the article is calming. But if you know the science (like you do), and read it accordingly, what you say is in there too. Sometimes different articles report differently on the same report - some more positive and promising, some more gloomy - that's why I sometimes post multiple articles on the same study.

HD

Click to expand...

HD, I know what you're saying, needless to say it's a sugar coated article for those that don't read between the lines. I expect we'll see alot more of these articles as things progress.

United States, Canada Keep Joint Vigil for Bird Flu Carriers​

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/d...1cmretrop0.6298639&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html

Officials step up wildlife surveillance, anticipating introduction of virus

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer



Washington – The United States and Canada are working closely to keep watch for the introduction of highly pathogenic avian influenza into North America, according to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton.

With the rapid movement of this dangerous bird flu virus across Central Asia, Europe and into Africa over the last few months, U.S. officials have come to accept that the appearance of the H5N1 virus in North America is inevitable.

Even though the precise method of the disease’s spread is not fully understood, flocks of migratory birds are thought to be carriers of the virus, capable of infecting other forms of wildlife and domestic poultry. (See related article.)

The United States has announced a campaign to step up surveillance of migratory birds, which are expected to transport the disease out of East Asia, through the state of Alaska and into the Americas via identified flyways.

“Since Canada is situated between Alaska and [the continental United States],” Norton said in a March 24 White House webchat, “we’ve [the United States] been coordinating closely with wildlife and health officials there and will continue to work with them on this important effort.”

Given the seasonal movements of flocks from Asia through Alaska and into the Americas, Norton said it is possible that the virus could arrive in Alaska during the Northern Hemisphere spring, which began March 20.

Later in 2006, the virus could be transported further south during the autumnal migration.

ENHANCED SURVEILLANCE CAMPAIGN

The enhanced surveillance campaign announced by three top government officials March 20 calls for detection and investigation of sick birds, monitoring of healthy birds, and targeted sampling of fowl to ascertain how many birds might be carrying the H5N1 virus that has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of birds since the epidemic began in late 2003. (See related article.)

With U.S. agencies on the verge of testing tens of thousands of wild birds, Norton was keen to point out that avian influenza viruses come in many forms and most of them are benign.

“It is quite possible that we could have dozens of H5N1 reports [from forthcoming wild bird tests], with none turning out to be the highly pathogenic variety,” Norton said. “These low pathogenic viruses do not even cause particular problems for birds and are not relevant to human influenza concerns.”

The U.S. secretary of the interior also reminded her audience that H5N1 is an animal disease, and the appearance of the virus in a given locale does not mean that an influenza outbreak among humans is imminent.

The virulent nature of the strain of influenza does make health officials worry about the development of a human flu pandemic.

NEARLY 200 HUMAN INFECTIONS IN PAST TWO YEARS

The virus has infected close to 200 people over the last two years, and killed 105 humans, the most recent deaths reported from China and Cambodia, according to World Health Organization statements of March 24.

Virtually all those infections occurred through direct contact with sick birds, but if the virus mutates to become contagious among humans, widespread illness and death could occur.

The human cases detected so far in eight nations show no evidence that the virus has developed that capability.

Norton also tried to quell the misperception that detection of H5N1 in wild birds poses an immediate threat to human health.

“There are no documented cases of wild birds directly transmitting avian influenza to people,” Norton said.

Responding to a concerned participant in the webchat, Norton said the risk of disease exposure to hunters is thought to be low, but possible.

She urged hunters to practice good hygiene in handling and cleaning wild game.

A transcript of Norton’s webchat is available on the White House Web site.

For additional information on the disease and efforts to combat it, see Bird Flu (Avian Influenza).

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

China

Illegal stalls linked to Shanghai flu death​

A woman who died last week from bird flu in Shanghai became sick after buying chickens from a street market where stall owners flouted a ban on live poultry sales, according to a magazine.

Christopher Bodeen

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

A woman who died last week from bird flu in Shanghai became sick after buying chickens from a street market where stall owners flouted a ban on live poultry sales, according to a magazine.

City officials have so far refused to say how the migrant worker, who was 29, became ill, although they say they have traced those who had contact with her and boosted flu-detection measures.

But the respected financial magazine Caijing said Monday its own investigation showed Li became sick after buying two chickens from a stall outside the downtown Tangjiawan market on March 8.

The market stopped selling live chickens in September after the city imposed a ban. But unlicensed stalls set up on the street outside were still selling live poultry, the magazine said.

Most of those stalls have since been closed and the entire market disinfected.

The Health Ministry confirmed Friday that the woman, who died on March 21, had the H5N1 strain of bird flu, making her the first human case in Shanghai. She was the mainland's 16th human case and the 11th to die.

Worldwide, the virus has killed more than 100 people in eight countries.

Caijing said the vendor who sold the chickens to Li has not been seen for several days. Li's husband and co-workers at a downtown construction site were being monitored for flu symptoms but were so far not showing signs of illness.

A woman at the Tangjiayuan market's administration office said all poultry sales had been suspended and the market disinfected.

"As far as I know, that woman who died from bird flu bought dead chickens from some vendor who sold chickens outside the market without a proper license," said the woman, who refused to give her name.

Most of China's human cases have been traced to contact with sick or dead birds, millions of which have been killed by the virus or slaughtered to contain outbreaks.

World Health Organization regional director Shigeru Omi said last week China must improve its surveillance for animal cases. None of China's human cases occurred in areas where authorities were alerted to the presence of the virus by detecting outbreaks in poultry, he pointed out.

A spokeswoman for the WHO Beijing office said officials are still waiting for additional details from the ministry.

"We hope to receive more details within the week," Aphaluck Bhatiasevi said.

City government officials said they had not seen the Caijing report and had no new information.

"We haven't heard from relevant departments about how this woman got infected by the virus," she said.

Despite calls from the country's leaders for more openness, Chinese officials are frequently accused of restricting public information about disease outbreaks, often to avoid criticism from their superiors. ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_...d=15221&sid=7251449&con_type=1&d_str=20060328

H5N1 Indonesian Pandemic Vaccine Sequence Released

Recombinomics Commentary
March 26, 2006

The human H5N1 sequence selected for the next US pandemic vaccine target was just released at Los Alamos (A/Indonesia/5/2005). It is from the father of the index case in Indonesia. Samples from the index case and her sister were not collected, but H5N1 was isolated from her father. Media reports of the familial cluster were in mid-July, and the sequence sof the HA and NA were deposited at Los Alamos by the CDC on August 1. 2005 at 9:29 GMT. The sequence was just updated and released to the public, although the other 6 gene segments are still locked up in the password protected side of the database, along with dozens of other H5N1 sequences from around the world.

Although the sequence is most closely related to Indonesian poultry, especially A/chicken/Wajo/BBVM/2205, there are many polymorphisms not in the most closely related sequence. Moreover, at the protein level there are human specific changes not found in the database, including a new glycosylation site, A90T, as well as a novel cleavage site RESRRKKR.

Many other changes are in the sequences and these polymorphisms are easily linked to H5N1 sequences in the area or in a range of migratory birds. There are polymorphism found in Vietnam and not Thailand as well as Thailand and not Vietnam. There are sequences in the migratory ducks from Jiangxi that appeared at Qinghai Lake and sequences that did not. There are Qinghai sequences not in the Jiangxi ducks and sequences from Henna tree sparrows and Hunan blackbirds. There are a few polymorphisms not limited to H5N1 isolates, including the recent Bavarian mallard sequence or the Canadian or Spanish swine.

In short, the Indonesian sequence is a genetic passport of where sequences have recombined to produce a rapidly evolving deadly H5N1 in Indonesia in July of 2005. The more recent infections no doubt have sequences that have evolved significantly since July of 2005 because of the large number of sequences flying into Indonesia as well as the sequences in people, pigs, and poultry resident within Indonesia.

This genetic soup is getting thicker as Indonesia fails to test and cull and WHO keeps the evolving story under lock and key, available to its consultants who have yet to issue any public statement acknowledging that H5N1 is rapidly evolving via recombination. Instead they issue press releases about reassortment and random mutations and chase the evolving H5N1, which is no contest with current approaches.

It is long past time to release the data. All 8 gene segments of the first official H5N1 case in Indonesia should have been released in August, 2005 and the locked up sequestered sequences should be released immediately.

Media Sources

Map

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/03260601/H5N1_Vaccine_Indo_Sequence.html

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B738237.htm

Sweden finds mink infected with bird flu virus

STOCKHOLM, March 27 (Reuters) - Swedish veterinarians have found a mink with an aggressive form of the H5 bird flu virus and had the mammal put down, the National Veterinary Institute said on Monday.

The animal was found in the Blekinge region of south Sweden, an area where several bird flu cases have been found. What is initially described as an aggressive form of H5 bird flu is often later confirmed as the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus.

The mink probably got the disease from eating wild birds which were already infected, the Institute said in a statement.

The H5N1 bird flu virus can infect humans who come into contact with infected poultry and has killed more than 100 people since late 2003.

The virus has also recently been detected in a marten, a weasel-like mammal, and cats in Germany, and a dog in Azerbaijan.

The World Health Organisation says that so far only domestic poultry are known to have played a role in transmitting the virus from animals to humans, but it has called for further investigation into the significance of infection in other mammals.

Experts gather to try to tease clues on antiviral use from bird flu data​

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cp_health_home&articleID=2211278

(CP) - International experts gathered in Geneva this week are trying to tease from the sparse medical literature clues on how best to use antiviral drugs for treatment of human cases of H5N1 avian flu.

They will be combing through case reports of H5N1 patients treated with the few flu drugs in the medical arsenal attempting to see if patterns are coming into focus on what works, at what dose, for what duration and perhaps even in what combination.

Among other issues, the World Health Organization-sponsored meeting will look at whether higher doses of Tamiflu are needed to combat the virulent H5N1 virus. That dosing regimen is based on the way that Tamiflu, from a class of drugs known as neuraminidase inhibitors, works against strains of human influenza.

Infectious disease experts not attending the two-day meeting, which begins Tuesday, outlined a number of issues they hope the session will clarify.

"Clearly we need more information on how the drugs work in the actual prevention and treatment of avian influenza," said Dr. John Treanor, author of a number of scientific papers on neuraminidase inhibitors, and a professor at the University of Rochester, N.Y.

"We've extrapolated everything from what has been done with conventional flu. And it's very likely, or at least possible, that the response to treatment with H5 would be different in several different ways."

While much of the world's attention has centred on Tamiflu, experts are also interested in the role other flu drugs might play.

"To me, a really big question is: What about Relenza? And I really hope that gets talked about a lot," said Dr. Anne Moscona, an infectious diseases specialist at Weill Medical College at Cornell University in New York.

Relenza is the brand name for zanamivir, the only other licensed neuraminidase inhibitor. The drug, administered by inhalation, has taken a back seat to oseltamivir or Tamiflu. But a number of experts, including Moscona, believe its potential has been under-explored.

For one thing, they suggest the drug's design makes it less vulnerable to the emergence of resistant viruses. To date there have been no reported cases of resistance to zanamivir, whereas oseltamivir resistance has been seen in low numbers both with human flu strains and in cases of H5N1 infection.

Also likely to be discussed are older, cheaper drugs known as the adamantanes or M2 inhibitors. The two drugs in this class are amantadine and rimantadine. (Rimantadine has not been brought to market in Canada.) Both are off patent.

The drugs, longtime warriors in the battle against seasonal flu, have recently been shelved after research done at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control showed the overwhelming majority of circulating human flu strains were resistant to them.

For a period, the H5N1 viruses were resistant as well, but a family or clade of viruses that are susceptible to the adamantane drugs has more recently emerged, prompting experts to give them a second thought.

"I think they should be on the table. In a pandemic everything will be on the table," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"I think that we would be remiss if we dismissed those offhand without knowing at the time the sensitivity of the virus."

These drugs are attractive because they are far more affordable than Tamiflu or Relenza, are in more abundant supply and can be stored for long periods without losing their potency.

But they have a downside. Resistance to them develops quickly, suggesting that while they might play some role early in the life of a pandemic virus, their efficacy might be limited.

"We know that resistance to these drugs can appear fairly easily . . . So it's going to be a little bit difficult making blanket recommendations that they should or they shouldn't be used," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, acting director of the WHO's global flu program.

"How's it going to come out in the wash? Not clear. But it is quite possible that in some situations they might be useful."

But the inability to predict whether adamantane drugs will be effective against H5N1 poses real treatment problems, as Dr. Nancy Cox, head of the CDC's flu branch, noted at an infectious diseases conference in Atlanta last week.

Physicians faced with an H5N1 patient won't have time to isolate viruses and run susceptibility tests.

"That really puts a clinician in a dilemma," Cox said.

"It would pose a very difficult problem for a clinician who didn't know if the patient was actually infected with a resistant or a sensitive H5N1 virus to use a drug that could potentially not be effective."


© The Canadian Press, 2006

JPD said:

http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Resources.H5N1

H5N1 is known to survive…

Unfortunately there is no consensus at this time.

0 deg C/32 deg F = more than 30 days Poultry Health Services Ltd

4 deg C/39 deg F = 35 days WHO Factsheet

17 deg C/63 deg F = 207 days Persistence of avian influenza viruses in water maybe not be specifically H5N1

22 deg C/71 deg F = 4 days Poultry Health Services Ltd

28 deg C/82 deg F = 102 days Persistence of avian influenza viruses in water maybe not be specifically H5N1

37 deg C/98.6 deg F = 6 days WHO Factsheet


Seasonal influenza (not necessarily H5N1) viruses remain infectious after 24 to 48 hours on nonporous environmental surfaces and less than 12 hours on porous surfaces Survival of influenza viruses on environmental surfaces. J Infect Dis 1982 Jul;146(1):47-51Not specifically H5N1.

Remains viable under a wide variety of environmental conditions at 7–8 pH.

Anatoly Smirnov, director of the Research Institute on Veterinary Sanitation, Hygiene and Environment in Russia said…the virus lived 447 days in frozen birds, 300 days in eggs and 240 days in chicken plume in indoor temperatures.

Click to expand...

Thanks, JPD. Not comforting info, heh?


Seabird

"This genetic soup is getting thicker as Indonesia fails to test and cull and WHO keeps the evolving story under lock and key, available to its consultants who have yet to issue any public statement acknowledging that H5N1 is rapidly evolving via recombination. Instead they issue press releases about reassortment and random mutations and chase the evolving H5N1, which is no contest with current approaches"

Point blank, the puppy from hell is exchanging it's genetic material.

Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts
The culling of flocks has failed to slow the rapid spread of the virus, due in North America this year. Vaccination of poultry is under study.

By Jia-Rui Chong
Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2006

The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

Since February, the virus has cut a wide swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds.

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks would contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, the strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere. Officials are hoping to buy a little more time to produce human vaccines and limit the potential economic damage.

"We cannot contain this thing anymore. Nature is in control," said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., who has been studying the virus since it emerged in 1997.

Formally known as avian influenza A, or H5N1, the virus is rarely transmitted to humans.

There have been 186 human cases and 105 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of the deaths — 29 — have occurred this year.

Many fear the virus will mutate into a form that is more easily transmitted among people, introducing a deadly flu strain unfamiliar to the human immune system.

Though the virus also could mutate into a harmless strain, scientists have recently found that it has infected domestic cats and a stone marten in Germany, increasing concerns over its ability to cross into mammals.

"Something generally disturbing is going on at the moment," Nabarro said. "It's certainly in the bird world, and it's pushing up against the human world in a serious way."

For most of its existence, H5N1 stewed in Southeast Asia.

It first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six. The government ordered the culling of all 1.6 million chickens, ducks, quail, partridges and geese in the area to eliminate the virus.

"The slaughter of all poultry in Hong Kong did slow it down," Webster said. "We thought we had gotten rid of it for quite some time."

Four years later, the virus resurfaced. Tens of millions of chickens and ducks were killed in Thailand and Vietnam to contain the virus. The sale of chicken plummeted across the region, even though thoroughly cooking the meat destroys the virus.

The outbreak of the virus in Europe and Africa is traced to the discovery last spring of thousands of dead migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in remote western China. The lake is a crucial stopover for many birds that ultimately mix with others that migrate through Europe, Africa and Asia.

Webster suspects that the virus mutated as it circulated among the birds at Qinghai Lake, allowing it to infect wild birds more easily and hitch a ride with them on their long travels.

The genetic fingerprints of the Qinghai strain have shown up in Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

"Each morning I sit down at the computer … there's another country, another outbreak or another human case," said Nancy J. Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It keeps us breathless," she said.

Scientists say the migrating birds could arrive in North America this summer via bird pathways that encompass Alaska and northeastern Canada.

There is no way to stop wild birds, and they can't all be killed.

"Once it's in migratory fowl, you really can't contain the movement of the disease," Cox said. "In an ideal world, we'd put the spark out, but that's in an ideal world."

With the fading hope of containment, governments are considering the controversial option of vaccinating poultry to limit economic damage and reduce human exposure to the virus.

Many countries have hesitated to vaccinate because some vaccinated birds could pick up the virus but not show any symptoms. Those seemingly healthy birds could sicken other birds or poultry workers.

Some experts suspect that the use of substandard poultry vaccines in China in the past helped H5N1 to circulate undetected there.

Japan, Hong Kong and Germany, among other areas, have banned imports from countries that vaccinate poultry, citing the risk of infected meat. The WHO has said there is no danger in eating infected meat if it is properly cooked.

At the end of February, the European Union relaxed its stand against poultry vaccines and allowed France and the Netherlands to inoculate poultry in selected areas.

Russia also approved a mass vaccination program this month, after the government's efforts to cull more than 800,000 birds did not stop the outbreaks.

"There were reasons in the past not to vaccinate," said Henry L. Niman, president of Recombinomics Inc., a virus and vaccine research company in Pittsburgh. "Now there has been some rethinking of that because nothing seems to be working very well."

Most U.S. chicken producers have yet to see the need to vaccinate their flocks, said Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, whose members produce about 95% of the broiler chickens in the United States.

Lobb said that vaccinating chickens would be a logistical nightmare, and that it would be easier to kill infected birds.

"If you're vaccinating, you're basically waiting for something to happen," he said. "We'd rather go out there and look for something to happen and if we find it, destroy the animals."

Work on a human vaccine is proceeding, and the CDC has begun stockpiling millions of doses of an H5N1 vaccine undergoing clinical trials.

That vaccine, which was derived from a strain of the virus circulating in Vietnam in 2004, is being produced by Chiron Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., and French drug maker Sanofi Pasteur.

Researchers have begun work on another human vaccine derived from a more recent version of the virus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced this month. That version is based on a strain harvested from Indonesia in 2005 and is more closely related to strains in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The key now, said Cox of the CDC, is buying time to develop vaccines and devise a strategy for using them effectively.

The Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Department has been brainstorming since April in anticipation of bird flu infections among city employees and their families.

"We're planning for an absenteeism rate as high as 30%," said Jim Sims, an emergency planner.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/...005262.story?coll=ny-leadhealthnews-headlines

AIDS, TB, malaria and bird flu spread unchecked in Burma​

http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=627966

Government policies in Burma that restrict public health and humanitarian aid have created an environment where AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria and bird flu (H5N1) are spreading unchecked, according to a report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In that report authors Chris Beyrer, MD, MPH, director of the Bloomberg School's Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Luke Mullany, PhD, Voravit Suwanvanichkij, MD, MPH and Nicole Franck, MHS, document the spread of these infectious diseases, which if left unchecked, could pose a serious health threat to other Southeast Asia nations and the world. They believe international cooperation and policies are needed to restore humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people, but caution that new restrictions imposed by the military junta are making such efforts more difficult. The full report was presented at a briefing for State Department leaders on March 24 and is available from the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights at www.jhsph.edu/burma. The report is also under review for publication with the journal Public Library of Science Medicine (PLoS Medicine).

The report states that Burma reported its first cases of bird flu among poultry to the World Health Organization on March 8, 2006. However, the ruling junta censored reports of the outbreak to its own public until March 17-- by which time the outbreak killed 10,000 more birds and 41,000 needed to be culled to stem further spreading.

The report documents a longstanding and severe under funding of health and education programs in Burma. Health expenditures in Burma are among the lowest globally, including an annual budget of less than $22,000 for the prevention and treatment of HIV among a total population of 43 million people. Much of the country lacks basic laboratory facilities to carry out a CD4 blood test, the minimum standard for clinical monitoring of AIDS care. In 2005, 34 percent of tuberculosis cases in Burma were resistant to any one of the four standard first-line drug treatments, which is double the rate of drug-resistant cases in neighboring countries. Nearly half of all deaths from malaria in Asia occur in Burma. The report also reveals that 70 percent of anti-malarial pills sold in Burma contain substandard amounts of active ingredients, which increases the risk of drug-resistance.

"There is a growing humanitarian crisis in Burma. In our report, we document how the ruling government's policies have restricted nearly all aid and allowed serious infectious diseases to spread unchecked," said Beyrer, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School. "With the global spread of bird flu, there is a fear that if a human form of H5N1 were to take hold in Burma, it could potentially spread unchecked for weeks or months before anyone knew about it. Uncontrolled spread of any disease, especially an emerging disease like H5N1, poses a serious health threat to Burma's populous neighbors, like China and India, as well as the rest of the world."

The report also documents threats and restrictions to foreign relief workers and relief groups, including the Red Cross. Because of the deteriorating situation, the United Nations Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was forced to withdraw its five-year, $96 million dollar grant agreement with Burma. Backpack Health Worker Team, an aid group that provides primary health care services in rural areas of Eastern Burma and Thailand, is also raising concerns about its ability to monitor and contain outbreaks of bird flu and other diseases.

"The Burmese junta is increasing restrictions on humanitarian assistance and public health while the health of Burmese people deteriorates, posing a widening threat to Burma and her neighbors," said Beyrer.

Link to tomorrows (3/28) Bird Flu thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=191304