04/12 | Daily Bird Flu Thread: Birdwatchers drafted in fight against avian flu

Link to yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193051

Human Cases

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 Egypt
o Iraq

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

Updated April 3, 2006

Animal Cases

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

* Africa:
o Burkina Faso
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

* South Asia:
o Afghanistan
o India
o Kazakhstan
o Pakistan

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

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


For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Organization for Animal Health Web Site: http://www.oie.int/eng/en_index.htm

Updated April 7, 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

UK

Birdwatchers drafted in fight against avian flu​

Published: Tuesday, 11 April, 2006, 11:48 AM Doha Time

LONDON: London’s wildlife sanctuaries are drafting in birdwatchers to look for signs of avian flu in the capital.

The London Wetland Centre in Barnes said it has already begun using volunteers to carry out checks on its birds for sign of the killer H5N1 strain of bird flu.

“Our staff carry out checks of all our areas every morning, but we are now asking birdwatchers to help as well,” said spokesman Martin Senior. “Our staff are training them in what to look for, and we will be using all of our hides and shelters to look for dead birds across the reserve.”

But Senior confirmed no birds from the Barnes sanctuary have so far been sent to government labs for testing.

At Kew Gardens there was a heightened level of concern as staff performed daily early-morning patrols to check the health and status of resident and visiting birds. Petting zoos, such as Battersea Park Children’s Zoo, where children are able to play with animals, have separated their birds from other animals.

Leading conservationists yesterday warned that public fears over bird flu could lead to serious problems for Britain’s wild birds.

“People are really going a bit bonkers over bird flu,” said Ruth Crumbie of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust.

“There is a real risk that people will stop feeding wild birds, which could be disastrous. Birds need all the help they can get at the moment, and I would urge people to keep feeding, and encourage nesting in your garden.”

The increased surveillance comes as further details emerged of contingency plans for a flu pandemic on London’s population if the disease passed to humans.

Planning documents circulated to businesses call for plans for a worst-case scenario involving food and water rationing, cancellation of all public events and restrictions on public transport.

Professor Sue Atkinson, London’s director of public health, said: “We believe 2mn people could contract it, and on average they would be out of action for five to eight days.

“That will obviously have a major effect on everyday life, with a lot of companies struggling to cope, so we have been drawing up plans to deal with this for a long time,” she said. “Our worst-case scenario also shows that up to 50,000 extra deaths could occur because people would have no immunity to the virus.”

A dead swan found in Scotland remains the only confirmed case of H5N1 in the UK. A total of 14 dead birds have tested negative in Scotland over the last few days. Further tests are being carried out on more birds in the infection area near Cellardyke, Fife.

The government moved to calm public fears following a leaked letter from chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson to Schools Minister Jacqui Smith in which he suggested an estimated 100,000 death toll among schoolchildren could be halved with school closures. – London Evening Standard

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topi...o=81239&version=1&template_id=38&parent_id=20

Poland

Bird flu deals heavy blow to Polish poultry industry​

Poland's poultry business has lost an estimated 760 million zlotys (233.8 million U.S. dollars) during the past six months as a result of bird flu outbreaks, the Polish News Agency reported Tuesday.

"The loss is a result of a fall of production and consumption of poultry meat," the president of the National Poultry Council Rajmund Paczkowski said.

According to estimates, the production of the poultry industry between October 2005 and March 2006 fell by 5 to 8 percent, and even 20 percent in some smaller farms, while the consumption of poultry products dropped by 10 to 15 percent.

More than 10 bird flu outbreaks have been detected in Poland since the country confirmed its first case in the northern city of Torun on March 5.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200604/12/eng20060412_257749.html

Hannah K. Strange
UPI U.K. Correspondent

LONDON, April 11, 2006

A bird flu pandemic could trigger a "sharp and deep" global economic recession if national governments and financial institutions do not act to prepare themselves now, the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday.

Launching the IMF's annual Global Financial Stability Report in London, Gerd Hausler, director of the institution's international capital markets department, said that a "real, fully-fledged" pandemic where an avian flu strain had mutated to pass from human to human could have a "serious impact" on international financial systems and for the global economy as a whole.

It could even trigger a disorderly unwinding of global financial imbalances, something that most analysts agreed would have devastating consequences for the world economy given their current unprecedented scale, he said.

The global financial system could be adversely affected by market disruptions and changes in capital flows stemming from an increase in risk aversion, he said. It would also suffer from operational disruptions caused by a sharp increase in worker absenteeism.

"A large part of the workforce would not show up for work, which would ultimately result in a sharp and deep recession," he said. "This is why we are encouraging our membership to do all it can to avoid and prepare for a situation where people panic and stay home from work."

He cautioned that while such an avian flu pandemic was relatively unlikely, the impact could be profound. "It is something the world doesn't talk so much about," he added.

The Global Financial Stability report says that the magnitude and duration of disruptions to financial systems and the world economy would depend not only on the severity of the pandemic but on the degree of preparedness.

While in recent years, financial institutions, central banks and regulators have developed business continuity plans to cope on an operational level with terrorist acts or disasters, planning for a bird flu pandemic has so far been "limited," it notes. The report acknowledges that a number of large financial institutions have extended their preparations, identifying non-essential services in the event of staff shortages, planning for working from home, for the transport of key personnel who could not work from home, and for heavy demand for cash by the public.

However the level of preparedness varies greatly across national authorities and financial institutions, it says.

The report warns that operational disruptions could prevent transactions from being completed and obligations from being met, and could spread from one jurisdiction to others even if they were unaffected by the virus, leading to disorderly changes in asset prices and capital flows.

It also cites potential threats to global financial markets, such as a sharp increase in risk aversion resulting in a rising demand for cash and liquid assets. This would in turn lead to a decline in equity values and an increase in lending premiums. As an avian flu pandemic is expected to spread rapidly across the globe, similar adjustments in asset prices could occur across entire regions, it says. These declines could put financial institutions under stress, it suggests. Market disruptions would become more severe should there be any breakdown in infrastructure leading to limited or intermittent trading.

A pandemic could also lead to significant reductions in capital flows to emerging markets, and some capital flight from residents seeking safe havens, the report says. Based on experience of the SARS threat, it assesses that foreign direct investment plans will change little, though some major investments may be postponed. Some countries, particularly those with high-priced equities or weak public services, or whose current accounts are highly dependent on commodity prices or export flows, may see investors remove portfolios in search of safer options.

In the worst case scenario, the shift in asset allocation caused by an outbreak of avian flu could trigger a disorderly unwinding of current global financial imbalances, the report warns. This phenomenon could be "very nasty," Hausler told Tuesday's press launch -- substantially worse than an unraveling caused by other factors such as a turning of the credit cycle -- with potentially very negative consequences for global financial stability.

To ensure minimal operational impact, the IMF report recommends that national authorities, including regulators, provide guidance on business continuity plans and review those established for adequacy and consistency. Banks and national authorities should test those plans to make certain that they can sustain essential functions over a prolonged period, and to ensure that back-up equipment, telecommunications and data centers are able to deal with the surge in online and remote access activities generated by a large number of people working from home.

Authorities and institutions must also ensure they can meet sharp increases in demands for cash and other liquid assets, and must be prepared to accommodate shock-related price increases, the IMF says.

To minimize market overreaction, countries should develop good internal and international communications strategies, the report suggests. To avoid panic or forced selling into falling markets and to contain asset price deflation, financial regulators should adopt a degree of prudential forbearance, perhaps temporarily easing restrictions and limits, it recommends.

The IMF emphasizes that a fully-fledged avian flu pandemic is by no means inevitable, or even probable, but given the potentially severe impact of such an event, national authorities and financial institutions must prepare now in order to minimize disruption.

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=7121

I could see this turn into a terrible scenario, birdwatchers turning into gestapo kind of folks, betraying there fellow countryman, gestapo birdwatchers becoming too powerful closing down peoples farms even at the expense of being wrong or even because of despitefulness or prejudice, could just be fiction though.

Indonesia's Bird Flu Cases Indicate Virus Control Isn't Working​

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=apHVwYTbSI64&refer=asia

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Human bird flu cases in Indonesia, averaging one a week since September, indicate measures to control the virus haven't stopped it spreading among poultry, a United Nations envoy said.

``I remain very concerned about the continued reports of human cases and fatalities because this means that bird flu in rural and urban areas is very pronounced,'' David Nabarro, the UN's senior coordinator for bird flu and pandemic influenza, said yesterday in an interview in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous nation, has had outbreaks of the H5N1 avian flu strain in 26 of its 33 provinces, and so far 32 people have become sick and 24 of them have died. Diseased fowl increase the risk for humans and create opportunities for the virus to mutate into a form that may kill millions of people.

The disease is known to have infected at least 193 people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa since 2003, killing 109. The H5N1 strain has all prerequisites to spawn a pandemic except the ability to spread easily from person-to-person, the World Health Organization said last week. The last flu pandemic, in 1968, killed 1 million people worldwide, according to the Geneva-based agency.

The WHO yesterday confirmed Indonesia's 32nd avian flu case after a man in Padang city on Sumatra island tested positive for the H5N1 virus. The health agency also said confirmatory tests on samples taken from an 8-year-old who died in July 2005 showed she had the virus in the same month the country's first fatality was reported.

Jakarta

About half the Indonesians infected with the H5N1 virus have come from Jakarta and surrounding areas. Thirty million households in Indonesian villages keep more than 200 million chickens in backyards, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

Nabarro said Indonesia needs to ``build up the animal health services from the bottom up'' and maintain disease surveillance.

``The government is very focused on the issue and the government is giving higher priority in improving animal health,'' he said. ``You have to maintain this effort for many years to come, particularly in improving bio-security in small- scale and backyard sectors.''

Bird flu controls in Indonesia, which successfully eradicated foot-and-mouth disease in cattle in the 1970s, have suffered because the government doesn't have enough people to monitor the spread of the disease in poultry. A law that came into effect in 2001 gave power to provinces and regencies with little supervision from the national government in Jakarta.

`Very Slow'

A ``very slow'' surveillance and monitoring system and communication problems between central and provincial governments are hampering efforts to contain the virus, Azmi Mat Akhir, an official with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said last month.

Indonesia, with a population of 220 million people, may spend about 3 trillion rupiah ($334 million) this year to implement control measures, including culling and vaccinating poultry, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said in February. The government on Feb. 24 started checking homes in Jakarta for diseased fowl in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.

FEATURE-In China, markets a worry as bird flu​

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HKG198548.htm

By John Ruwitch

GUANGZHOU, China, April 12 (Reuters) - The cacophony of squawking, clucking, honking and quacking that two football fields' worth of live poultry makes is the first thing you notice approaching the Baixing Free-Range Bird Wholesale Market.

Then the smell of feathers, feed, dirt and faeces hits.

Tens of thousands of birds from all over southern China are trucked each day to the market in a dust-covered suburb of Guangzhou where they are stocked temporarily in small pens and sold -- live or butchered -- to retailers or restaurants.

It is a massive one-stop shop for all kinds of poultry, including chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons. It is also possibly the ideal place for avian influenza to spread.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread with surprising speed. Since January, more than 30 countries have reported outbreaks.

Sitting in the middle of the market, duck vendor Li Jingwen seems oblivious to the noise and stench, and brushes off suggestions that bird flu might be something to fear.

As his colleagues toss ducks into a basket to be weighed and sold, Li loads a wad of tobacco into a bamboo water pipe and explains.

"So few people have been infected by bird flu," he says, squinting to avoid dust and feathers stirred up by a janitor. "The common cold infects and kills more people around the world."

A woman who runs the tiny convenience store next to the feed depot by the market's exit feels the same way. "The chickens aren't afraid, so why should we be?"

The virus mostly infects birds, and scientists have said that test results show about one percent of live poultry in the area have the H5N1 virus. In other words, they are infected and can shed the virus in their faeces, yet they appear healthy.

But since 2003, H5N1 has infected more than 190 people and killed over half. Twelve have so far died in China, including a man in Guangzhou.

With such a high death rate, health experts have been warning the virus could pose the greatest threat in years if it mutates and acquires the ability to spread easily between humans. Millions of people could die in a global pandemic that would also cripple economies for months or even longer.

MARKET WORRIES

Markets like Baixing, and smaller "wet markets" that are ubiquitous in Chinese villages, towns and cities, are worrisome.

Scientists rate very close contact between humans and infected birds as the greatest risk.

"However, the other setting is the marketplace, where you have a huge volume of animals coming through and changing all the time," said Julie Hall, in charge of the WHO's efforts against bird flu in China.

"The mix of different species and the way in which live markets operate clearly is something which we need to look at."

The Chinese government is taking measures to better regulate its markets. In some places, like Shanghai, the sale of live poultry has been banned in city wet markets. China has also been vaccinating farmed poultry in the past few years.

In Guangzhou, the capital of the populous and economically vibrant southern province of Guangdong, health officials have warned that the warming weather does not mean bird flu is gone. The virus tends to thrive in cooler months.

Hong Kong, too, has stepped up its monitoring of incoming birds, regularly disinfects markets and plans to set up a central slaughterhouse in the coming years.

But some say the measures taken on the mainland are insufficient.

Guan Yi, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, says Guangdong's testing is slow and the sample sizes are too small to be meaningful in the hunt for infected birds.

"The Guangdong market is a major consumer market, most of the poultry is imported from other provinces. Just ask them: How do you detect the millions and millions of poultry imported every day, imported from the other neighbouring provinces?" he said.

The fact that birds are vaccinated also complicates the testing picture, he added. "What's the significance of checking the antibodies? Was the antibody caused by vaccine or infection? How do you interpret the significance?" he asked.

For those who spend their days in the noisy Baixing market, it's all a bit over-hyped. All vehicles coming in have to drive through a shallow pool of water and disinfectant, but that's about the only obvious precaution.

"It's safe here," said a cleaning lady, also surnamed Li, as she scooped up a dead chicken and tossed it into a special receptacle behind the guard post for disposal.

Asked how the bird died, she said she didn't know, and added: "A few die every day". (Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing)

If and when Bird Flu goes H2H, we are told it will spread very rapidly. Airline passengers will quickly carry it to almost everywhere. Since almost no one has antibodies, the disease will transmit easily because humans have no immune resistance. If those statements are accurate, why isn't it also killing birds just as rapidly? Once H5N1 is loose in a chicken flock, how fast do the birds die? Is it a matter of one here and one there or do large numbers fall over dead together? If it is highly virulent in chicken flocks, and if the disease is loose in wild birds, why aren't huge numbers of birds dying wherever it takes hold? How is it that culling infected chicken flocks seems to slow down the spread, enough so that China, for example, can claim to be successfully controlling the disease? Vaccinating is only said to weaken the disease, not to eradicate it. Why doesn't the disease spread in birds the wildfire way we are being told it will spread in humans?

sirlancelot said:

I could see this turn into a terrible scenario, birdwatchers turning into gestapo kind of folks, betraying there fellow countryman, gestapo birdwatchers becoming too powerful closing down peoples farms even at the expense of being wrong or even because of despitefulness or prejudice, could just be fiction though.

Click to expand...

I like the way you put that sirlancelot... you make it sound like the story line for a 'B-movie'...

I try to keep a straight face with some of the stories that come across the Daily BF... But, this one, with bow-legged poindexters, in bermuda shorts, pith helmets and binoculars slung around their necks, becoming the next feared ghestapo... That ranks right up there with New Freedom's 'Gay Duck' story a couple fo days ago.

Ya know... so much of life all comes down to perspective and the attitude at which it's approached.

Cambodian ostracised for reporting bird flu​

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BKK260524.htm

By Ek Madra

TOUL PREK, Cambodia, April 12 (Reuters) - When her 3-year-old daughter died of bird flu, Choeun Sok Ny expected sympathy from fellow villagers in Cambodia. All she got was abuse after the death drew government culling teams but no compensation.

"Our neighbours are unhappy with us because they lost all their chickens and ducks after my daughter died," the 23-year-old said, clutching a photo album of her daughter, Mon Puthy, who became Cambodia's fifth bird flu victim last month.

"They should care about their lives more than their chickens. But they don't," she said, the tears rolling down her cheeks as she explained the local backlash that epitomises the problems of bird flu monitoring in the poorest corners of the globe.

If governments in countries like Cambodia, where most people have to get by on a dollar a day, do not compensate properly for poultry lost in anti-bird flu culls, villagers will do all they can to ensure possible outbreaks are covered up.

"Next time, they won't be able to just come and cull my chickens if compensation is not settled first," said angry 28-year-old Duch Yoeum, who lost 50 birds in the cull around Toul Prek, a dusty village 50 km (30 miles) west of Phnom Penh.

"I used to sell my chickens for about two dollars each, but now I have nothing to sell," he said, standing next to an empty bamboo cage.

"That girl's death had nothing to do with my chickens. If I am allowed to raise chickens again, I won't bother to tell them when my chickens get sick," he said.

SCEPTICISM

Public understanding of bird flu remains low in the Southeast Asian nation still recovering from the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s. Even Mon Puthy's father, who also handled dead birds, isn't convinced his daughter died of the H5N1 virus.

"I half believe it. I had close contact with my daughter when she was in hospital, but I'm still fine," said 30-year-old Choeun Ourk, who tested negative for the virus known to have infected 193 people worldwide and killed 109 since 2003.

However, experts said the people of Toul Prek, a remote community in rice fields and banana and coconut groves, knew enough to keep quiet when hundreds of birds started dying.

"The village knew about the dangers from these diseased birds, but somehow that knowledge wasn't turned fully into practice," David Nabarro, the United Nations chief bird flu official, said during a recent visit to Bangkok.

Experts were now trying to find out "exactly why villagers perhaps did not confirm to authorities when birds were dying and whether that means the incentive payments for reporting are either not getting through or are not sufficient", he said.

Cambodia asked donors in Beijing in January for $32.5 million over three years in bird flu aid, but the sum is too small to be able to pay culling compensation, said Megge Miller of the World Health Organisation in Phnom Penh.

The consequences are serious for the informal reporting networks acting as a first line of defence against a virus that scientists fear could mutate into a form that jumps easily between humans, unleashing a global flu pandemic, Miller said.

"The recent cases have really highlighted that because there is no compensation, people are being ostracised from their communities and so we get no reports any more," she said.

With the cash-strapped government unable to pay compensation, the best Agriculture Ministry officials can offer is a promise to pay villagers back in kind.

"Compensation is not there, but we are trying to replace their sick chickens with healthy ones for new breeding," Animal Health Department director Kao Phal said.

"If we keeping paying out compensation, what will we do if big farms have all their poultry die?"

Human bird flu cases reported in 3 countries​

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/apr1106avflu.html

Apr 11, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – Egypt and Indonesia each reported a new human case of avian influenza today, while the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed a suspected case in Azerbaijan.

An 18-year-old Egyptian woman from the northern governorate of Menufiya is that country's 12th victim of the avian flu virus, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today. She was hospitalized today and remains in stable condition, AFP added.

Although details were scant, the news service said she contracted the illness 4 days ago after handling infected poultry.

All of Egypt's 12 human infections have been reported in the past 3 weeks, AFP noted. Of those patients, 3 have died, 5 have recovered and 4 are under treatment, AFP reported in a statement attributed to Egyptian health officials.

In Indonesia, a 23-year-old man in Sumatra has a confirmed H5N1 infection, Reuters news service reported today. His illness has been confirmed by a WHO collaborating laboratory, Hariadi Wibisono of the Indonesian health ministry told Reuters.

The man had been working at a chicken farm in West Java before becoming ill, the story said. He is the 33rd person in Indonesia to suffer avian flu, of whom 23 have died, an AFP story said.

United Nations avian flu coordinator David Nabarro, attending a meeting in Jakarta today, told reporters he would not recommend mass culling of birds in Indonesia, Reuters reported. Indonesia has not conducted the mass culling seen in some other nations, nor has it conducted a thorough mass vaccination campaign.

Teenager recovered in Azerbaijan
In Azerbaijan, follow-up tests at a WHO lab have confirmed an additional human H5N1 infection, the WHO announced today. The patient, a girl, 17, fell ill on Mar 11 but has since recovered and left the hospital. Her 15-year-old cousin also had an H5N1 infection, which had been confirmed earlier. They are neighbors from the Daikyand settlement in Salyan rayon, where seven of the country's eight cases originated.

"Active house-to-house surveillance in the settlement has failed to detect any further cases," WHO said in a news release. This brings Azerbaijan's human tally to eight cases, of which five were fatal.

WHO also updated its case count to reflect the confirmed case in Azerbaijan, with the deaths remaining at 109 and total cases climbing to 193.

A 41-year-old woman who has been hospitalized in southern China with pneumonia symptoms is undergoing testing for H5N1 infection, AFP reported today. She is from Guangzhou, just north of Hong Kong.

A Bloomberg news service report cites the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong as saying that the Chinese government has banned reporting of the woman's suspected illness.

Authorities asked local media to await an official government statement on the woman, whose surname is Li. She has been hospitalized since Mar 25, according to Bloomberg's report, which relied heavily on the Hong Kong newspaper.

The woman works in a public market, about 20 meters from a livestock area, according to Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, WHO spokeswoman in China, who was quoted in the Post.

The woman has been diagnosed as having pneumonia of an unknown cause and is in stable condition, according to an AFP report today. AFP quoted Bhatiasevi as saying that testing would take 2 to 3 weeks.

Mixed news elsewhere
Elsewhere in the world there was mixed news about the impact of the virus on people.

In Afghanistan, no evidence of avian flu was found in birds in a remote village where three children recently died, Reuters reported yesterday. However, 20 other samples from seven provinces have tested positive for an H5 avian flu, although the neuraminidase has not yet been determined.

The deaths of the children, all from the same family in the central province of Ghor, prompted fears of avian flu, Reuters said. Samples were not taken from the children before their burial, the stories noted.

The lack of samples left investigators to rely on bird samples. Officials found no evidence of disease among about 1,000 chickens in the village, Reuters said.

News from West Africa was more worrisome, if a Reuters report from Nairobi yesterday is any indication. A WHO official, Honore Meda, told Reuters at an avian flu seminar in Nairobi that human cases of H5N1 may be occurring undetected in Africans.

"So far, there is no confirmed human case of avian flu virus infection in West Africa, but this is not a reason to say there is no human case," Meda said. "There is a risk and probability of human cases occurring in West Africa but there's no evidence to say there is or there is not a human case."

WHO in February tested samples from four Nigerians, including a woman who died. The samples did not yield a clear result, Reuters reported. Four West African countries have experienced or are experiencing avian flu outbreaks in poultry.

In India, seven poultry farmers committed suicide because the H5N1 virus destroyed their livelihood, according to an AFP report that cited information from a farmers' organization.

The H5N1 infections and subsequent culling that have swept India have cost the industry $1.8 billion in 6 weeks, the National Egg Coordination Committee said today.

The seven suicides are not an unheard-of response to the stresses of farming in India. The AFP story noted that nearly 9,000 people in four Indian states are thought to have killed themselves in connection with rising costs, debt, and repeated crop failures in the past 5 years.

Government urges individual preparation for avian pandemic.​

One of the most reported medical stories in recent months has been the avian flu that’s making its way around the world. Millions of birds have been destroyed in efforts to slow the spread of the disease.

Although the H5N1 strain of flu affects birds, about 190 humans have come down with the disease. It has been fatal in more than half the cases. Thus far, the flu hasn’t been much of a threat to human populations, but health officials worry the H5N1 strain could mutate into a human virus.

Such a new strain of influenza could sweep across the globe, killing millions and sickening millions more. Such an outbreak could affect nearly every aspect of daily life as people in all industries become too sick to work and governments limit public gatherings. The global health care network would be swamped by the pandemic. The government would be overwhelmed by the scope of the problem.
You don’t have to take our word for it. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said at a meeting in Denver last month that the government will not be able to take care of everyone, so Americans must take it upon themselves to prepare for such an outbreak.

Other agencies on state and local levels have urged people to stockpile supplies such as food, water, medicines and other essentials, to be able to sustain themselves without outside help for at least 72 hours.

It’s a frightening prospect, but not without a tiny glimmer of light. We see the possible pandemic as an opportunity for America to begin to wean itself from dependence on government. Don’t misunderstand; we don’t want to see millions suffer and die just to prove a point. But individual preparedness can help people realize that government is not always the answer.

For decades, people have turned to Washington and state governments when disaster strikes. We’d prefer for the government to limit itself to the few, enumerated roles laid out for it in the U.S. Constitution.

Individuals and corporations are not powerless to respond in emergencies. Last year, when the Federal Emergency Management Administration was slow to respond to the disaster in New Orleans, corporations such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot had trucks rolling into the area within hours after the storm ended. Some people, especially in areas that didn’t sustain much damage from the storm or floodwaters, had stockpiled supplies and were able to get by until services returned to some semblance of normal.

The Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” certainly fits in this case. Generations of outdoor recreationists have lived by the adage, “better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.” Not everyone has the means to plunk down the cash needed to lay in supplies for several days or a week, but most can pick up a few extra canned goods or a gallon of drinking water on their weekly grocery trips. And the more we can rely on ourselves if such a crisis comes to pass, the less we’ll be looking to Washington. There’s a role for government in a pandemic that could cripple our economy, but making sure everyone is fed is not part of it. There are some things only government can do, and it should not be distracted by doing things we can do for ourselves.

More information on a possible flu pandemic can be found on the Internet at www.pandemicflu.com and www.cdcgov/business.

http://www.oaoa.com/columns/edit041206.htm

H5N1 Bird Flu Surveillance Shortfalls in Great Britain​

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/04120601/H5N1_Surveillance_GB.html

Recombinomics Commentary
April 12, 2006

The weekly magazine said its suspicions were raised because samples of droppings from more than 3,000 wild birds taken for DEFRA last December by the conservation group The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) showed only 0.06 percent had the ordinary flu that ducks and geese normally carry.

Crommie said DEFRA told the WWT samplers to take fecal samples on a sterile moistened swab and to put them in dry plastic tubes before freezing. But the independent experts said the samples would need to be immersed in a saline or preservative solution before being frozen.

"If you left a swab in the refrigerator in its sheath like that, it could dry out and your would lose all your virus," said Bjorn Olsen, of the University of Kalmar in Sweden, who tests 10,000 birds each year for avian flu.

The above comments describe one way to generate false negatives, but there are countless other ways, and the low percentage of samples that are positive for bird flu indicates the testing procedure in Great Britain is flawed.

The flawed testing in Europe has been described previously. Last fall Canada reported H5 in as many as 24% of the birds tested in British Columbia. H5 has detected in all reporting areas and the number of bird flu positives was higher than the H5 numbers. Last fall most European countries were reporting negative results, although a handful of countries had detected H5N1 in wild bird populations and the H5N1 detected was the predicted H5N1 strain.

Although European countries have yet to detect H5N1 in live wild birds, most have now detected H5N1 in dead wild birds, especially swans. Russia detected H5N1 in about two dozen species of wild birds as described in the OIE Mission Report and conceded that their numbers were an underestimate because many sparsely populated regions were not tested. The Russian data from last summer would suggest that by now H5N1 would be widespread in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and south central Asia because major flyways in those areas intersect in southern Siberia where H5N1 was concentrated and those birds would spread H5N1 during fall and winter migrations. Thus, the affected countries, like England, that continue to deny widespread H5N1 infections are simply admitting that their surveillance system is flawed.

In Europe, evidence suggest that H5N1 arrived in the fall, and was most often detected in the winter in resident birds like the mute swan at a time when most migratory birds had flown through the Middle East into Africa. Those birds are now beginning to return, but most of the H5N1 detected in Europe in the past several months are from H5N1 that arrived in the fall.

England would not be exempt from birds migrating in from Russia last fall and the failure to detect H5N1 in over 3000 samples reflects testing flaws. Testing methodologies in countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa which still maintain an H5N1 free status should be investigated.

New cases of H5N1 found in southern Russian province​

Published: 4/12/2006

MOSCOW - The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has been found among dozens of dead hens in Russia's southern region of Volgograd, in the second such case in two weeks, an official with the local administration said.

"A local veterinary laboratory confirmed that the blood of the dead hens contained the H5N1 virus," the Interfax news agency quoted an official with the administration of the district where the birds were found as saying.

Samples were sent to the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, where the type of virus was to be more thoroughly tested, the official said.

Twenty-five hens died Tuesday in the village of Kolobrodovo, in the Frolovo district of the Volgograd region, he said. The village was placed under quarantine.

H5N1 had already been found among dozens of dead birds in the Volgograd region late last month.

Russia's chief veterinarian Sergei Dankvert warned last month that bird flu was posing a growing threat to the country.

In its most dangerous form H5N1 can be deadly to humans, and scientists worry that it could mutate into a form transmissible from human to human.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 186 people have been reported infected with H5N1 and more than half of those have died.

The outbreaks in the Volgograd region follow outbreaks in several other parts of southern Russia as well as in nearby Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia.


04/12/2006 19:46 GMT

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=118670

India

Bird flu: Seven suspected patients hospitalised​

Press Trust of India

Indore, April 13, 2006

Seven persons, including six women, suspected to be affected with bird-flu were admitted in the isolation ward of the TB Hospital, Chief Medical Officer KK Vijayvargiya said on Wednesday.

"Their blood samples have been collected and were sent to Delhi for examination," he said.

"The suspected persons were referred from Mortakka in Khandwa district with suspected bird flu fever," he said, adding that they were examined by doctors and initial reports did not reveal anything suspicious.

Only after getting the report from the Delhi laboratory it can be confirmed whether they are affected with the bird flu or not, he said.

The suspected persons consumed a chicken dish few days back following which it was suspected that they are affected with the disease, he said.

They complained of vomiting, fever and pain in hands and legs, he added.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1673918,001300820000.htm

Chinese school closes after unknown virus kills student​

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Di...th=April2006&file=World_News2006041322340.xml

BEIJING: A high school in northern China has been shut down after an unidentified virus killed one student and left dozens of others hospitalised with high fevers, state press reported yesterday.

Medical officials have determined that the outbreak in Shaanxi province is not bird flu but are still trying to identify the virus, the Beijing Times reported. The virus was first detected after 19 of the students from Qishan county came down with high fever late last month.

One of the students from Yidian High School died after being sent to the provincial capital of Xian for treatment and, by Monday this week, a total of 30 students had been hospitalized with high fevers, the report said. Most of the fevers registered over 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit), it added.

“At the moment we have ruled out the possibility of atypical pneumonia and the bird flu, but the transmission of this disease is getting stronger and the exact cause and source of the disease has not been confirmed,” one unnamed medical official was quoted as saying.

Officials at the school said the outbreak came after students had participated in a sports meeting in cold weather.

Link to tomorrows (4/13) Bird Flu thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193295