05/25 | Daily BF: UN says most important development in the spread of H5N1 since 2003
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PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Source Of Family's Bird Flu Puzzles U.N. Officials
POSTED: 11:30 am PDT May 24, 2006
UPDATED: 5:59 pm PDT May 24, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The U.N. health agency described the deaths of six Indonesian family members from bird flu as the most important development in the spread of the virus since 2003, saying it is investigating whether the disease has spread from person to person.
"We have a team down there, they are examining what is going on and they can't find an animal source of this infection," said Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the Western Pacific region of the World Health Organization.
"This is the first time that we've been completely stumped" by a source for the infection, he said.
Six of the seven people in an extended family in northern Sumatra who caught the disease have died, the most recent on Monday. WHO is investigating whether the H5N1 strain of bird flu was spread among family members, though it said Wednesday there was no evidence the virus had mutated to a form that will spread more easily between humans, possibly sparking a pandemic.
Steven Bjorge, the WHO team leader in the village of Kubu Sembelang, said none of the poultry in the area had tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus.
"We're not surprised that there is possible human-to-human transmission," Bjorge said. "The thing we're looking for is whether it's sustained beyond the immediate cluster."
Isolated cases of very limited human-to-human transmission have been documented -- including one in Thailand involving a mother and child -- but such cases do not mean a pandemic flu strain has emerged. There was no indication the Sumatra infections had spread to anyone outside the family.
Still, the scenario worries scientists.
"No matter what's going on at this stage, it's a limited transmission between members of the same family," Cordingley said from Manila, Philippines.
"What we are looking out for is any sign of this virus going outside of this family cluster into the general community, that would be very worrying. We haven't seen any signs of that yet."
Bird flu has killed 124 people worldwide, more than a quarter of them in Indonesia. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected poultry.
Bjorge said the virus that infected the family members was genetically the same as the one found circulating in the area earlier. Tests are still being carried out on poultry in the village.
Peter Roeder, an animal health expert from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said tests so far had been negative for the virus, but antibodies were found in some specimens taken from chickens and ducks.
It's unclear, however, whether they were infected at the time the family members fell ill. They could have been sickened much earlier or developed antibodies after vaccination, he said, adding that no immunization records were available.
Dead poultry was also found in an area outside the village, but test results for those birds have not yet come back, said Roeder, who has worked closely with Indonesia to strengthen poultry surveillance and response to bird flu outbreaks.
Bjorge said the woman first believed to be infected worked as a vegetable vendor in a market where live poultry was sold.
Experts are trying to determine if that's where she became infected. The woman, who died May 4, was never tested for the H5N1 virus, but WHO considers her part of the family cluster. The woman's 25-year-old brother is the only family member still living after being infected.
"All confirmed cases in the cluster can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness," the WHO said in a statement on its Web site.
Bjorge said some samples have been taken from villagers, but that local authorities have resisted working with outside health experts. WHO has enlisted local villagers to help monitor the village for anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms.
If anyone is found to have even mild symptoms, they will be quarantined and given the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu, he said.
http://www.nbc11.com/health/9268026/detail.html
okie medicvet
Inactive
How long would it be before it is known if others outside the family have it? What is the latent period for this?
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
okie medicvet said:
1.) Testing is done on location...
2.) Then confirmation testing is done in HK or the UK
3.) Then something is said...
The Sumatra Cluster went on from late April to mid May... it became the news over the weekend...
As for the incubation period... some say 2-4 days, some 7-10...
How long? Ya might just have to ask the guys who shipped all that Tamiflu over the weekend.
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Bird flu returns to plague the FTSE
By Tom Stevenson and David Litterick (Filed: 25/05/2006)
Comment: Stormy markets cut the taste for risk
Markets suffered another volatile day as nervous investors added bird flu to their growing list of worries, star fund manager Anthony Bolton warned the slide in world markets "could last months", and a high-profile flotation in New York dived in first-day dealings.
In London, the FTSE 100 closed 91.6 points lower at 5587.1, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 index slumped 180.3 points to 9054.0. Metal prices also headed sharply lower after Tuesday's record gains were reversed. Copper dropped $645, or 7.6pc, to $7,815 a tonne in afternoon trading.
Nerves were frayed by a report from the World Health Organisation which said human-to-human transmission of avian flu was a possible cause of six deaths in a single Indonesian family.
Currencies in Asia, where most bird flu cases have occurred, fell on fears that a global pandemic, which experts believe could kill millions and devastate economies, had moved closer.
The dollar, a traditional safe haven in times of uncertainty, rose as unexpectedly strong sales of new homes in America bolstered the view that US interest rates will rise for a 17th consecutive time in June.
The dollar was up by 1.5 cents to $1.8672 against the pound despite a 4.8pc drop in US durable goods orders in April. The strength of the dollar hit gold, which closed $21.95 lower at $644.80.
A spokesman for the WHO said: "This is the most significant development so far in terms of public health. We have not had in the past what we have here, which is no explanation as to how these people became infected."
David Bloom, a currency strategist at HSBC, said: "This is the last thing we needed. Only a few weeks ago everyone thought everything was fine. Now they're not so sure. The normal rules have broken down."
Anthony Bolton, manager of Fidelity's Special Situations Fund, warned in a speech that investors had been piling too much money into riskier assets. He also expressed concern about the likely impact of an avian flu pandemic.
"It is a risk," he said. "It must be serious for governments to spend the amount of time and money that they have."
In New York, internet phone company Vonage became the biggest technology float for more than two years but jittery markets and scepticism over the future of the company pushed the shares down by up to 14pc on their debut.
Vonage raised $531m (£284m) after selling 32.1m shares at the mid-range price of $17 a share. But by midday the stock had fallen as low as $14.50 as traders doubted that it would ever make money.
Vonage's management has acknowledged it may never be profitable and investors noted that it faces competition in the "voice over internet protocol" market from Google and eBay's Skype, both of which have far deeper pockets.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/25/cnflu25.xml
Bird Flu Fears Ignite Debate on Scientists' Sharing of Data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/24/AR2006052402293.html
Bird Flu Fears Ignite Debate on Scientists' Sharing of Data
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 25, 2006; A20
As fears of an influenza pandemic grow, a struggle has emerged between experts who believe the latest genetic data on the H5N1 bird flu virus should be made public immediately and others who fear that such a policy would alienate the countries collecting virus samples and the scientists analyzing them.
The issue may come to a head this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the governing body of the World Health Organization. Health ministers from more than 190 countries will consider a resolution that would require them to provide flu data and virus samples to the scientific community "in a timely manner."
If adopted, that probably would end the current system whereby flu researchers decide when and how quickly crucial genetic data on the virus are made available to other scientists.
WHO supports the change. But before it is adopted, developing countries where the H5N1 virus is circulating would need to be assured that their scientists would share credit for discoveries and that their citizens would have access to its fruits -- particularly a vaccine.
Without guarantees, scientists and clinicians may be unwilling to hand over virus samples or collect them in the first place, Margaret Chan, WHO's director of pandemic influenza planning, said recently.
Critics of the current system say the possibility of global catastrophe trumps any concern about hurt feelings or career advancement.
"Science just moves more rapidly when you share the data openly," said Steven L. Salzberg, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland and a leader of the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project at the National Institutes of Health.
He said the chief fear is that one researcher will expropriate another's hard-earned data before the first can produce a scientific paper.
"It will happen, I can't deny it," he said. "But the problem is that when you take that attitude with a public health matter, then you're essentially putting your scientific goals ahead of matters of the public."
But the resistance to sharing data may wane as the specter of a pandemic grows.
This week, an international team of epidemiologists is investigating an H5N1 outbreak that has killed six members of a family in a remote Indonesian village.
"The government has been extremely cooperative . . . unlike some previous examples where we have had a little more difficulty in getting specimens to the proper laboratories," Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday from Geneva, where she is attending the World Health Assembly. A laboratory in Jakarta has been doing "gold-standard diagnostics" in the outbreak, she said.
Although this cluster of cases appears to have the longest chain of transmission seen to date -- chicken to human to human to human -- preliminary analysis of the virus's genes has revealed no new mutations or evolutionary changes.
The RNA letters that make up the virus's genes are at the center of the dispute.
To a great degree, these "gene sequences" determine a microbe's behavior. Fewer than a dozen changes in flu's eight genes may be enough to give a strain pandemic potential -- the ability to spread easily between people who have no immunity to it.
An essential step in charting the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the past two years has been the analysis of gene sequences by a small number of labs in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Today, sequences from most newly collected samples of H5N1 are first deposited in the Influenza Sequence Database at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Access requires a password and is limited to about 15 research groups, mostly government and academic labs in WHO's global flu surveillance network.
Although everyone in this fraternity can use the data, the researchers who provide them get to publish the first scientific paper. The people who collected the virus or isolated it from a patient are usually listed as coauthors. Only after the paper appears is the gene sequence deposited in GenBank, a public database.
The details of the arrangement are murky, including the size of the Los Alamos repository and who ultimately controls access. Questions put to its manager, Catherine A. Macken, were answered with one sentence: "My policy . . . is to not reveal details about privately held data."
The alternative is to deposit sequences in GenBank as soon they come off the sequencing machine.
Run by the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, GenBank is the world's largest collection of gene sequences (along with its European and Japanese counterparts, with which it shares data). About 2 million people around the world consult it each day. As of late last week, GenBank held 4,734 gene sequences from H5N1 influenza.
The issue gained public attention in February when Ilaria Capua, a 40-year-old virologist at the Tri-Veneto Region Experimental Animal Health Care Institute in Italy, sequenced the first H5N1 sample from Africa, isolated from a chicken farm in northern Nigeria. Someone at WHO invited her to contribute it to the Los Alamos data, but she declined and instead filed it in GenBank.
David J. Lipman, director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which oversees GenBank, said that since then, "we are seeing more movement toward people trying to cooperate and make data public. . . . Things are starting to open up."
Capua said this week that "what really surprises me is that I didn't say something that is completely out of context. I said, 'Wait a minute -- if this is the biggest threat, then we all have to run in the same direction.' "
Robert Webster, a leading flu virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, doesn't disagree in principle. But, he said, "this is a difficult situation; there are many pros and cons to this one."
Most of the H5N1 samples his lab analyzes are provided by Asian scientists. Occasionally, they are given secretly if they come from a place where the virus has not been publicly reported. These collaborators have part ownership in the data, and Webster and others say they ask permission before loading the sequences into either the Los Alamos or GenBank databases.
Any system that immediately disseminates gene sequences must be one that Asian nations -- China in particular -- do not think exploits them.
Webster said he also feels a need to protect graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who do the sequencing work.
"I want to give them time to bring this information together [in a publication]," he said. "But if it's out there, the bottom feeders will use it, because there are bottom feeders."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/24/AR2006052402293.html
Bird Flu Fears Ignite Debate on Scientists' Sharing of Data
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 25, 2006; A20
As fears of an influenza pandemic grow, a struggle has emerged between experts who believe the latest genetic data on the H5N1 bird flu virus should be made public immediately and others who fear that such a policy would alienate the countries collecting virus samples and the scientists analyzing them.
The issue may come to a head this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the governing body of the World Health Organization. Health ministers from more than 190 countries will consider a resolution that would require them to provide flu data and virus samples to the scientific community "in a timely manner."
If adopted, that probably would end the current system whereby flu researchers decide when and how quickly crucial genetic data on the virus are made available to other scientists.
WHO supports the change. But before it is adopted, developing countries where the H5N1 virus is circulating would need to be assured that their scientists would share credit for discoveries and that their citizens would have access to its fruits -- particularly a vaccine.
Without guarantees, scientists and clinicians may be unwilling to hand over virus samples or collect them in the first place, Margaret Chan, WHO's director of pandemic influenza planning, said recently.
Critics of the current system say the possibility of global catastrophe trumps any concern about hurt feelings or career advancement.
"Science just moves more rapidly when you share the data openly," said Steven L. Salzberg, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland and a leader of the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project at the National Institutes of Health.
He said the chief fear is that one researcher will expropriate another's hard-earned data before the first can produce a scientific paper.
"It will happen, I can't deny it," he said. "But the problem is that when you take that attitude with a public health matter, then you're essentially putting your scientific goals ahead of matters of the public."
But the resistance to sharing data may wane as the specter of a pandemic grows.
This week, an international team of epidemiologists is investigating an H5N1 outbreak that has killed six members of a family in a remote Indonesian village.
"The government has been extremely cooperative . . . unlike some previous examples where we have had a little more difficulty in getting specimens to the proper laboratories," Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday from Geneva, where she is attending the World Health Assembly. A laboratory in Jakarta has been doing "gold-standard diagnostics" in the outbreak, she said.
Although this cluster of cases appears to have the longest chain of transmission seen to date -- chicken to human to human to human -- preliminary analysis of the virus's genes has revealed no new mutations or evolutionary changes.
The RNA letters that make up the virus's genes are at the center of the dispute.
To a great degree, these "gene sequences" determine a microbe's behavior. Fewer than a dozen changes in flu's eight genes may be enough to give a strain pandemic potential -- the ability to spread easily between people who have no immunity to it.
An essential step in charting the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the past two years has been the analysis of gene sequences by a small number of labs in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Today, sequences from most newly collected samples of H5N1 are first deposited in the Influenza Sequence Database at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Access requires a password and is limited to about 15 research groups, mostly government and academic labs in WHO's global flu surveillance network.
Although everyone in this fraternity can use the data, the researchers who provide them get to publish the first scientific paper. The people who collected the virus or isolated it from a patient are usually listed as coauthors. Only after the paper appears is the gene sequence deposited in GenBank, a public database.
The details of the arrangement are murky, including the size of the Los Alamos repository and who ultimately controls access. Questions put to its manager, Catherine A. Macken, were answered with one sentence: "My policy . . . is to not reveal details about privately held data."
The alternative is to deposit sequences in GenBank as soon they come off the sequencing machine.
Run by the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, GenBank is the world's largest collection of gene sequences (along with its European and Japanese counterparts, with which it shares data). About 2 million people around the world consult it each day. As of late last week, GenBank held 4,734 gene sequences from H5N1 influenza.
The issue gained public attention in February when Ilaria Capua, a 40-year-old virologist at the Tri-Veneto Region Experimental Animal Health Care Institute in Italy, sequenced the first H5N1 sample from Africa, isolated from a chicken farm in northern Nigeria. Someone at WHO invited her to contribute it to the Los Alamos data, but she declined and instead filed it in GenBank.
David J. Lipman, director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which oversees GenBank, said that since then, "we are seeing more movement toward people trying to cooperate and make data public. . . . Things are starting to open up."
Capua said this week that "what really surprises me is that I didn't say something that is completely out of context. I said, 'Wait a minute -- if this is the biggest threat, then we all have to run in the same direction.' "
Robert Webster, a leading flu virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, doesn't disagree in principle. But, he said, "this is a difficult situation; there are many pros and cons to this one."
Most of the H5N1 samples his lab analyzes are provided by Asian scientists. Occasionally, they are given secretly if they come from a place where the virus has not been publicly reported. These collaborators have part ownership in the data, and Webster and others say they ask permission before loading the sequences into either the Los Alamos or GenBank databases.
Any system that immediately disseminates gene sequences must be one that Asian nations -- China in particular -- do not think exploits them.
Webster said he also feels a need to protect graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who do the sequencing work.
"I want to give them time to bring this information together [in a publication]," he said. "But if it's out there, the bottom feeders will use it, because there are bottom feeders."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
URL: http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/nation_world/article/0,2845,MCA_25345_4724920,00.html
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post
May 25, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The World Health Organization might soon convene an expert panel to decide whether an unprecedented human outbreak of bird flu in Indonesia requires the world to go on higher alert for a possible pandemic, health officials said Wednesday.
If the global alert status were increased, international stockpiles of antiviral drugs would probably be shipped to Indonesia and travel from the country would be monitored to contain the outbreak.
Indonesian health authorities this week confirmed that the virus had killed at least six members from a single extended family on Sumatra island, including the death Monday of a 32-year-old man.
A seventh family member also died from what investigators suspect was bird flu, but she was buried before samples could be taken. Another relative is hospitalized with a confirmed case but is recovering.
Maria Cheng, a WHO spokeswoman in Geneva, said the outbreak in the North Sumatran village of Kubu Sembilang, was not only the largest bird flu cluster in the world but also the first in which investigators believe the virus was passed from one person to another and then to a third.
I Nyoman Kandun, Indonesia's director for disease control, said this week that the evidence from Sumatra was "suggestive of a third generation" of infection because of the long intervals between the earliest, middle and most recent cases.
While the outbreak is exceptional, international and Indonesian health officials in Jakarta stressed that the virus appears unchanged. Laboratory analysis of virus samples shows that it has not mutated or developed into a form more easily passed among people.
Top international health investigators dispatched to Sumatra have uncovered no signs that the disease has spread beyond the one extended family, indicating that broader transmission of bird flu remains difficult.
Several epidemiologists, including two from WHO's global headquarters in Geneva and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, remain on the scene, tracking people who were in contact with the most recent victim and checking for illness.
Any decision to convene the expert panel, Cheng said, "depends on what we see in Indonesia. Our investigation is still incomplete." Moreover, she said, "Convening the panel does not necessarily mean we're going to go up an alert level."
WHO may weigh higher bird flu alert
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post
May 25, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The World Health Organization might soon convene an expert panel to decide whether an unprecedented human outbreak of bird flu in Indonesia requires the world to go on higher alert for a possible pandemic, health officials said Wednesday.
If the global alert status were increased, international stockpiles of antiviral drugs would probably be shipped to Indonesia and travel from the country would be monitored to contain the outbreak.
Indonesian health authorities this week confirmed that the virus had killed at least six members from a single extended family on Sumatra island, including the death Monday of a 32-year-old man.
A seventh family member also died from what investigators suspect was bird flu, but she was buried before samples could be taken. Another relative is hospitalized with a confirmed case but is recovering.
Maria Cheng, a WHO spokeswoman in Geneva, said the outbreak in the North Sumatran village of Kubu Sembilang, was not only the largest bird flu cluster in the world but also the first in which investigators believe the virus was passed from one person to another and then to a third.
I Nyoman Kandun, Indonesia's director for disease control, said this week that the evidence from Sumatra was "suggestive of a third generation" of infection because of the long intervals between the earliest, middle and most recent cases.
While the outbreak is exceptional, international and Indonesian health officials in Jakarta stressed that the virus appears unchanged. Laboratory analysis of virus samples shows that it has not mutated or developed into a form more easily passed among people.
Top international health investigators dispatched to Sumatra have uncovered no signs that the disease has spread beyond the one extended family, indicating that broader transmission of bird flu remains difficult.
Several epidemiologists, including two from WHO's global headquarters in Geneva and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, remain on the scene, tracking people who were in contact with the most recent victim and checking for illness.
Any decision to convene the expert panel, Cheng said, "depends on what we see in Indonesia. Our investigation is still incomplete." Moreover, she said, "Convening the panel does not necessarily mean we're going to go up an alert level."
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Siberia
Created: 25.05.2006 14:05 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:05 MSK, 1 hour 6 minutes ago
MosNews
Authorities in southwestern Siberia have imposed quarantine restrictions in four districts after outbreaks of bird flu, a local emergencies official told RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. The outbreak of the virus in the Omsk Region, its capital about 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) east of Moscow, is the first time avian influenza has been registered in Siberia this year.
“Tests confirmed bird flu [virus] in four districts,” he said, adding that authorities had acted to impose quarantine restrictions in the affected areas.
The official said bird flu was suspected in one more area, where ten birds had died in the last 24 hours, and that a total of 185 domestic birds had died at nine locations in seven districts since May 13.
The lethal H5N1 strain of the virus returned to the south of European Russia in February, but was largely contained in a massive vaccination campaign.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said last month that around 1.1 million birds had died of the disease in Russia, and 0.3 million had been culled in measures to control the spread of the virus since the beginning of February. No human cases of bird flu have yet been diagnosed in Russia.
http://mosnews.com/news/2006/05/25/birdflunovosib.shtml
Bird Flu Quarantine Imposed in Russia’s Siberia
Created: 25.05.2006 14:05 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:05 MSK, 1 hour 6 minutes ago
MosNews
Authorities in southwestern Siberia have imposed quarantine restrictions in four districts after outbreaks of bird flu, a local emergencies official told RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. The outbreak of the virus in the Omsk Region, its capital about 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) east of Moscow, is the first time avian influenza has been registered in Siberia this year.
“Tests confirmed bird flu [virus] in four districts,” he said, adding that authorities had acted to impose quarantine restrictions in the affected areas.
The official said bird flu was suspected in one more area, where ten birds had died in the last 24 hours, and that a total of 185 domestic birds had died at nine locations in seven districts since May 13.
The lethal H5N1 strain of the virus returned to the south of European Russia in February, but was largely contained in a massive vaccination campaign.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said last month that around 1.1 million birds had died of the disease in Russia, and 0.3 million had been culled in measures to control the spread of the virus since the beginning of February. No human cases of bird flu have yet been diagnosed in Russia.
http://mosnews.com/news/2006/05/25/birdflunovosib.shtml
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Has the Bird Flu Virus Mutated?
May 25, 2006, 07:13 AM EDT
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - World health officials say the bird flu virus that killed six members of an Indonesian family is not a mutated version that can easily pass among people. Authorities say the family probably passed the disease among themselves, but there's no evidence the virus has mutated. At least six people died and one other was infected in the largest family cluster of bird flu cases likely transmitted from person to person since the virus started ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl says that the family members' close physical proximity was probably responsible for the spread of the disease. Global and U-S health officials say tests on virus samples taken from the family do not indicate any significant changes. Health workers have found no sign the disease has moved outside the family. Bird flu has killed 124 people worldwide, more than a quarter of them in Indonesia.
http://www.wtvr.com/Global/story.asp?S=4947792
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Sofia Worried over Romania Bird Flu Situation
Politics: 25 May 2006, Thursday.
Sofia is seriously worried by the bird flu situation in Romania, it emerged Thursday.
Bulgaria's Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil explained that so far 47 bird flu hotspots have been found in Romania, but a total of 74 are expected to be confirmed.
Kabil underlined that he is expecting the report of the World Health Organization bureau in Bulgaria as in his words the information coming from Southeastern Asia is really worrying. He also specified that he is hoping for more information on the data that the virus is spreading from a man to a man.
In his words all necessary measures have been taken in Bulgaria. After the meeting of the crisis headquarters it would be clear whether additional measures would be taken, Kabil explained.
Romanian authorities put an end to the quarantine that was imposed in the wake of the confirmed presence of birds infected with avian flu in the country. The ban on transporting live birds however remains in force.
People were allowed to move freely in all localities where bird-flu outbreaks were recorded after fifteen patients suspected of bird-flu tested negative, said an official with the Health Ministry, as cited by the online edition of Mediafax.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=63977
New Freedom
Veteran Member
A good summary of what has happened in the past couple of weeks:
http://www.time.com/time/health/printout/0,8816,1197527,00.html
Wednesday, May. 24, 2006
A New Bird Flu Cluster
Eight family members in rural Indonesia fall ill, and medical investigators are racing to figure out why
By BRYAN WALSH/HONG KONG
Public fears of bird flu seem to have abated in recent weeks, but scientists know the world is always one viral mutation away from a deadly pandemic. That fact has been driven home again by a worrying cluster of human bird flu cases in rural Indonesia that could represent the first time the H5N1 virus has managed to pass from human to human to human. The cluster likely began with a 37-year-old woman who hosted a family pork roast on April 29 in the Indonesian village of Kubu Sembilang in north Sumatra. The woman had become sick on April 27, and as she worsened, several family members slept in the same small room as she did. By the first week of May six more members of the family had fallen ill with avian flu. The first woman died on May 4 and was buried before any tissue samples could be taken, but doctors were able to confirm H5N1 in the remaining family members, all but one of whom have died. An eighth family member, a 32-year-old man, became sick on May 15 and died May 22; he may have caught the virus while caring for his infected 10-year-old son, who died of the disease on May 13.
The WHO has dispatched a team of investigators to the area, including experts from the organization's headquarters in Geneva, but they have been unable to find any evidence of contaminated poultry in the village that may have triggered the human infections. "If we can't find an external source that explains all seven confirmed cases, then we have to go with the theory that this is human-to-human," says Peter Cordingley, the spokesperson for the WHO's Western Pacific regional headquarters. Human-to-human transmission within a family is believed to have occurred at least twice before, in Thailand and Vietnam, although never involving this many people. But if the 10-year-old boy was infected by a family member, and then went on to infect his father, it would represent the first known time the virus had passed from human to human to human. "It's certainly possible," says Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesperson in Geneva.
That's a worrying threshold to cross, but the good news is that the virus doesn't seem to have spread outside the family. The 32-year-old man ran away from doctors after falling ill, and passed though four neighboring villages before he was apprehended, coming into contact with 33 people. All of them are currently under observation and being given the antiviral drug Tamiflu as a prophylactic, but none have shown signs of infection. Scientists have genetically sequenced two viruses isolated from the cluster and found no evidence of the kinds of significant mutations that would likely be necessary before the virus could pass easily from person to person. "The virus looks pretty much the same as other cases," says Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong who has seen the genetic sequences.
If those contacts remain healthy for the next week and a half, then the outbreak at Kubu Sembilang will likely be judged contained. But the cluster itself could remain a mystery. Villagers have been extremely uncooperative with investigators, complicating efforts to get samples from animals and forcing the WHO to set up its command hub 5 miles from the village. "We don't have a lot of access to the village right now," says Hartl. "But they've lost seven people. There's a lot of shock and grief they have to work through first." It's a reminder of the power bird flu still has to surprise—and to kill.
http://www.time.com/time/health/printout/0,8816,1197527,00.html
Wednesday, May. 24, 2006
A New Bird Flu Cluster
Eight family members in rural Indonesia fall ill, and medical investigators are racing to figure out why
By BRYAN WALSH/HONG KONG
Public fears of bird flu seem to have abated in recent weeks, but scientists know the world is always one viral mutation away from a deadly pandemic. That fact has been driven home again by a worrying cluster of human bird flu cases in rural Indonesia that could represent the first time the H5N1 virus has managed to pass from human to human to human. The cluster likely began with a 37-year-old woman who hosted a family pork roast on April 29 in the Indonesian village of Kubu Sembilang in north Sumatra. The woman had become sick on April 27, and as she worsened, several family members slept in the same small room as she did. By the first week of May six more members of the family had fallen ill with avian flu. The first woman died on May 4 and was buried before any tissue samples could be taken, but doctors were able to confirm H5N1 in the remaining family members, all but one of whom have died. An eighth family member, a 32-year-old man, became sick on May 15 and died May 22; he may have caught the virus while caring for his infected 10-year-old son, who died of the disease on May 13.
The WHO has dispatched a team of investigators to the area, including experts from the organization's headquarters in Geneva, but they have been unable to find any evidence of contaminated poultry in the village that may have triggered the human infections. "If we can't find an external source that explains all seven confirmed cases, then we have to go with the theory that this is human-to-human," says Peter Cordingley, the spokesperson for the WHO's Western Pacific regional headquarters. Human-to-human transmission within a family is believed to have occurred at least twice before, in Thailand and Vietnam, although never involving this many people. But if the 10-year-old boy was infected by a family member, and then went on to infect his father, it would represent the first known time the virus had passed from human to human to human. "It's certainly possible," says Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesperson in Geneva.
That's a worrying threshold to cross, but the good news is that the virus doesn't seem to have spread outside the family. The 32-year-old man ran away from doctors after falling ill, and passed though four neighboring villages before he was apprehended, coming into contact with 33 people. All of them are currently under observation and being given the antiviral drug Tamiflu as a prophylactic, but none have shown signs of infection. Scientists have genetically sequenced two viruses isolated from the cluster and found no evidence of the kinds of significant mutations that would likely be necessary before the virus could pass easily from person to person. "The virus looks pretty much the same as other cases," says Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong who has seen the genetic sequences.
If those contacts remain healthy for the next week and a half, then the outbreak at Kubu Sembilang will likely be judged contained. But the cluster itself could remain a mystery. Villagers have been extremely uncooperative with investigators, complicating efforts to get samples from animals and forcing the WHO to set up its command hub 5 miles from the village. "We don't have a lot of access to the village right now," says Hartl. "But they've lost seven people. There's a lot of shock and grief they have to work through first." It's a reminder of the power bird flu still has to surprise—and to kill.
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Two siblings believed to have bird flu
Abdul Khalik and Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Bandung
One of two new suspected bird flu patients from the same family in Bandung, West Java, died Tuesday, leading to speculation that a new cluster has surfaced.
The two, a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man, were admitted to Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung on Monday evening, but the girl's condition worsened and she died at 2:50 p.m on Tuesday.
The siblings, residents of Cileunyi in Bandung regency, exhibited symptoms associated with bird flu and had known contact with dead chickens.
"They had high fevers and lower respiratory infections, which made it hard for them to breathe," said Djatnika, the deputy head of the hospital's bird flu team.
Blood samples taken from the two, he said, have been sent to a Health Ministry laboratory. Local tests, however, are not considered definitive and need confirmation from a World Health Organization (WHO)'s internationally accredited laboratory.
A previous bird flu cluster in West Java was identified earlier this year in Indramayu, where several members of the same family died. As well as a new one in Medan found last week, health authorities have pinpointed five bird flu clusters around the country.
But new cases of bird flu have continued to emerge. On Monday, a man from a North Sumatra village, who belonged to a bird flu cluster believed to total eight infections from one family, died. Local tests also confirmed two more bird flu infections in the country.
While the government put the total cases of bird flu here at 43, with 33 fatalities, WHO put the figure at 41 cases, with 32 fatalities.
The ASEAN Foundation, one arm of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has said it is time to turn to technology for help.
The foundation proposes using information and communications technology (ICT), particularly short message service (SMS), to prevent further outbreaks of the disease.
The idea is based on the successful application of ICT in Thailand and Vietnam to stop new bird flu cases in both humans and animals at village level. The foundation is now applying ICT for the same purpose in Laos and Cambodia.
The foundation's executive director, Apichai Sunchindah, said Thailand and Vietnam had been successful in dealing with bird flu through the use of information technology.
In Thailand, he said, one million volunteers -- equipped with cellular phones or computers -- were deployed at village level. They filed their reports via e-mail or text message to a central terminal for the government to follow up.
"With this system, people are involved and the government can map out the spread of bird flu to take sufficient measures," Sunchindah said on the sidelines of an international symposium on ICT for social development in Jakarta on Tuesday.
While Indonesia is struggling to contain bird flu, there have been no reports of new cases in Thailand or Vietnam this year, winning them praise from international communities.
Professor Felix Librero from the University of the Philippines, who has conducted intensive research on the use of text messages to pass on information to fight bird flu, and managing director of Malaysia's Southbound Sdn. bhd. Chin Saik Yoon, both agreed the method would work in Indonesia.
There are about 60 million cell phone users in the country.
Two siblings believed to have bird flu
Abdul Khalik and Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Bandung
One of two new suspected bird flu patients from the same family in Bandung, West Java, died Tuesday, leading to speculation that a new cluster has surfaced.
The two, a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man, were admitted to Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung on Monday evening, but the girl's condition worsened and she died at 2:50 p.m on Tuesday.
The siblings, residents of Cileunyi in Bandung regency, exhibited symptoms associated with bird flu and had known contact with dead chickens.
"They had high fevers and lower respiratory infections, which made it hard for them to breathe," said Djatnika, the deputy head of the hospital's bird flu team.
Blood samples taken from the two, he said, have been sent to a Health Ministry laboratory. Local tests, however, are not considered definitive and need confirmation from a World Health Organization (WHO)'s internationally accredited laboratory.
A previous bird flu cluster in West Java was identified earlier this year in Indramayu, where several members of the same family died. As well as a new one in Medan found last week, health authorities have pinpointed five bird flu clusters around the country.
But new cases of bird flu have continued to emerge. On Monday, a man from a North Sumatra village, who belonged to a bird flu cluster believed to total eight infections from one family, died. Local tests also confirmed two more bird flu infections in the country.
While the government put the total cases of bird flu here at 43, with 33 fatalities, WHO put the figure at 41 cases, with 32 fatalities.
The ASEAN Foundation, one arm of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has said it is time to turn to technology for help.
The foundation proposes using information and communications technology (ICT), particularly short message service (SMS), to prevent further outbreaks of the disease.
The idea is based on the successful application of ICT in Thailand and Vietnam to stop new bird flu cases in both humans and animals at village level. The foundation is now applying ICT for the same purpose in Laos and Cambodia.
The foundation's executive director, Apichai Sunchindah, said Thailand and Vietnam had been successful in dealing with bird flu through the use of information technology.
In Thailand, he said, one million volunteers -- equipped with cellular phones or computers -- were deployed at village level. They filed their reports via e-mail or text message to a central terminal for the government to follow up.
"With this system, people are involved and the government can map out the spread of bird flu to take sufficient measures," Sunchindah said on the sidelines of an international symposium on ICT for social development in Jakarta on Tuesday.
While Indonesia is struggling to contain bird flu, there have been no reports of new cases in Thailand or Vietnam this year, winning them praise from international communities.
Professor Felix Librero from the University of the Philippines, who has conducted intensive research on the use of text messages to pass on information to fight bird flu, and managing director of Malaysia's Southbound Sdn. bhd. Chin Saik Yoon, both agreed the method would work in Indonesia.
There are about 60 million cell phone users in the country.
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Indonesian Bird Flu Outbreak Worries Hawaii Authorities
Thu May 25, 1:04 AM ET
Infectious disease and health experts in Hawaii are closely monitoring events on a small Indonesian island, KITV reported.
According to health officials, six members of the same family in a rural village in Sumatra died from the most concentrated outbreak of bird flu.
While most of the human cases of bird flu have involved people who live, work or eat near infected birds, the most recent victims did not live near any poultry.
"The way in which it was spread within the family suggests that it went from person to person," said Dr. Steven Berman, an infectious disease specialist.
Berman said authorities in Sumatra are trying to explain how the infection was passed between people or if there was a common source.
The virus did not spread into surrounding communities.
"The only thing that's reassuring about this is that the virus has not mutated," Berman said. "It's the same strain that has infected the other and the poultry."
Indonesian Bird Flu Outbreak Worries Hawaii Authorities
Thu May 25, 1:04 AM ET
Infectious disease and health experts in Hawaii are closely monitoring events on a small Indonesian island, KITV reported.
According to health officials, six members of the same family in a rural village in Sumatra died from the most concentrated outbreak of bird flu.
While most of the human cases of bird flu have involved people who live, work or eat near infected birds, the most recent victims did not live near any poultry.
"The way in which it was spread within the family suggests that it went from person to person," said Dr. Steven Berman, an infectious disease specialist.
Berman said authorities in Sumatra are trying to explain how the infection was passed between people or if there was a common source.
The virus did not spread into surrounding communities.
"The only thing that's reassuring about this is that the virus has not mutated," Berman said. "It's the same strain that has infected the other and the poultry."
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
The Washington Post article by David Brown,
<u>Bird Flu Fears Ignite Debate on Scientists' Sharing of Data</u>,
is a mind-blower.
The vital genetic sequences, core <b>information</b> about the virus and how it is changing, is not being released to the world's scientists because of greed, jealousy, turf wars, petty selfishness, hoarding of data for possible fleeting far-off obscure archaic academic fame and tiny print peer merit in some musty journal, and the miniscule possibility of some teeny financial reward as a bonus for being part of a lab team and doing one's job as a matter of course. Unbelievable!
Should the human race perish because such base tamasic selfish outrageous pettiness goes unchecked?
Dr Niman's counter to the article:
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6481
Mankind could have stopped this. The knowledge, the historical records, the means were there. But no, humanimals had to fuss with their stupidest little selfish ego narrow-minded tantrums and so perish. Maybe it is cosmic justice that a virus evolved faster than mankind.
<u>Bird Flu Fears Ignite Debate on Scientists' Sharing of Data</u>,
is a mind-blower.
The vital genetic sequences, core <b>information</b> about the virus and how it is changing, is not being released to the world's scientists because of greed, jealousy, turf wars, petty selfishness, hoarding of data for possible fleeting far-off obscure archaic academic fame and tiny print peer merit in some musty journal, and the miniscule possibility of some teeny financial reward as a bonus for being part of a lab team and doing one's job as a matter of course. Unbelievable!
Should the human race perish because such base tamasic selfish outrageous pettiness goes unchecked?
Dr Niman's counter to the article:
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6481
Mankind could have stopped this. The knowledge, the historical records, the means were there. But no, humanimals had to fuss with their stupidest little selfish ego narrow-minded tantrums and so perish. Maybe it is cosmic justice that a virus evolved faster than mankind.
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Veteran Member
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Interior: Swans likely 1st to get bird flu
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Wed May 24, 9:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A deadly bird flu virus will likely slip into the United States through a pretty package: either majestic swans flying across the Bering Strait into Alaska or from smuggled exotic wildlife at one of the nation's ports.
Its detection probably will depend on watching to see if hundreds of birds die at once, Interior Department officials said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press, adding it may not show up at all in 2006.
"From my perspective, I would say swans are the starting point because we found the disease already, or Europe has found them, in swans," said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The first 1,300 tissue samples taken in Alaska from migratory birds that could carry the H5N1 virus are due to arrive later this week at the
U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Madison, Wis. They come from a subsistence hunt by native Alaskans.
Among migrating birds, officials believe the disease will probably be transmitted from an Asian species to a North American one from the Pacific Flyway when both begin arriving in Alaska for the summer to nest. The Pacific flyway — one of four bird highways in the sky over the United States — stretches from Alaska and western Canada through the Western states to Mexico.
"Birds coming up that would fly in that flyway are the ones that would probably most likely mingle with the Australasian birds that have come up and may be carrying" H5N1, Hall said. "We're working as if it could show up this year."
The Madison lab between now and next January will test 10,000 to 20,000 tissue samples for the 'H' type of protein hemagglutinin. Testing for the 'N' type of protein neuraminidase will be done by the Agriculture Department in Ames, Iowa. Nationally, 70,000 samples are expected to be tested.
Only after both phases of testing will Bush administration officials announce whether the highly pathogenic H5N1 has arrived in the United States. The virus has spread from Asia to Africa and Europe, killing at least 124 people.
If an H5N1 strain shows, officials will then have to determine whether it is a highly pathogenic variety capable of causing a large kill of at least 500 or more birds.
Typically, three to 12 die-offs of more than 500 birds occur each year. There have been two this year already, from bird cholera at Klamath Basin in Oregon and California and parasites in the Mississippi River between Wisconsin and Illinois, said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Hall added, however, that global trade in pets, illegal wildlife and animal parts could prove to be the more likely route for the deadly virus reaching the United States.
"I am more concerned about the illegal smuggling and the bringing-in illegally of birds into this country," he said. "And the reason is an endangered species, or even birds people are not supposed to have because they're from another country bring very high dollars in."
Hall and Patrick Leahy, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, which is conducting the initial round of tests for presence of the virus, said their concerns about the virus will ease sometime between October and December if it hasn't shown up.
"We may dodge the bullet this year, but the sampling will continue," Leahy said, explaining the entire effort would begin anew next spring.
Leahy said a variation of influenza in birds, H5N2, was found last year in two of 100 birds sampled in North Dakota.
The first samples of the two ducks came back positive for the deadly bird flu strain, but more analysis found they were infected with one of a number of duck viruses and "there was nothing to be concerned about," said Ted Gutzke, project leader at North Dakota's J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge.
It isn't clear yet which birds will be show symptoms of the disease or just be a carrier like a Typhoid Mary, Leahy said. "A lot of the USGS activities is looking at how the virus behaves in different wildlife species," he said.
Meanwhile, the White House was closely monitoring a family cluster of bird flu cases likely transmitted from human to human in Indonesia. Seven of eight family members died, but there wasn't reason yet to fear a pandemic, said the
World Health Organization in Geneva.
"They're still trying to investigate the possibilities it's human-to-human contact, whether this is the sort of contact that might lead to a pandemic," said Tony Snow,
President Bush's press secretary.
Hall said the Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to collect tissue samples or feces from 27 species of migratory waterfowl and shorebirds that could have contracted virus — directly or indirectly — from ducks in China or other sources. It also is collecting water samples from where birds defecate.
No one knows whether the virus will reach the United States or develop into a strain of deadly flu that can be transmitted easily by humans. Until that happens, Interior officials say they won't become alarmed.
"Our reaction until there's evidence that it has recombined or has mutated would be to treat it as we do other wildlife diseases — make sure people know it's there," Hall said. "We have bird die-offs every year."
In the meantime, Hall advised anyone who comes across a dead bird not to handle it. Game birds should be cooked thoroughly and hunters should keep sanitation in mind in handling, cleaning and deboning them, he said.
ers
Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, left, talks about government efforts to monitor and prevent a deadly bird flu virus from making its way into the U.S. from Asia, during an interview with the Associated Press in Washington, Wednesday, May 24, 2006. At right is P. Patrick Leahy, the U.S. Geological Survey's acting director. Hall said that swans traveling along the Pacific flyway are most likely to be bearers of the deadly bird flu virus among wild migratory birds but an even bigger worry is the prospect of the virus arriving by illegal animal trade. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Interior: Swans likely 1st to get bird flu
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Wed May 24, 9:00 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A deadly bird flu virus will likely slip into the United States through a pretty package: either majestic swans flying across the Bering Strait into Alaska or from smuggled exotic wildlife at one of the nation's ports.
Its detection probably will depend on watching to see if hundreds of birds die at once, Interior Department officials said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press, adding it may not show up at all in 2006.
"From my perspective, I would say swans are the starting point because we found the disease already, or Europe has found them, in swans," said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The first 1,300 tissue samples taken in Alaska from migratory birds that could carry the H5N1 virus are due to arrive later this week at the
U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Madison, Wis. They come from a subsistence hunt by native Alaskans.
Among migrating birds, officials believe the disease will probably be transmitted from an Asian species to a North American one from the Pacific Flyway when both begin arriving in Alaska for the summer to nest. The Pacific flyway — one of four bird highways in the sky over the United States — stretches from Alaska and western Canada through the Western states to Mexico.
"Birds coming up that would fly in that flyway are the ones that would probably most likely mingle with the Australasian birds that have come up and may be carrying" H5N1, Hall said. "We're working as if it could show up this year."
The Madison lab between now and next January will test 10,000 to 20,000 tissue samples for the 'H' type of protein hemagglutinin. Testing for the 'N' type of protein neuraminidase will be done by the Agriculture Department in Ames, Iowa. Nationally, 70,000 samples are expected to be tested.
Only after both phases of testing will Bush administration officials announce whether the highly pathogenic H5N1 has arrived in the United States. The virus has spread from Asia to Africa and Europe, killing at least 124 people.
If an H5N1 strain shows, officials will then have to determine whether it is a highly pathogenic variety capable of causing a large kill of at least 500 or more birds.
Typically, three to 12 die-offs of more than 500 birds occur each year. There have been two this year already, from bird cholera at Klamath Basin in Oregon and California and parasites in the Mississippi River between Wisconsin and Illinois, said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Hall added, however, that global trade in pets, illegal wildlife and animal parts could prove to be the more likely route for the deadly virus reaching the United States.
"I am more concerned about the illegal smuggling and the bringing-in illegally of birds into this country," he said. "And the reason is an endangered species, or even birds people are not supposed to have because they're from another country bring very high dollars in."
Hall and Patrick Leahy, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, which is conducting the initial round of tests for presence of the virus, said their concerns about the virus will ease sometime between October and December if it hasn't shown up.
"We may dodge the bullet this year, but the sampling will continue," Leahy said, explaining the entire effort would begin anew next spring.
Leahy said a variation of influenza in birds, H5N2, was found last year in two of 100 birds sampled in North Dakota.
The first samples of the two ducks came back positive for the deadly bird flu strain, but more analysis found they were infected with one of a number of duck viruses and "there was nothing to be concerned about," said Ted Gutzke, project leader at North Dakota's J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge.
It isn't clear yet which birds will be show symptoms of the disease or just be a carrier like a Typhoid Mary, Leahy said. "A lot of the USGS activities is looking at how the virus behaves in different wildlife species," he said.
Meanwhile, the White House was closely monitoring a family cluster of bird flu cases likely transmitted from human to human in Indonesia. Seven of eight family members died, but there wasn't reason yet to fear a pandemic, said the
World Health Organization in Geneva.
"They're still trying to investigate the possibilities it's human-to-human contact, whether this is the sort of contact that might lead to a pandemic," said Tony Snow,
President Bush's press secretary.
Hall said the Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to collect tissue samples or feces from 27 species of migratory waterfowl and shorebirds that could have contracted virus — directly or indirectly — from ducks in China or other sources. It also is collecting water samples from where birds defecate.
No one knows whether the virus will reach the United States or develop into a strain of deadly flu that can be transmitted easily by humans. Until that happens, Interior officials say they won't become alarmed.
"Our reaction until there's evidence that it has recombined or has mutated would be to treat it as we do other wildlife diseases — make sure people know it's there," Hall said. "We have bird die-offs every year."
In the meantime, Hall advised anyone who comes across a dead bird not to handle it. Game birds should be cooked thoroughly and hunters should keep sanitation in mind in handling, cleaning and deboning them, he said.
ers
Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, left, talks about government efforts to monitor and prevent a deadly bird flu virus from making its way into the U.S. from Asia, during an interview with the Associated Press in Washington, Wednesday, May 24, 2006. At right is P. Patrick Leahy, the U.S. Geological Survey's acting director. Hall said that swans traveling along the Pacific flyway are most likely to be bearers of the deadly bird flu virus among wild migratory birds but an even bigger worry is the prospect of the virus arriving by illegal animal trade. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Contacts of flu family tracked
Health experts are trying to trace anyone who had contact with an Indonesian family struck down by bird flu to put them on antiviral drugs as a precaution.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Health experts are trying to trace anyone who had contact with an Indonesian family struck down by bird flu to put them on antiviral drugs as a precaution.
Seven of the family in a remote village in North Sumatra died this month, but so far there is no evidence of anyone else being infected, said Firdosi Mehta of the World Health Organization.
"There is active surveillance in the village - fever surveillance to look for any more cases that are occurring outside this immediate family cluster," Mehta said.
The H5N1 bird flu virus infected as many as eight members of the family. It is the largest bird flu family cluster known to date and has drawn an enormous amount of attention from medical experts.
But Mehta urged against any over- reaction, saying this was not the first cluster that the world has known. He said it was little different from other family clusters that were documented in Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam.
Still, Mehta cautioned "we cannot conclusively discard" that the Sumatra family experienced human-to-human transmission.
The WHO said Tuesday that limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu might have occurred in the family, but there was no scientific evidence that the virus had mutated to allow it to spread easily among people.
The Sumatra family had slaughtered and cooked a pig and chickens - both highly susceptible to the virus - for a feast on April 29
Efforts to test chickens and pigs for the virus have failed because residents there have refused to cooperate. Tensions are high as they blame the government for not helping enough.
REUTERS
Contacts of flu family tracked
Health experts are trying to trace anyone who had contact with an Indonesian family struck down by bird flu to put them on antiviral drugs as a precaution.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Health experts are trying to trace anyone who had contact with an Indonesian family struck down by bird flu to put them on antiviral drugs as a precaution.
Seven of the family in a remote village in North Sumatra died this month, but so far there is no evidence of anyone else being infected, said Firdosi Mehta of the World Health Organization.
"There is active surveillance in the village - fever surveillance to look for any more cases that are occurring outside this immediate family cluster," Mehta said.
The H5N1 bird flu virus infected as many as eight members of the family. It is the largest bird flu family cluster known to date and has drawn an enormous amount of attention from medical experts.
But Mehta urged against any over- reaction, saying this was not the first cluster that the world has known. He said it was little different from other family clusters that were documented in Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam.
Still, Mehta cautioned "we cannot conclusively discard" that the Sumatra family experienced human-to-human transmission.
The WHO said Tuesday that limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu might have occurred in the family, but there was no scientific evidence that the virus had mutated to allow it to spread easily among people.
The Sumatra family had slaughtered and cooked a pig and chickens - both highly susceptible to the virus - for a feast on April 29
Efforts to test chickens and pigs for the virus have failed because residents there have refused to cooperate. Tensions are high as they blame the government for not helping enough.
REUTERS
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Veteran Member
Bird Flu 'Cluster' Found: Good News and Bad News
Experts Doubt Human-to-Human Transmission, Observe No Signs of MutationBy JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN
May 24, 2006 — - A family of eight was found infected with bird flu this week, prompting fears that the virus had mutated to allow human-to-human transmission leading to a pandemic.
However, experts told ABC News the event was not unequivocally a cause for alarm.
The Good News:
-- Experts said this is not the start of a pandemic. If it were, there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of people sick by now.
"The first case(s) in this family cluster arose in late April, more than three weeks ago. If the virus that has affected this family had been a true pandemic virus, it would have spread throughout the neighborhood, into the community and into adjacent and even far-distant communities. The absence of such spread, together with the genetic sequencing data, clearly indicates that this virus is not the harbinger of the next pandemic," said David Fedson, infectious disease and vaccine expert, formerly of Sanofi-Pasteur.
-- The virus does NOT show signs of mutation. The World Health Organization has already tested samples from the 6 confirmed cases in the family and the virus looks like the same H5N1 virus that is circulating in birds. For the virus to become one that spreads to humans easily, it MUST mutate.
-- The "mother of all clusters" remark from the WHO Indonesian official is probably an overstatement. There have been other clusters approximately the same size.
Infectious disease expert Bill Schaffner of Vanderbilt University said of the remarks, "It's more excitable than if I were the official; I wouldn't say that. It's certainly a cluster."
The Bad News:
-- If these cases turn out to be human-to-human transmissions of bird flu, there is no pandemic yet, but it would be alarming. It would indicate the virus is picking up steam -- experts say it would mean virus is "one step closer" to pandemic.
What is the WHO doing now?
Dick Thompson, the WHO avian influenza media contact who is currently in Jakarta said:
-- WHO is backtracking from the first victim -- where did she become infected? Could other family members have become infected the same way?
-- WHO has found birds in the area that are carrying antibodies to the H5N1 virus, but not the virus itself. This means the virus is around and birds were exposed but apparently did not fall ill.
-- WHO has analyzed samples of the virus from all Indonesian family members but the 1st one, who was buried before testing. The virus does NOT show signs of mutating.
-- WHO is not yet ready to conclude "human to human" transmission until all other avenues (contact with sick birds, bird droppings, or other animals) have been eliminated.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2000221
Experts Doubt Human-to-Human Transmission, Observe No Signs of MutationBy JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN
May 24, 2006 — - A family of eight was found infected with bird flu this week, prompting fears that the virus had mutated to allow human-to-human transmission leading to a pandemic.
However, experts told ABC News the event was not unequivocally a cause for alarm.
The Good News:
-- Experts said this is not the start of a pandemic. If it were, there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of people sick by now.
"The first case(s) in this family cluster arose in late April, more than three weeks ago. If the virus that has affected this family had been a true pandemic virus, it would have spread throughout the neighborhood, into the community and into adjacent and even far-distant communities. The absence of such spread, together with the genetic sequencing data, clearly indicates that this virus is not the harbinger of the next pandemic," said David Fedson, infectious disease and vaccine expert, formerly of Sanofi-Pasteur.
-- The virus does NOT show signs of mutation. The World Health Organization has already tested samples from the 6 confirmed cases in the family and the virus looks like the same H5N1 virus that is circulating in birds. For the virus to become one that spreads to humans easily, it MUST mutate.
-- The "mother of all clusters" remark from the WHO Indonesian official is probably an overstatement. There have been other clusters approximately the same size.
Infectious disease expert Bill Schaffner of Vanderbilt University said of the remarks, "It's more excitable than if I were the official; I wouldn't say that. It's certainly a cluster."
The Bad News:
-- If these cases turn out to be human-to-human transmissions of bird flu, there is no pandemic yet, but it would be alarming. It would indicate the virus is picking up steam -- experts say it would mean virus is "one step closer" to pandemic.
What is the WHO doing now?
Dick Thompson, the WHO avian influenza media contact who is currently in Jakarta said:
-- WHO is backtracking from the first victim -- where did she become infected? Could other family members have become infected the same way?
-- WHO has found birds in the area that are carrying antibodies to the H5N1 virus, but not the virus itself. This means the virus is around and birds were exposed but apparently did not fall ill.
-- WHO has analyzed samples of the virus from all Indonesian family members but the 1st one, who was buried before testing. The virus does NOT show signs of mutating.
-- WHO is not yet ready to conclude "human to human" transmission until all other avenues (contact with sick birds, bird droppings, or other animals) have been eliminated.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2000221
New Freedom
Veteran Member
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060525/wl_asia_afp/healthfluindonesia_060525053755
Dozens quarantined in Indonesian bird flu village
Thu May 25, 1:37 AM ET
JAKARTA (AFP) - Health experts in an Indonesian village hit by an unprecedented bird flu outbreak have asked more than 30 people to quarantine themselves to contain any potential further spread, officials said.
People who had close contact with any of seven relatives who have died since last month in the North Sumatran village are being monitored for signs of illness, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Dick Thompson told AFP.
"The focus right now is contact tracing, identifying those people who may have been in contact with this cluster," Thompson told AFP by telephone.
"We will monitor their health and encourage them to self-quarantine themselves."
A day after another WHO spokesman, Peter Cordingley, said the UN body was "stumped" about the original source of the infection, Thompson said that contact with an infected bird was now considered the likely cause.
Cordingley also on Wednesday described the outbreak as "the mother of all clusters", but Thompson stressed there was evidence that the virus had not mutated into a form that could be more easily spread from humans to humans.
"From what we see, it takes very close and maybe prolonged contact with a sick individual," for someone to catch the virus, Thompson said.
Thompson said while Indonesia's cluster was the biggest so far, there had been "maybe four to five" close-contact infections since the outbreak of bird flu in late 2003 that has gone on to kill 124 people in nine countries worldwide, 33 of them in Indonesia.
He said samples of the virus taken from the cluster of victims had been sequenced in a Hong Kong laboratory and had not shown any signs of mutation into a more contagious form.
The WHO has sent a 10-member team to Kubu Sembelang village, Karo District, to identify those who had close contact with the family. So far more than 30, including more relatives, have been traced and asked to quarantine themselves.
"We will monitor them for a week or two to see if they become sick. If they do they will immediately be put in isolation in a hospital," Thompson said.
The group under watch might be given Tamiflu, an anti-flu drug that has shown some effectiveness in reducing the mortality rate of avian flu when administered in the early stages of the sickness, he added.
Bird flu tests would be carried out on anyone who showed signs of sickness.
Six people in the family have been confirmed to have been infected with H5N1, while the WHO has concluded the first person in the family to die was also a bird flu victim although she was buried before tests could be carried out.
The cases have brought Indonesia's bird flu death toll to 33, with 22 of those this year.
Dozens quarantined in Indonesian bird flu village
Thu May 25, 1:37 AM ET
JAKARTA (AFP) - Health experts in an Indonesian village hit by an unprecedented bird flu outbreak have asked more than 30 people to quarantine themselves to contain any potential further spread, officials said.
People who had close contact with any of seven relatives who have died since last month in the North Sumatran village are being monitored for signs of illness, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Dick Thompson told AFP.
"The focus right now is contact tracing, identifying those people who may have been in contact with this cluster," Thompson told AFP by telephone.
"We will monitor their health and encourage them to self-quarantine themselves."
A day after another WHO spokesman, Peter Cordingley, said the UN body was "stumped" about the original source of the infection, Thompson said that contact with an infected bird was now considered the likely cause.
Cordingley also on Wednesday described the outbreak as "the mother of all clusters", but Thompson stressed there was evidence that the virus had not mutated into a form that could be more easily spread from humans to humans.
"From what we see, it takes very close and maybe prolonged contact with a sick individual," for someone to catch the virus, Thompson said.
Thompson said while Indonesia's cluster was the biggest so far, there had been "maybe four to five" close-contact infections since the outbreak of bird flu in late 2003 that has gone on to kill 124 people in nine countries worldwide, 33 of them in Indonesia.
He said samples of the virus taken from the cluster of victims had been sequenced in a Hong Kong laboratory and had not shown any signs of mutation into a more contagious form.
The WHO has sent a 10-member team to Kubu Sembelang village, Karo District, to identify those who had close contact with the family. So far more than 30, including more relatives, have been traced and asked to quarantine themselves.
"We will monitor them for a week or two to see if they become sick. If they do they will immediately be put in isolation in a hospital," Thompson said.
The group under watch might be given Tamiflu, an anti-flu drug that has shown some effectiveness in reducing the mortality rate of avian flu when administered in the early stages of the sickness, he added.
Bird flu tests would be carried out on anyone who showed signs of sickness.
Six people in the family have been confirmed to have been infected with H5N1, while the WHO has concluded the first person in the family to die was also a bird flu victim although she was buried before tests could be carried out.
The cases have brought Indonesia's bird flu death toll to 33, with 22 of those this year.
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Local tests show West Java girl died of bird flu
(Reuters)25 May 2006
JAKARTA -
Local tests have confirmed an Indonesian child from the city of Bandung died of bird flu,
a senior health ministry official said on Thursday.Local results on bird flu cases are not considered definitive and need confirmation from the World Health Organisation.
I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of communicable disease control, told Reuters local tests have found one of two siblings admitted to hospital earlier this week in the West Java capital of Bandung was a positive H5N1 case.
“The younger one is positive. We are looking into the other one,” he said.
The younger sibling, a 10-year old girl, died on Tuesday.
World attention is now focused on another Indonesian family after the WHO confirmed seven members from Kubu Simbelang village in North Sumatra province were infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
It is the largest known bird flu cluster since the disease re-appeared in Asia in 2003 and the WHO says limited human-to-human contact between family members might have occurred.
International and local health officials say there is no evidence the virus had mutated in the Kubu Simbelang cluster case. But the case has baffled experts because no definitive source of infection has been found.
H5N1 remains difficult for humans to catch, but experts fear it could evolve into a form passes easily from human to human, causing a pandemic that could kill millions.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Display...May/theworld_May897.xml§ion=theworld&col=
H5N1 Bird Flu Cluster in Bandung Indonesia Confirmed
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05250602/H5N1_Bandung_Confirmed.html
Recombinomics Commentary
May 25, 2006
local tests have found one of two siblings admitted to hospital earlier this week in the West Java capital of Bandung was a positive H5N1 case.
"The younger one is positive. We are looking into the other one," he said.
The younger sibling, a 10-year old girl, died on Tuesday.
The above comments confirm H5N1 bird flu in the Bandung familial cluster. Two siblings have died, while a third is being treated at home. The number of confirmed clusters continues to make up the majority of cases in Indonesia.
Currently the large cluster in North Sumatra has captured significant attention, but the repeated and widespread outbreaks of smaller cluster is cause for concern and involves two distinct H5N1 sequences.
2 cases of H5N1 bird flu reported in Czech Republic
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/25-05-2006/81024-Czech-0
Another two cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain have been reported in the Czech Republic, an official said Thursday.
A lab in Prague detected the deadly strain in two dead swans found last week in the southeast of the country, said Ivan Prikryl of the regional veterinary authority in the southeastern town of Brno.
So far, the H5N1 strain has been found in 14 birds, all swans, in the Czech Republic, reports the AP.
USDA Undertakes Elaborate Testing Program For Bird Flu
http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2006052412230005&Take=1
By Libby Quaid
Of THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMES, Iowa (AP)--The U.S. government's elaborate network for diagnosing bird flu will eventually come down to a sprawling 640-acre campus in the Iowa countryside where strict security is the only hint of the crucial role scientists there could play in a national drama that the country hopes will never materialize.
The security and the elaborate protective clothing the Agriculture Department scientists wear - scrubs, coveralls, rubber boots, protective glasses, hairnets and gloves - looks like a made-for-TV disaster movie.
"These are nice, bright, healthy birds," says veterinarian Michelle Crocheck of four unsuspecting chickens strutting around in their cage.
For now.
If suspected cases of bird flu are found at other screening labs across the country, the future for Crocheck's charges is grim.
The four fowl - and hundreds like them - are key players in a complex testing process at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories that will determine whether the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus has arrived in the U.S..
"Lab diagnosis is definitely the centerpiece of the whole avian influenza response," said Larry Granger, who oversees emergency management for the Agriculture Department.
The labs - normally off-limits to anyone but the scientists who work there - were opened Tuesday to journalists for a walkthrough of the nation's only internationally recognized bird-flu testing program.
Researchers test for bird flu, mad-cow disease and many other animal diseases on the 640-acre campus near Iowa State University. The sprawling green lawns and low buildings are under tight security.
Known as the H5N1 strain of bird influenza, the virus spread from Asia, where it's blamed for the slaughter of 200 million birds, to Africa and Europe. The virus has killed at least 124 people.
No one knows whether the virus will reach the U.S. or develop into a strain of deadly flu that can be transmitted easily by humans.
To help determine when and where it arrives, the government has begun a massive testing program. The first phase started in Alaska, where thousands of migratory birds will be captured and swabbed. The birds are considered natural reservoirs for bird flu and can harbor hundred of different flu viruses.
Samples will be shipped to a network of laboratories across the country for screening. If a sample contains evidence of the H5 virus, it then gets shipped to Ames, where tests are run over several days to determine if the infected bird carried the H5N1 strain.
First, virus from the sample is injected in bird eggs, which are tested five days later to determine whether it is one of 144 strains of bird flu or whether it is another disease such as Exotic Newcastle, which is harmless to humans but deadly to poultry.
If it contains bird flu, the sample is tested to determine whether it is H5N1 or another of the avian influenzas. Only those testing positive for H5N1 go to the lab with the caged chickens.
Eight of these birds, specially bred and disease-free, are injected with virus from the suspect sample. Perhaps within hours, certainly in two days, the birds will begin moving more slowly, perhaps hunching in the corner of the cage and no longer eating and drinking. Their wattles might turn from bright orange to blue.
"If you lose 75% of the chickens, or more, then it's high-path," said Brundaben Panigrahy, head of the lab's avian section, using scientists' shorthand for the lethal strain of Asian bird flu.
Although the test results will be announced publicly, likely by officials in Washington, Granger said this won't be a signal of a threat to humans.
"If we find this virus in the wild bird population, it doesn't necessarily mean there's a human health risk," Granger said. "Likewise, it doesn't mean there is a risk to commercial poultry."
Bird Flu Quarantine Imposed in Russia’s Siberia
http://mosnews.com/news/2006/05/25/birdflunovosib.shtml
Authorities in southwestern Siberia have imposed quarantine restrictions in four districts after outbreaks of bird flu, a local emergencies official told RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. The outbreak of the virus in the Omsk Region, its capital about 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) east of Moscow, is the first time avian influenza has been registered in Siberia this year.
“Tests confirmed bird flu [virus] in four districts,” he said, adding that authorities had acted to impose quarantine restrictions in the affected areas.
The official said bird flu was suspected in one more area, where ten birds had died in the last 24 hours, and that a total of 185 domestic birds had died at nine locations in seven districts since May 13.
The lethal H5N1 strain of the virus returned to the south of European Russia in February, but was largely contained in a massive vaccination campaign.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said last month that around 1.1 million birds had died of the disease in Russia, and 0.3 million had been culled in measures to control the spread of the virus since the beginning of February. No human cases of bird flu have yet been diagnosed in Russia.
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
ROMANIA
2006-05-25 17:40:00
Bird flu continues to spread in Romania, where the fourth outbreak has been detected in southern Bucharest, as well as additional ten in the Prahova locality, central Romania.
"200 people living in Bucharest's fourth district have been quarantined last night, which sets the number of isolated residents of the capital to 400", Marius Dobresku, the spokesman of the city authorities, said.
"Nearly 250 birds have been culled since dead birds were found in several courtyards in the region", he added.
Romanian authorities decided to end the quarantine and allow people to move freely in all localities were bird-flu outbreaks were recorded, after the 15-patients suspected of bird-flu tested negative, said an official with the Health Ministry.
However, “Ending the quarantine does not mean disinfection and culling of birds in the affected areas will stop,” Rodica Costinea of the Health Ministry, said.
Source: Makfax
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=60475
ROMANIA: Fourth Case of Bird Flu Outbreak in Bucharest
2006-05-25 17:40:00
Bird flu continues to spread in Romania, where the fourth outbreak has been detected in southern Bucharest, as well as additional ten in the Prahova locality, central Romania.
"200 people living in Bucharest's fourth district have been quarantined last night, which sets the number of isolated residents of the capital to 400", Marius Dobresku, the spokesman of the city authorities, said.
"Nearly 250 birds have been culled since dead birds were found in several courtyards in the region", he added.
Romanian authorities decided to end the quarantine and allow people to move freely in all localities were bird-flu outbreaks were recorded, after the 15-patients suspected of bird-flu tested negative, said an official with the Health Ministry.
However, “Ending the quarantine does not mean disinfection and culling of birds in the affected areas will stop,” Rodica Costinea of the Health Ministry, said.
Source: Makfax
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=60475
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><center>Focus news, 25 May 2006
<font size=+1 color=red>Preparing for supply meltdown</font>
<A href="http://www.supplymanagement.co.uk/EDIT/CURRENT_ISSUE_pages/CI_features_item.asp?id=14885">www.supplymanagement.co.uk</a></center>
Contingency planning is an exciting and important role for purchasers. But it is often a neglected area, as Anusha Bradley and Rebecca Ellinor report
The threat of a flu pandemic and the reality of terrorist attacks, together with the repercussions of natural disasters, are never far from the headlines. But it seems that more than half of UK businesses have failed to account for them in the supply chain planning.</b>
Research from the Chartered Management Institute suggests 49 per cent do not have any plans in place to ensure they will be able to keep running if disaster strikes.
The findings are similar to those published in this month's London Business Survey. It found half of the capital's firms do not have plans to cope with a terror attack or emergency such as the Buncefield oil depot explosion. And small companies were worst prepared.
René de Sousa, senior procurement specialist at CIPS, says it is part of procurement's responsibility to ensure continuity of supply - and for that it has to draft contingency plans.
"It really is vital. You must identify where the constraints are and put procedures in place whether you're in the private or public sector. The consequences of not doing it can undo a lot of good work in your business, especially if you look at reputation as well - your customers expect you to be able to manage this."
When members of Ariba's newly formed CXO council met for the first time this month, supply risk management was the top of their agenda.
Head of the council is Javier Urioste, former procurement chief at JPMorgan Chase, who now runs Urioste Mercy & Company, an international business advisory firm. He says while risks such as currency fluctuations and energy costs are widely recognised, there are many other areas where problems can arise. "Globalisation and offshoring means working with suppliers in different parts of the world, which presents types of risk covering geopolitical, social and cultural issues."
He says as well as developing and implementing a risk management strategy, you need to inform people about it.
"You must talk to all stakeholders to educate internal clients, logistics and the supply companies of your plans. Risk management needs to be a culture for supply management."
Alan Day, managing director of supply risk management consultancy State of Flux, says even those who have considered risk may not be covered. He cited a poor assessment made by a pharmaceutical company that had five suppliers for a key base ingredient but did not realise they all came from the same earthquake-prone region in Japan.
Day believes manufacturing, telecoms and some parts of the financial services industry are further ahead, but the majority of firms, particularly those in services, lag behind. He says buyers must first decide which suppliers are critical to their business.
"Purchasers are used to considering the most important suppliers in terms of spend. But 20 per cent of your suppliers will contribute 80 per cent of your risk. So who are they? They may not be the ones you spend most of your money with."
Mark Hillman, senior research analyst for AMR Research, believes the complexity of supply risk management has prevented many firms tackling it properly. He suggests buyers either start with the most high-risk supplies - those from sole-source suppliers - or the most strategically important supplies. "Start with these and work backwards looking at everyone who is involved or connected to that product or supply," he says.
Hillman says buyers who haven't drafted plans should see it as an opportunity to raise the strategic profile of procurement and adds that involving finance will help because once they see the financial risk they will assist.
He recently examined US firms' preparedness for a flu pandemic and found while 43 per cent of respondents say they have a policy in place, but the majority do not have an effective supply chain risk management plan.
Plans must also be reviewed: "A strategy is no good if it sits in a binder on a shelf and is forgotten," he warns. The CMI study found only 37 per cent of firms with contingency plans tested them at least once a year. And of those, 79 percent found shortcomings in their plans.
"Disaster preparation is only as strong as the proverbial weakest link. Be sure you are not the weak link - and check the rest of the chain," Hillman says.
<B><center>Focus news, 25 May 2006
<font size=+1 color=red>Preparing for supply meltdown</font>
<A href="http://www.supplymanagement.co.uk/EDIT/CURRENT_ISSUE_pages/CI_features_item.asp?id=14885">www.supplymanagement.co.uk</a></center>
Contingency planning is an exciting and important role for purchasers. But it is often a neglected area, as Anusha Bradley and Rebecca Ellinor report
The threat of a flu pandemic and the reality of terrorist attacks, together with the repercussions of natural disasters, are never far from the headlines. But it seems that more than half of UK businesses have failed to account for them in the supply chain planning.</b>
Research from the Chartered Management Institute suggests 49 per cent do not have any plans in place to ensure they will be able to keep running if disaster strikes.
The findings are similar to those published in this month's London Business Survey. It found half of the capital's firms do not have plans to cope with a terror attack or emergency such as the Buncefield oil depot explosion. And small companies were worst prepared.
René de Sousa, senior procurement specialist at CIPS, says it is part of procurement's responsibility to ensure continuity of supply - and for that it has to draft contingency plans.
"It really is vital. You must identify where the constraints are and put procedures in place whether you're in the private or public sector. The consequences of not doing it can undo a lot of good work in your business, especially if you look at reputation as well - your customers expect you to be able to manage this."
When members of Ariba's newly formed CXO council met for the first time this month, supply risk management was the top of their agenda.
Head of the council is Javier Urioste, former procurement chief at JPMorgan Chase, who now runs Urioste Mercy & Company, an international business advisory firm. He says while risks such as currency fluctuations and energy costs are widely recognised, there are many other areas where problems can arise. "Globalisation and offshoring means working with suppliers in different parts of the world, which presents types of risk covering geopolitical, social and cultural issues."
He says as well as developing and implementing a risk management strategy, you need to inform people about it.
"You must talk to all stakeholders to educate internal clients, logistics and the supply companies of your plans. Risk management needs to be a culture for supply management."
Alan Day, managing director of supply risk management consultancy State of Flux, says even those who have considered risk may not be covered. He cited a poor assessment made by a pharmaceutical company that had five suppliers for a key base ingredient but did not realise they all came from the same earthquake-prone region in Japan.
Day believes manufacturing, telecoms and some parts of the financial services industry are further ahead, but the majority of firms, particularly those in services, lag behind. He says buyers must first decide which suppliers are critical to their business.
"Purchasers are used to considering the most important suppliers in terms of spend. But 20 per cent of your suppliers will contribute 80 per cent of your risk. So who are they? They may not be the ones you spend most of your money with."
Mark Hillman, senior research analyst for AMR Research, believes the complexity of supply risk management has prevented many firms tackling it properly. He suggests buyers either start with the most high-risk supplies - those from sole-source suppliers - or the most strategically important supplies. "Start with these and work backwards looking at everyone who is involved or connected to that product or supply," he says.
Hillman says buyers who haven't drafted plans should see it as an opportunity to raise the strategic profile of procurement and adds that involving finance will help because once they see the financial risk they will assist.
He recently examined US firms' preparedness for a flu pandemic and found while 43 per cent of respondents say they have a policy in place, but the majority do not have an effective supply chain risk management plan.
Plans must also be reviewed: "A strategy is no good if it sits in a binder on a shelf and is forgotten," he warns. The CMI study found only 37 per cent of firms with contingency plans tested them at least once a year. And of those, 79 percent found shortcomings in their plans.
"Disaster preparation is only as strong as the proverbial weakest link. Be sure you are not the weak link - and check the rest of the chain," Hillman says.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=brown><center>Study Warns of "Chaos" and "Panic" If Bird Flu Strikes </font>
May 23, 2006
<A href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/05/bird_flu_media.html">www.consumeraffairs.com</a></center>
A new report finds that journalists covering public health issues see a government and society that is "thoroughly unprepared" for a pandemic flu outbreak.</b>
Public health journalists in the study view the threat of a pandemic as highly serious. They believe a pandemic could lead to potential "societal breakdown," "chaos," and "panic." And, the vast majority of respondents judge the nation's response to pandemic flu to be either insufficient, misdirected, or both.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates wrote the report, which is based on 20 one-on-one telephone interviews conducted from March 3 to 29, 2006, with leading health journalists, representing national and regional media from print and broadcast organizations.
The report was released by the non-profit, non-partisan Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University.
Journalists in the study recognize the federal government has taken positive steps to prepare for a pandemic flu outbreak, particularly toward investing in vaccine research, but overall, they criticize the "generalities" that they view permeate preparedness planning, citing such areas of weakness as unclear government leadership and poor communication with the business community and the public on how to maintain day-to-day life during a pandemic.
For instance, one respondent believed a pervasive divisiveness in the government is hampering preparedness efforts, with a high likelihood that these jurisdictional and political rivalries will only intensify during a crisis.
Reporters also cite problems with emergency hospital preparedness as one of their biggest concerns.
Additionally, the journalists think the media would play an important role during a flu pandemic as a crucial link to the public.
News organizations would have to strike a balance between working with the government to disseminate accurate and timely information to the public, and holding policymakers accountable for pandemic-related decisions and actions.
One respondent believed avian flu could "change life as we know it," and wanted coverage to prepare the public without being alarmist or causing panic. Other journalists are wary of the sometimes "sensational" and "irresponsible" coverage of avian and pandemic flu and suggested that due to the subject's complexity, covering this story should be restricted to journalists with the background and sources to accurately portray the threat.
Journalists also believe the public has adopted a "wait and see" approach to pandemic flu, with few Americans truly understanding the threat or what they can do to prepare.
<B><font size=+1 color=brown><center>Study Warns of "Chaos" and "Panic" If Bird Flu Strikes </font>
May 23, 2006
<A href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/05/bird_flu_media.html">www.consumeraffairs.com</a></center>
A new report finds that journalists covering public health issues see a government and society that is "thoroughly unprepared" for a pandemic flu outbreak.</b>
Public health journalists in the study view the threat of a pandemic as highly serious. They believe a pandemic could lead to potential "societal breakdown," "chaos," and "panic." And, the vast majority of respondents judge the nation's response to pandemic flu to be either insufficient, misdirected, or both.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates wrote the report, which is based on 20 one-on-one telephone interviews conducted from March 3 to 29, 2006, with leading health journalists, representing national and regional media from print and broadcast organizations.
The report was released by the non-profit, non-partisan Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University.
Journalists in the study recognize the federal government has taken positive steps to prepare for a pandemic flu outbreak, particularly toward investing in vaccine research, but overall, they criticize the "generalities" that they view permeate preparedness planning, citing such areas of weakness as unclear government leadership and poor communication with the business community and the public on how to maintain day-to-day life during a pandemic.
For instance, one respondent believed a pervasive divisiveness in the government is hampering preparedness efforts, with a high likelihood that these jurisdictional and political rivalries will only intensify during a crisis.
Reporters also cite problems with emergency hospital preparedness as one of their biggest concerns.
Additionally, the journalists think the media would play an important role during a flu pandemic as a crucial link to the public.
News organizations would have to strike a balance between working with the government to disseminate accurate and timely information to the public, and holding policymakers accountable for pandemic-related decisions and actions.
One respondent believed avian flu could "change life as we know it," and wanted coverage to prepare the public without being alarmist or causing panic. Other journalists are wary of the sometimes "sensational" and "irresponsible" coverage of avian and pandemic flu and suggested that due to the subject's complexity, covering this story should be restricted to journalists with the background and sources to accurately portray the threat.
Journalists also believe the public has adopted a "wait and see" approach to pandemic flu, with few Americans truly understanding the threat or what they can do to prepare.
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Experts looking for bird flu spread watch for deaths </font>
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Wed May 24, 3:36 PM ET
<A href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060524/ts_nm/birdflu_spread_dc">news,yahoo.com</a></center>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A suspicious-looking cluster of human bird flu cases in Indonesia illustrates just how difficult it will be to detect the beginning of a pandemic, should one occur, scientists said on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization issued assurances on Tuesday that the virus had not changed into a clearly dangerous form, but experts said if it had changed, the information would have come much too late.</b>
In fact, they said, the only way anyone will know that a dangerous form of the virus is circulating will be when people start to become sick and die in large numbers.
"We are not going to know it until a lot of people are infected," said Dr. Eric Toner, an expert in emergency medicine at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
And the canaries in the mine will be people trying to cope with the outbreak.
"If it being transmitted efficiently, we would see health care workers being sick," Toner said.
High technology genetic sequencing may give some answers after the fact, but the only way to actually detect a beginning epidemic will be after it has already started, using old-fashioned epidemiology -- the study of a disease's impact on a population.
"We have to, because the genetics of the virus is going to come too late," said Dr. Arnold Monto, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Michigan. It takes days or weeks to completely sequence the eight genes of a flu virus.
WHO hopes that countries will be able to quickly identify and isolate human cases of bird flu while investigators check to see how dangerous the strain is.
But the case in Indonesia shows this does not often happen in the real world.
INCOMPLETE INFORMATION
"We are going to be making some crucial decisions based on very incomplete information and speed is of the essence here," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
And nothing happened speedily in Indonesia. "The first cases were in late April," Osterholm said. WHO issued its first definitive statement on the situation on Tuesday -- nearly a month later.
Had efficient and sustained human transmission been underway, that would be time for many people to have been infected.
The H5N1 avian influenza virus is still almost exclusively a bird virus. It has killed or forced the culling of hundreds of million of birds as it has moved through Asia, across Europe and into many parts of Africa.
It only occasionally infects people -- 218 in 10 countries, killing 124 of them. But only a few genetic changes would allow the virus to easily infect people, and it would likely sweep around the world if this happened, killing millions.
Scientists fully expect the occasional human case of avian flu. But they become more concerned when they see a cluster, like the case of the seven family members in the northern part of Indonesia's Sumatra island.
So far everyone known to have been infected was either in close contact with an infected bird, or in very close contact with an infected person -- and in fact, with a blood relative, which suggests some people may be genetically susceptible to infection.
But in Indonesia it is not yet clear how the first victim in this cluster, a 37-year-old woman, became infected.
Scientists were reassured by the first genetic analysis of virus samples taken from some of the Indonesian patients, although no one is certain of all the genetic changes that would be needed to allow the virus to infect many people.
"We do know some of the things to look for -- we know some of the virulence elements," Monto said.
"But I think the proof in the pudding is watching what happens in the region."
<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Experts looking for bird flu spread watch for deaths </font>
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Wed May 24, 3:36 PM ET
<A href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060524/ts_nm/birdflu_spread_dc">news,yahoo.com</a></center>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A suspicious-looking cluster of human bird flu cases in Indonesia illustrates just how difficult it will be to detect the beginning of a pandemic, should one occur, scientists said on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization issued assurances on Tuesday that the virus had not changed into a clearly dangerous form, but experts said if it had changed, the information would have come much too late.</b>
In fact, they said, the only way anyone will know that a dangerous form of the virus is circulating will be when people start to become sick and die in large numbers.
"We are not going to know it until a lot of people are infected," said Dr. Eric Toner, an expert in emergency medicine at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
And the canaries in the mine will be people trying to cope with the outbreak.
"If it being transmitted efficiently, we would see health care workers being sick," Toner said.
High technology genetic sequencing may give some answers after the fact, but the only way to actually detect a beginning epidemic will be after it has already started, using old-fashioned epidemiology -- the study of a disease's impact on a population.
"We have to, because the genetics of the virus is going to come too late," said Dr. Arnold Monto, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Michigan. It takes days or weeks to completely sequence the eight genes of a flu virus.
WHO hopes that countries will be able to quickly identify and isolate human cases of bird flu while investigators check to see how dangerous the strain is.
But the case in Indonesia shows this does not often happen in the real world.
INCOMPLETE INFORMATION
"We are going to be making some crucial decisions based on very incomplete information and speed is of the essence here," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
And nothing happened speedily in Indonesia. "The first cases were in late April," Osterholm said. WHO issued its first definitive statement on the situation on Tuesday -- nearly a month later.
Had efficient and sustained human transmission been underway, that would be time for many people to have been infected.
The H5N1 avian influenza virus is still almost exclusively a bird virus. It has killed or forced the culling of hundreds of million of birds as it has moved through Asia, across Europe and into many parts of Africa.
It only occasionally infects people -- 218 in 10 countries, killing 124 of them. But only a few genetic changes would allow the virus to easily infect people, and it would likely sweep around the world if this happened, killing millions.
Scientists fully expect the occasional human case of avian flu. But they become more concerned when they see a cluster, like the case of the seven family members in the northern part of Indonesia's Sumatra island.
So far everyone known to have been infected was either in close contact with an infected bird, or in very close contact with an infected person -- and in fact, with a blood relative, which suggests some people may be genetically susceptible to infection.
But in Indonesia it is not yet clear how the first victim in this cluster, a 37-year-old woman, became infected.
Scientists were reassured by the first genetic analysis of virus samples taken from some of the Indonesian patients, although no one is certain of all the genetic changes that would be needed to allow the virus to infect many people.
"We do know some of the things to look for -- we know some of the virulence elements," Monto said.
"But I think the proof in the pudding is watching what happens in the region."
The Flying Dutchman
Deceased
=
<B><center>WHO:
<font size=+1 color=blue>Avian Flu Rapidly Spreading in Birds Around World </font>
By Lisa Schlein
Geneva
23 May 2006
<A href="http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-23-voa76.cfm">www.voanews.com</a></center>
Public Health Experts attending the World Health Assembly say the H5N1 virus in birds is rapidly spreading around the world. The World Health Organization urges nations to speed up their pandemic preparedness plans.
The U.N. agency says there is greater chance now for the H5N1 virus to move into the human population because of the rapid spread of the virus from infected birds. </b>
David Navarro
U.N. Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza David Nabarro says it is not easy for humans to get infected. But, he warns this virus has the capacity to infect and cause disease in humans. "If this virus also develops the capacity to pass easily between humans then we have got something pretty terrible that is going to happen in our world and we will all need to move very rapidly to close it down. We are in this breathing space before it happens. We do not know how long that breathing space is going to be. But, if we are not all organizing ourselves to get ready and to take action to prepare for a pandemic, then we are squandering an opportunity for our human security," he said.
Latest World Health Organization figures put the known number of humans infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus at 217, with 123 deaths. Most of these cases and deaths have occurred in Asia. But, the disease has spread to Europe and the Middle East.
WHO Coordinator of Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response, Keiji Fukuda, says influenza pandemics occur at least a couple of times each century. "We are in a period in which the risk both elevated and more visible and this is because of the H5N1 virus. And, this is because this virus has the ability to persist and to spread and also to infect people. Now the WHO assessment at this period is that we remain at phase three. This is a period in which we may see examples of limited human-to-human transmission. But, we definitely have not seen sustained human-to-human transmission," he said.
Dr. Fukuda says WHO's early efforts in raising global awareness have been very successful. He notes one and one half years ago, a WHO survey found fewer than 50 countries had pandemic preparedness plans. Now, he says, more than 176 countries have either a draft or a completed national pandemic plan.
Egypt's Minister of Health, Mostafa El-Gabaly describes how even a developing country, with limited resources, can get control of the H5N1 virus if it responds immediately to the threat. He says after Egypt's first reported cases of H5N1 in birds and humans, his government sprang into action. It vaccinated tens of thousands of birds and culled those infected with the disease. "Training at the grassroots level, I think is the most important and most effective way of fighting this disease. Whether training people to cull birds. Whether training people to educate families. Whether training people to protect themselves from the dangers of the disease," he said.
The World Health Organization urges countries to strengthen their early warning systems, build national capacity to cope with a pandemic and strengthen global scientific research in vaccine development.
<B><center>WHO:
<font size=+1 color=blue>Avian Flu Rapidly Spreading in Birds Around World </font>
By Lisa Schlein
Geneva
23 May 2006
<A href="http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-23-voa76.cfm">www.voanews.com</a></center>
Public Health Experts attending the World Health Assembly say the H5N1 virus in birds is rapidly spreading around the world. The World Health Organization urges nations to speed up their pandemic preparedness plans.
The U.N. agency says there is greater chance now for the H5N1 virus to move into the human population because of the rapid spread of the virus from infected birds. </b>
David Navarro
U.N. Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza David Nabarro says it is not easy for humans to get infected. But, he warns this virus has the capacity to infect and cause disease in humans. "If this virus also develops the capacity to pass easily between humans then we have got something pretty terrible that is going to happen in our world and we will all need to move very rapidly to close it down. We are in this breathing space before it happens. We do not know how long that breathing space is going to be. But, if we are not all organizing ourselves to get ready and to take action to prepare for a pandemic, then we are squandering an opportunity for our human security," he said.
Latest World Health Organization figures put the known number of humans infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus at 217, with 123 deaths. Most of these cases and deaths have occurred in Asia. But, the disease has spread to Europe and the Middle East.
WHO Coordinator of Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response, Keiji Fukuda, says influenza pandemics occur at least a couple of times each century. "We are in a period in which the risk both elevated and more visible and this is because of the H5N1 virus. And, this is because this virus has the ability to persist and to spread and also to infect people. Now the WHO assessment at this period is that we remain at phase three. This is a period in which we may see examples of limited human-to-human transmission. But, we definitely have not seen sustained human-to-human transmission," he said.
Dr. Fukuda says WHO's early efforts in raising global awareness have been very successful. He notes one and one half years ago, a WHO survey found fewer than 50 countries had pandemic preparedness plans. Now, he says, more than 176 countries have either a draft or a completed national pandemic plan.
Egypt's Minister of Health, Mostafa El-Gabaly describes how even a developing country, with limited resources, can get control of the H5N1 virus if it responds immediately to the threat. He says after Egypt's first reported cases of H5N1 in birds and humans, his government sprang into action. It vaccinated tens of thousands of birds and culled those infected with the disease. "Training at the grassroots level, I think is the most important and most effective way of fighting this disease. Whether training people to cull birds. Whether training people to educate families. Whether training people to protect themselves from the dangers of the disease," he said.
The World Health Organization urges countries to strengthen their early warning systems, build national capacity to cope with a pandemic and strengthen global scientific research in vaccine development.
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Analysis: Local govts. plan for mass flu
By Olga Pierce May 24, 2006, 3:49 GMT
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- In the advent of a large-scale influenza pandemic, the federal government will be unable to manage the crisis in every community, so local public health agencies are creating their own plans to manage the crisis.
What the federal government could do is fund preparations beforehand so that if an emergency situation occurs the supplies and workforce will be ready, representatives of the National Association of County and City Health Officials told congressional staffers at a briefing.
'(A pandemic) would affect everyone at once,' said Association Executive Director Patrick Libbey, 'and the federal government would not have the ability to respond at the community level.'
'Even if the intentions are good, I don`t think the ability will be there,' said Marty Fenstersheib, health officer of Santa Clara County in California, which has 1.8 million residents and includes the city of San Jose. 'Whether we have a pandemic today, next week, or in five years, we have to be prepared. Our challenge is to make a response that is local because all of the response to this pandemic will be local. Although the preparing we do will not stop the pandemic, it will save lives.'
The county is already working on a plan to contain a pandemic once it begins and to treat the 400,000 to 600,000 people who are expected to come down with the illness if the incidence falls within the expected 25 to 35 percent range.
The first step, he said, would be to try to eliminate points of contact between the sick and the healthy. Sporting events and other public gatherings would be ended, and schools would be closed.
Then, healthcare workers would begin operating from a single triage protocol. The sickest patients, especially those who need ventilators, would be treated in hospitals, he said, but the supply of beds would run out in about three weeks, and thus they should be reserved only for those who truly need them.
'Hospitals are not the answer to deal with this pandemic,' he said. 'We will still have people sick from heart disease, strokes and everything else.'
To treat the intermediately ill, local flu treatment centers, mainly staffed with some 400,000 nurse volunteers who are being trained and having their backgrounds checked ahead of time, would be in place to administer intravenous fluids and distribute anti-virals and antibiotics for secondary infections. Likely locations for the centers are convention centers and hotels that already have beds and kitchen facilities.
The majority of people, he said, would receive treatment at home. 'Families have to be prepared to take care of family members.'
To that end, the county has created educational materials in an array of languages to inform citizens of good care, including separating the sick from the well inside the home and when to disinfect and wear gloves and surgical masks.
Engaging business is also a crucial component of pre-pandemic planning, said Dorothy Teeter, interim director of public health for King County, an urban county in Washington that encompasses Seattle and has a population of 1.8 million.
The county is also home to major global businesses like Starbucks, Microsoft and Boeing and international air and seaports.
Like public-sector services, businesses will also face a workforce shortage during a pandemic of 40 percent or more, she said, and they need plans in place to keep their businesses running to keep services available and minimize economic damage.
To do this, 'they need assistance. They need leadership from public health departments,' Teeter said.
Aside from the direct impact of employees staying home, there may be other factors planners have not thought of until they hold discussions with businesses about their needs, she said.
The business leaders in King County are concerned about the effect of school closings on employees who are parents, Teeter said, and how their workers without cars will be able to get to their jobs if public transportation is shut down.
'Businesses did want to actively participate in planning,' she said.
They are also offering to help. Already area businesses have volunteered their facilities for communications hubs and health centers if pandemic strikes.
Public-health departments can also help businesses review their own policies to make sure they are not counterproductive.
In particular, Teeter said, businesses should look over their human-resources policies to make sure that sick employees don`t feel they have to come to work even if they are sick during a pandemic. And making arrangements for employees to work from home would also be a good idea.
But planning and actually being prepared are two different things, the officials said, and to truly be ready more funding has to be made available before the first person becomes sick.
'At this time we have no identified funding stream to make sure implementation of a plan can actually take place,' Teeter told United Press International, and now is the time to start stockpiling medical supplies and cots, and start training workers.
The cost of planning has already taken resources away from other public-health priorities, Fenstersheib told UPI, which is hurting their efforts to combat problems occurring now.
In the advent of an influenza pandemic, even more money would be needed, and it`s not clear where it would come from, he said. 'It`s going to cost a lot of money to take care of all those people at influenza care centers, and we don`t have that.'
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/...9.php/Analysis_Local_govts._plan_for_mass_flu
PCViking
Lutefisk Survivor
Officials Backtrack Bird Flu Cluster
POSTED: 12:09 pm EDT May 25, 2006
UPDATED: 12:09 pm EDT May 25, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The first person infected in a cluster of bird flu cases in a family in Indonesia may have come into contact with sick or dead chickens before possibly passing the virus on to relatives, a World Health Organization official said Thursday.
The woman grew vegetables and sold them in a market, which may have brought her into contact with infected poultry, said Steven Bjorge, a WHO epidemiologist in Jakarta. Investigators also haven't ruled out contamination from chicken feces that the woman used as garden fertilizer, he said.
Officials have not linked her family members to any possible exposure to the virus from birds, which has led them to believe that limited human-to-human transmission may have occurred.
Six of the seven family members who caught bird flu have died, the most recent on Monday. An eighth family member who died was buried before tests could be done, but she was considered to be among those infected with bird flu.
The deaths in the family cluster were the largest ever reported. The WHO has stressed the virus has not mutated into a version easily passed between people or shown any sign of spreading outside the family _ all blood relatives who had very close contact with each other.
"We believe she may have had some contact either with dead or dying chickens in her household or through her activities as a vegetable grower and a seller in a market," Bjorge said of the first woman infected in the cluster.
He said a team of international health experts and villagers is closely monitoring the area where the family lived in northern Sumatra to ensure no one else experiences flu-like symptoms.
"We are very concerned about this large outbreak and we've taken it very seriously as has the government," Bjorge said. "We want to find out if there is any possibility of even one person having mild symptoms that might have been overlooked."
Local authorities have resisted working with outside health experts and many villagers blame black magic, not bird flu, for the deaths of the family members.
On Monday, a half-dozen protesters beheaded a chicken and drank its blood to show local authorities that poultry was not the source of the problem.
Tests for the H5N1 virus in birds in the village of Kubu Sembelang have all come back negative, baffling experts.
So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected poultry. But there is evidence of isolated cases of limited transmission between people in very close contact with each other.
Scientists are unsure how this has occurred, but they have theorized that the virus may pass from one person to another through droplets sneezed or coughed by humans into the air or food, onto surfaces or in some combination.
It has been suggested that some people may have a genetic susceptibility to the disease. In all four family clusters recorded so far, only direct blood relatives _ not spouses _ have caught bird flu.
Bjorge said the sick family members in Indonesia were in close physical proximity, which included sleeping close to each other.
"Even though so many people were tragically affected in this cases, it hasn't really changed the picture of avian influenza in Indonesia at this time," Bjorge said.
A top U.S. health official said Wednesday, however, that the Indonesian case may be the first time bird flu has been passed in a chain of transmission, with a person infected by a bird passing the virus to another person, who then went on to infect a third person or people.
Previous clusters all involved only one jump from person to person. Scientists are still investigating to see how many possible jumps the virus could have made in Indonesia.
Bird flu has killed 124 people worldwide, more than a quarter of them in Indonesia. Scientists fear the H5N1 virus will mutate into a highly contagious form, possibly sparking a global pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to infected birds.
WHO said it will leave its pandemic alert level unchanged at 3, where it has been for months, meaning there is "no or very limited human-to-human transmission."
___
http://www.wral.com/aphealthandwellnewsnews/9273483/detail.html
Perpetuity
Inactive
Well now, ain't that comforting to know, and doesn't it just give you the highest of confidence to know how far on (or behind) the ball they are???
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
DOOM is weirder than fiction
The following article reads weirder than a pulp fiction novel, but IT IS HAPPENING.
Fellow TB2Kers, our Doom approaches. A series of virulently stupid bizarre acts have allowed this virus to go unchecked. We are all cluster f*****.
[ Fair Use: For Educational / Research / Discussion Purposes Only ]
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&sid=aiu7Xi_3TZEY
Australia & New Zealand
<b><font size=6 color="purple">Indonesia Bird-Flu Victim Sought Witch Doctor, Shunned Hospital</b></font>
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- <b>Dowes Ginting died of bird flu this week in the arms of his wife in the back of a jeep as he was taken to the hospital. For three days he had evaded doctors</b> seeking to test him for the virus that killed him and at least six of his Indonesian relatives, including his son.
The movements of Ginting, a thin, boyish looking 32-year-old who grew limes, chilies and tomatoes in a northern mountain village of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, are part of a health probe that's attracting international attention. He and his relatives -- a brother, two sisters, two nephews, a niece and his son -- represent the largest reported instance in which avian flu may have been spread among people, investigators say.
<b>The World Health Organization says the Sumatran incident may mean the H5N1 avian influenza strain is becoming more adept at infecting humans, not just birds. </b> Scientists are monitoring outbreaks like the one in Sumatra for signs the virus is evolving into a form capable of killing millions.
``It's a good example of what the beginning of a pandemic outbreak might look like,'' said Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. ``You would expect familial or hospital-based outbreaks and clusters.''
The WHO's disease-trackers are especially interested in the whereabouts of Ginting before he died to determine whom he risked infecting. He may have caught the virus from his son, who probably was infected by an aunt. This would be the first evidence of a three-person chain of infection, said WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in a telephone interview.
Animal Source?
Cheng said investigators have yet to identify an infected animal as a source of the outbreak. While that's not uncommon, direct contact with sick or dead birds is the principal cause of the human H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003, according to the United Nations agency.
To date, the virus has sickened 218 people in 10 countries, killing 124 of them, the WHO said on May 23. Only a few cases may have been caused by exposure to other infected individuals.
<b>Health officials' difficulty tracking down Ginting for the three days leading to his death suggests that Indonesia may have trouble containing a human outbreak that might jump from affected villages to the rest of Southeast Asia</b>.
A pandemic starts when a novel influenza A-type virus, to which almost no one has natural immunity, emerges and begins spreading across the world. Experts believe that the 1918 pandemic, which killed 50 million people, began when a lethal avian flu virus jumped directly to people from birds. A similar outbreak may take more than 142 million lives and cause the world's economy to shrink by an eighth, a February report by the Lowy Institute and Australian National University found.
Indonesia
<b>The chances of one emerging in Indonesia are higher because the Southeast Asian nation of about 240 million people has 30 million villages with more than 200 million chickens in backyards</b>, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
``Indonesia is a very challenging situation,'' said William Hueston, director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. It's a ``huge country with a lot of different geographical units, and many working independently as I understand it.''
The Sumatra cases are being traced back to Ginting's 37-year- old sister, Puji, who worked selling limes at the Tiga Panah market about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from her home in Kubu Sembelang.
She developed symptoms on April 27 and died of respiratory disease on May 4, according to the WHO. No specimens were obtained before her burial, and the cause of her death can't be confirmed, the agency said in a May 18 statement.
Investigators Stumped
It's possible the woman became infected from an animal source, said WHO's Cheng in a May 24 phone interview, ``but we've found no definitive evidence of H5N1 in any of the animals we've tested.'' The investigators comprise local health officials supported by five international experts, led by Tom Grein, a senior WHO epidemiologist based in Geneva.
A preliminary investigation indicates that three of the infected family members -- Puji's two sons and another brother -- spent the night of April 29 in a small room when the woman was coughing frequently, the WHO said in a May 23 statement.
Other infected family members lived in adjacent homes. All the confirmed cases can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness, the WHO said in its statement.
Coughing
It's less clear how Ginting's son was infected, Dick Thompson, leader of the WHO's pandemic and outbreak communications team, said by phone yesterday from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Based on neighbors' accounts, it's possible the boy entered his aunt's house during her illness, he said.
Ginting helped care for his 10-year-old son at the Adam Malik Hospital in Medan up until the boy's death on May 13, the WHO said. Two days later, after returning to his home in Kubu Sembelang, Ginting began coughing.
Ginting was examined three days later by local health-care workers, who observed avian flu-like symptoms. The WHO's Grein recommended on May 18 that he be isolated and treated in the hospital with the Roche Holding AG antiviral drug, Tamiflu.
<b><font size=5 color="blue">Instead Ginting fled local health authorities and sought care from a <u>witch doctor</u></b></font>, I Nyoman Kandun, director general of disease control with the Indonesian Health Ministry, told reporters in Jakarta on May 22.
Disease Trackers
Disease trackers located Ginting late on May 21 in a nearby village. Blood samples and swabs of his nose and throat for viral particles were taken that day and flown to a laboratory in Jakarta. Ginting died the following day after tests confirmed he had H5N1, the WHO said on May 23.
There have been half a dozen examples of human-to-human transmission of H5N1, said the WHO's Thompson. In all of those examples, the virus had spread from one person to another and stopped. The difficulty in confirming human-to-human transmission is that it's sometimes impossible to eliminate other sources of infection in the environment, such as animals, he said.
Ginting's actions and the local reaction to the deaths have health officials worried about how to contain outbreaks should the virus become contagious among people. Some residents of Kubu Sembelang said they resented the rapid assessment by some government officials that there was avian flu in the village.
``The Minister of Health said that when the family got into the hospital they must be infected with bird flu,'' Veronita, a food vendor said in an interview on May 17. ``The results of the tests hadn't even been reported. Later the minister of health changed her words and said they `probably' have bird flu.''
Chicken Head
<b>To help instill confidence in the community, ``the district leader himself cut off the head of a chicken and had it cooked to prove that the poultry here are safe to eat</b>,'' Veronita said.
<b><font size=6 color="red">Dozens of poultry farmers and sellers from Ginting's district slaughtered chickens and drank the blood</b></font> in Medan on May 22 in a demonstration of their frustration at being branded by authorities as having been infected with avian flu. Footage of the protests was broadcast on Trans TV television.
``They're very afraid of losing their main income and that has become a problem for us in handling the disease,'' Bayu Krisnamurti, secretary of the national committee of avian flu control in the Southeast Asian nation, said in a phone interview on May 23. ``I don't want to blame them, but we must try to understand this is the situation,'' said Krisnamurti.
Garnering Trust
The Sumatra experience shows the government and international health authorities need to do a better job educating communities and garnering their trust, said Cheng. Ginting's wife, Bren, highlighted the family's suspicion and lack of understanding when she said in a May 17 interview that she believed Tamiflu poisoned her son.
The WHO said this month that Tamiflu should be the first choice for doctors treating people with avian flu.
The agency has mounted an international effort to get at the cause of the Sumatra incident and to establish the trust of the community, with experts flying in from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and from WHO offices in New Delhi, Bangkok, Geneva and Kuala Lumpur.
Investigators also are following 33 people known to have been in contact with infected family members, Cheng said. Some of the people are taking Tamiflu to prevent the disease, she said. No other suspected cases had been reported, she said.
The following article reads weirder than a pulp fiction novel, but IT IS HAPPENING.
Fellow TB2Kers, our Doom approaches. A series of virulently stupid bizarre acts have allowed this virus to go unchecked. We are all cluster f*****.
[ Fair Use: For Educational / Research / Discussion Purposes Only ]
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&sid=aiu7Xi_3TZEY
Australia & New Zealand
<b><font size=6 color="purple">Indonesia Bird-Flu Victim Sought Witch Doctor, Shunned Hospital</b></font>
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- <b>Dowes Ginting died of bird flu this week in the arms of his wife in the back of a jeep as he was taken to the hospital. For three days he had evaded doctors</b> seeking to test him for the virus that killed him and at least six of his Indonesian relatives, including his son.
The movements of Ginting, a thin, boyish looking 32-year-old who grew limes, chilies and tomatoes in a northern mountain village of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, are part of a health probe that's attracting international attention. He and his relatives -- a brother, two sisters, two nephews, a niece and his son -- represent the largest reported instance in which avian flu may have been spread among people, investigators say.
<b>The World Health Organization says the Sumatran incident may mean the H5N1 avian influenza strain is becoming more adept at infecting humans, not just birds. </b> Scientists are monitoring outbreaks like the one in Sumatra for signs the virus is evolving into a form capable of killing millions.
``It's a good example of what the beginning of a pandemic outbreak might look like,'' said Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. ``You would expect familial or hospital-based outbreaks and clusters.''
The WHO's disease-trackers are especially interested in the whereabouts of Ginting before he died to determine whom he risked infecting. He may have caught the virus from his son, who probably was infected by an aunt. This would be the first evidence of a three-person chain of infection, said WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in a telephone interview.
Animal Source?
Cheng said investigators have yet to identify an infected animal as a source of the outbreak. While that's not uncommon, direct contact with sick or dead birds is the principal cause of the human H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003, according to the United Nations agency.
To date, the virus has sickened 218 people in 10 countries, killing 124 of them, the WHO said on May 23. Only a few cases may have been caused by exposure to other infected individuals.
<b>Health officials' difficulty tracking down Ginting for the three days leading to his death suggests that Indonesia may have trouble containing a human outbreak that might jump from affected villages to the rest of Southeast Asia</b>.
A pandemic starts when a novel influenza A-type virus, to which almost no one has natural immunity, emerges and begins spreading across the world. Experts believe that the 1918 pandemic, which killed 50 million people, began when a lethal avian flu virus jumped directly to people from birds. A similar outbreak may take more than 142 million lives and cause the world's economy to shrink by an eighth, a February report by the Lowy Institute and Australian National University found.
Indonesia
<b>The chances of one emerging in Indonesia are higher because the Southeast Asian nation of about 240 million people has 30 million villages with more than 200 million chickens in backyards</b>, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
``Indonesia is a very challenging situation,'' said William Hueston, director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. It's a ``huge country with a lot of different geographical units, and many working independently as I understand it.''
The Sumatra cases are being traced back to Ginting's 37-year- old sister, Puji, who worked selling limes at the Tiga Panah market about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from her home in Kubu Sembelang.
She developed symptoms on April 27 and died of respiratory disease on May 4, according to the WHO. No specimens were obtained before her burial, and the cause of her death can't be confirmed, the agency said in a May 18 statement.
Investigators Stumped
It's possible the woman became infected from an animal source, said WHO's Cheng in a May 24 phone interview, ``but we've found no definitive evidence of H5N1 in any of the animals we've tested.'' The investigators comprise local health officials supported by five international experts, led by Tom Grein, a senior WHO epidemiologist based in Geneva.
A preliminary investigation indicates that three of the infected family members -- Puji's two sons and another brother -- spent the night of April 29 in a small room when the woman was coughing frequently, the WHO said in a May 23 statement.
Other infected family members lived in adjacent homes. All the confirmed cases can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness, the WHO said in its statement.
Coughing
It's less clear how Ginting's son was infected, Dick Thompson, leader of the WHO's pandemic and outbreak communications team, said by phone yesterday from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Based on neighbors' accounts, it's possible the boy entered his aunt's house during her illness, he said.
Ginting helped care for his 10-year-old son at the Adam Malik Hospital in Medan up until the boy's death on May 13, the WHO said. Two days later, after returning to his home in Kubu Sembelang, Ginting began coughing.
Ginting was examined three days later by local health-care workers, who observed avian flu-like symptoms. The WHO's Grein recommended on May 18 that he be isolated and treated in the hospital with the Roche Holding AG antiviral drug, Tamiflu.
<b><font size=5 color="blue">Instead Ginting fled local health authorities and sought care from a <u>witch doctor</u></b></font>, I Nyoman Kandun, director general of disease control with the Indonesian Health Ministry, told reporters in Jakarta on May 22.
Disease Trackers
Disease trackers located Ginting late on May 21 in a nearby village. Blood samples and swabs of his nose and throat for viral particles were taken that day and flown to a laboratory in Jakarta. Ginting died the following day after tests confirmed he had H5N1, the WHO said on May 23.
There have been half a dozen examples of human-to-human transmission of H5N1, said the WHO's Thompson. In all of those examples, the virus had spread from one person to another and stopped. The difficulty in confirming human-to-human transmission is that it's sometimes impossible to eliminate other sources of infection in the environment, such as animals, he said.
Ginting's actions and the local reaction to the deaths have health officials worried about how to contain outbreaks should the virus become contagious among people. Some residents of Kubu Sembelang said they resented the rapid assessment by some government officials that there was avian flu in the village.
``The Minister of Health said that when the family got into the hospital they must be infected with bird flu,'' Veronita, a food vendor said in an interview on May 17. ``The results of the tests hadn't even been reported. Later the minister of health changed her words and said they `probably' have bird flu.''
Chicken Head
<b>To help instill confidence in the community, ``the district leader himself cut off the head of a chicken and had it cooked to prove that the poultry here are safe to eat</b>,'' Veronita said.
<b><font size=6 color="red">Dozens of poultry farmers and sellers from Ginting's district slaughtered chickens and drank the blood</b></font> in Medan on May 22 in a demonstration of their frustration at being branded by authorities as having been infected with avian flu. Footage of the protests was broadcast on Trans TV television.
``They're very afraid of losing their main income and that has become a problem for us in handling the disease,'' Bayu Krisnamurti, secretary of the national committee of avian flu control in the Southeast Asian nation, said in a phone interview on May 23. ``I don't want to blame them, but we must try to understand this is the situation,'' said Krisnamurti.
Garnering Trust
The Sumatra experience shows the government and international health authorities need to do a better job educating communities and garnering their trust, said Cheng. Ginting's wife, Bren, highlighted the family's suspicion and lack of understanding when she said in a May 17 interview that she believed Tamiflu poisoned her son.
The WHO said this month that Tamiflu should be the first choice for doctors treating people with avian flu.
The agency has mounted an international effort to get at the cause of the Sumatra incident and to establish the trust of the community, with experts flying in from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and from WHO offices in New Delhi, Bangkok, Geneva and Kuala Lumpur.
Investigators also are following 33 people known to have been in contact with infected family members, Cheng said. Some of the people are taking Tamiflu to prevent the disease, she said. No other suspected cases had been reported, she said.
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
It is? It looks fine on my computer. Macs often look different.
That post was one of the hardest on my BRAIN I've ever seen.
What crazy reasons to die.
That post was one of the hardest on my BRAIN I've ever seen.
What crazy reasons to die.
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
For the title only, which merits a font the size of the empire state building and a neon color not on the planet.
I closed the tags ... on my computer only the title is different and a couple sentences further down in the article so bizarre and indicative of a dire future that they need highlighting.
Is the whole article big and purple on your computer?
I closed the tags ... on my computer only the title is different and a couple sentences further down in the article so bizarre and indicative of a dire future that they need highlighting.
Is the whole article big and purple on your computer?
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
For those who may not have been following the particulars of this highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, it has been found to be especially strong, alive, active, and deadly in BLOOD, raw blood, which is different than other flu virii and also what the villagers were swigging down in protest. Raw blood out of decapitated chickens where the worst human-to-human transmission chain death cluster yet (at least publicized) has happened. Where just days ago articles claimed those chickens tested positive for the virus antibodies.
In other words, idiotic mass suicide. And these villagers refuse to be quarantined. And witch doctors move around a lot and do unmentionable things with animals and animal parts and animal body fluids. Tests have come back from that area showing humans, chickens, duck, geese, pigs, etc carrying H5N1.
The latest accounts of villager non-cooperation in Indonesia and Romania and Africa and these horrifying morbid tales do not bode well for human life continuation on planet earth, to put it ever so mildly and politely.
In other words, idiotic mass suicide. And these villagers refuse to be quarantined. And witch doctors move around a lot and do unmentionable things with animals and animal parts and animal body fluids. Tests have come back from that area showing humans, chickens, duck, geese, pigs, etc carrying H5N1.
The latest accounts of villager non-cooperation in Indonesia and Romania and Africa and these horrifying morbid tales do not bode well for human life continuation on planet earth, to put it ever so mildly and politely.
So we're still not there, the virus in this family cluster didn't show the required mutations for EASY human-to-human transmission, and they had all feasted on chickens and pig beforehand.By the way, I understand that Cheney benefits in some way from Tamiflu sales, has some stock in it or something. I haven't really investigated this. Tamiflu has been tried in the Vietnam cases without any noticeable benefit at all.
New Freedom
Veteran Member
Dozens of poultry farmers drank chicken blood ??? That's nice to know, especially since they found out a few weeks ago that the AF antibodies are found in the blood.........
it just keeps getting better and better......NOT!
it just keeps getting better and better......NOT!