06/07 | Daily BF: So who's really to blame for bird flu?

Link to yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=199851

Here is an important link... everything you wanted to know about influenza, by Johns Hopkins: http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/33/450/Rashid Chotani.pdf

So who's really to blame for bird flu?​

According to experts, wild birds are spreading the deadly H5N1 virus that's wiping out poultry worldwide. But are they really to blame? Or is the disease not only a direct result of intensive farming - but actually being spread by the industry? Joanna Blythman reports

Wednesday June 7, 2006
The Guardian

If you normally make a point of buying free-range poultry and eggs, then you may be wondering if this is any longer a wise decision. The television reportage of bird flu, with its shots of men wearing white suits and masks chasing chickens in poor, rural Asian or African villages, or footage of chickens being slaughtered in third world markets while sinister-looking, positively Hitchcockian wild birds circle overhead, has helped build the perception that H5N1 is a disease of wild birds and domesticated poultry kept outdoors in primitive - and, by implication, dodgy - circumstances. On the home front, the nation is on amber alert. All the major summer agricultural shows have decided to abandon their customary displays of live poultry. The fear is that H5N1 is winging its way to Britain, and that if we don't get every last chicken, hen and budgie indoors, then it could mutate into a human flu pandemic and any minute we'll be dead.

A stream of statements and strategy documents from august bodies such as the World Health Organisation reinforce the "wild birds and backyard poultry are the problem" plot-line. This must come as music to the ears of the intensive poultry producers, who heartily resent the good press that organic and free-range poultry generally receive. For once it is free-range birds that everyone is worried about, not the caged laying hens and tightly packed broiler birds that generally feature in food exposes.

But what if those august bodies have got it wrong? Multiple cracks are beginning to show in the supposed scientific consensus on the origins of avian flu. A growing number of non-governmental organisations, bird experts and independent vets are pointing the finger at the global intensive poultry industry. A new report from Grain, an international environmental organisation, challenges the official line. "H5N1 is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices," it says. "Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and south-east Asia. Although wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances, [the main infection] route is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends its products and wastes around the world through a multitude of channels."

Grain's alternative theory for the emergence of H5N1 - which got backing in an editorial in the Lancet medical journal last month - starts with the observation that bird flu has coexisted pretty peacefully with wild birds, small-scale poultry farming and live markets for centuries without evolving into a more dangerous form of the disease. An explanation for this is that outdoor poultry flocks tend to be low-density, localised, and offer plenty of genetic diversity in breeding stock. By contrast, the hi-tech, intensive poultry farm, where as many as 40,000 birds can be kept in one shed and reared entirely indoors without ever seeing the light of day, is just like an overcrowded nursery of wheezy toddlers when the latest winter bug comes knocking - an ideal environment for spreading the disease and for encouraging the rapid mutation of a mild virus into a more pathogenic and highly transmissible strain, such as H5N1. "What we are saying is that H5N1 is a poultry virus killing wild birds, not the other way around," says Devlin Kuyek, from Grain.

The organisation's view is supported by the charity BirdLife International, which plots the migratory routes of wild birds. "With few exceptions, there is a limited correlation between the pattern and timing of spread among domestic birds and wild bird migrations," it says. It points out that most of the bird flu outbreaks in south-east Asian countries can be linked to the movements of poultry and poultry products. Looking at the outbreaks in Nigeria and Egypt, which occurred almost simultaneously in multiple large-scale poultry operations, it says that there is "strong circumstantial evidence" that it was the transfer of infected material - straw, soil on vehicles, clothes or shoes - from one factory unit to another that spread H5N1 there, not wild birds.

To British animal welfare experts, this alternative theory makes a lot of sense. Intensive poultry farms, particularly those producing chicken meat or "broilers", are notorious for rapidly spreading and amplifying diseases. Pathogenic bugs such as salmonella, campylobacter and Newcastle disease are already endemic among factory-farmed poultry. Half the British chickens on supermarket shelves tested by the Health Protection Agency in 2005 were contaminated with multi drug-resistant strains of the potentially deadly E coli bug. "Broilers are particularly vulnerable to disease for many reasons," says Dr Lesley Lambert, of Compassion in World Farming. "The birds are genetically very similar because they have been bred to put on rapid muscle growth, however this compromises their immune, skeletal and respiratory systems. They stand on a thick cake of impacted litter and droppings, in close proximity to one another, and share the same warm air space. It's the perfect circumstances for disease to sweep through."

But where, exactly, might H5N1 have originated? There is some speculation that the initial source was in China. The Washington Post has reported that as recently as the late 90s, in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the lid on less virulent strains of bird flu, intensive poultry farms in China were using, with the full approval of their government, an anti-viral drug called Amantadine. This drug is intended for humans and its use to treat birds would be a violation of international poultry regulations. Such misuse could have caused the avian flu virus to evolve into the drug-resistant H5N1 strain. In any event, medics and pharmaceutical experts now agree that Amantadine has become useless in protecting people in case of a worldwide bird flu epidemic.

But whatever the initial trigger was that caused bird blu to mutate into deadly H5N1, having once got a grip in an intensive poultry unit, how then might it have been spread outwards ?

Intense debate has built up over one particular mass outbreak last year among geese at Qinghai lake in northern China. The widely accepted official explanation is that migratory birds carried the virus westwards from there to Russia and Turkey. But according to BirdLife International's Dr Richard Thomas, no species migrates from Qinghai west to eastern Europe. "The pattern of outbreaks follows major road and rail routes, not flyways," he says. What Qinghai lake does have, however, is many surrounding intensive poultry farms whose "poultry manure", a euphemism for what is scraped off the floor of factory farms - bird faeces, feathers and soiled litter - is used as feed and fertiliser in fish farms and fields around Qinghai. According to WHO, bird flu can survive in bird faeces for up to 35 days. Might it be that at Qinghai, H5N1 was passed from intensively reared birds to wild ones via chicken faeces, and not the other way around?

If so, then this is extremely worrying. In Britain, this February, the day after the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) minister Ben Bradshaw assured the public that the British poultry industry was "very well prepared" for avian flu and had "extremely high levels of biosecurity", the animal welfare organisation Animal Aid photographed tonnes of poultry-shed waste containing body parts and feathers that had been dumped on farm land in West Yorkshire.

When H5N1 turned up in a remote village in eastern Turkey in January, this was initially blamed on migratory birds. Then when villagers gave their side of the story, it emerged that their diseased birds were intimately connected with a large factory farm nearby. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has now acknowledged that the poultry trade spread H5N1 in Turkey, singling out the common practice of intensive poultry farms sending out huge truckloads of low-value (possibly ailing) birds to poor farmers. Yet when bird flu hit a factory farm in Nigeria in February, the FAO spokesman still insisted: "If it's not wild birds [that are the cause], it will be difficult to understand." The Nigerian authorities, on the other hand, blamed the poultry industry. It subsequently emerged that the hatching eggs used by the farm in question were not from registered hatcheries, and may have come from a bird flu-infected country, such as Turkey.

Worldwide, intensive poultry production has exploded and this growth seems to be mirrored by an increase in avian flu. In the south-east Asian countries where most of the H5N1 outbreaks are concentrated - Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam - production has jumped eightfold in just three decades as cheap chicken meat has become an international commodity. Conversely, certain other countries in Asia, such as Laos, have experienced relatively few bird flu outbreaks. In Laos, H5N1 has been restricted mainly to the country's few factory farms. Laos effectively stamped out bird flu by closing the border to poultry from Thailand and culling chickens in commercial operations. "Laos is rife with free-ranging chickens mixing with ducks, quail, turkeys and wild birds. The principal reason why it has not suffered widespread bird flu outbreaks is that there is ¬almost no contact between its small-scale poultry farms which produce nearly all of its ¬domestic supply, and its commercial factory farms, which are integrated with foreign poultry companies," says Kuyek.

Despite all the evidence now emerging that wild birds may not be the prime carrier of H5N1, governments are panicking. In Europe alone, Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, Croatia, Norway and the Netherlands have all issued bans or restrictions on the keeping of outdoor poultry. So far in Britain the government has not joined this stampede, probably because British consumers are particularly keen on free-range poultry products. When it comes to eggs, for example, we now consume more that come from free-range systems than from cages.

Farmers who cater for the nation's growing appetite for high-welfare poultry and eggs are worried, however. Some free-range and organic producers hope they might be able to bring birds indoor yet benefit from a European Union rule that would allow them still to sell their produce as free-range or organic, for a period of up to 12 weeks. Others are against taking advantage of this. "If you keep birds entirely indoors, they simply stop being free-range or organic," says Lawrence Woodward, director of Elm Farm Research Centre. Certainly, it is clear that temporary housing of free-range or organic birds can never be anything other than a stop-gap measure, because if H5N1 hits Britain, scientists think it will be endemic for at least five years.

Once N5N1 is identified in the UK, the solution preferred by the government's chief scientist, Professor David King, is to ban outdoor production. But environmental organisations insist that this would be an enormous mistake. "Bringing birds indoors fails to address the root cause of disease. The government should support farming that encourages animal health, so that livestock have naturally robust immune systems developed by contact with, rather than exclusion from, all disease challenge. Organic and free-range systems are the foundation stones for such a positive strategy, not, as some in the intensive industry seek to misrepresent them, as reservoirs of disease," says Soil Association spokesman Robin Maynard.

Professor King has made it abundantly clear, however, that in his view, the arrival of this virus would mean that "organic farming and free-range farming would come to an end". From an administrative point of view, keeping the nation's birds under lock and key makes any potential cull easy - no running around farmyards needed. Chillingly, Defra has stated that in the event of an H5N1 outbreak among indoor flocks, producers will be allowed simply to shut down the ventilation systems to sheds so that the birds slowly suffocate to death.

An alternative strategy, advocated by animal welfare groups, is vaccination. But such measures make less sense to cost-conscious intensive poultry producers. Broiler (chicken meat) producers in particular are under constant pressure to minimise costs in order to stay profitable because retailers demand cheap meat. Vaccination adds to production costs and means more work. And while it is relatively easy for organic or free-range producers to vaccinate their birds because their flocks are smaller, it is a daunting undertaking for intensive producers with flocks of thousands. Moreover, the vaccine takes two weeks to take effect and the typical broiler lives for only five weeks anyway, so they do not see the point.

Unless the vaccination lobby prevails - and going on Britain's track record with foot and mouth disease, the odds are not promising - then consumers may lose the option of choosing more ethical and humane outdoor-reared poultry products. So if you are are partial to a crisply roasted free-range chicken, or a nice organic egg, make a point of savouring them now while you can. They may not be around for much longer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1791842,00.html

Health minister asks people to watch out for bird flu​

http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=13919

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has asked the people to watch out for the avian influenza (AI) virus by avoiding direct contact with poultry and keeping poultry out of their homes.

"The number of bird flu patients has increased rapidly in Indonesia, and in Medan, the largest bird flu patient cluster has been found recently. Laboratory-check results show that they were infected with the avian influenza virus from poultry. Therefore, poultry must be kept separate from human being," the minister said at the launching of a bird flu awareness campaign here on Wednesday.

She cited as an example that Vietnam had been able to stop the spread of bird flu virus infection after the country freed its areas from poultry for six months.
However, Minister Fadila said that Indonesia would not be able to follow Vietnam`s example because it was a a high-cost policy.

She hoped that the community would help the government control the bird flu virus by protecting themselves from direct contact with chicken and other poultry.

"If there is a sudden death of poultry, the people must immediately report it, and so if somebody gets symptoms of bird flu disease, he or she must be rushed to the hospital immediately," she said.

She also emphasized that the people must not keep poultry in their houses.

The minister believed that a community-based surveillance will help the government in dealing with the deadly disease.

Since July 2005, some 50 bird flu cases affected people were found in Indonesia, and 37 of them had died of the disease.

The number of fatality tends to increase, and it worries not only Indonesia but also the world?s community, she said.

The minister said that the government`s efforts to eradicate the bird flu virus would not be successful without the cooperation of the community.

Indonesia Is Running Out of Ideas on Bird Flu, Supari Says​

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=a.GYFEfOE9vs&refer=asia



June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia's Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said she is struggling to warn of the danger of bird flu, which has killed three of every four people it has infected in the world's fourth-most-populous nation.

``I am running out of ideas how to make the public aware,'' Supari told reporters in Jakarta today. Yesterday the health ministry confirmed the 49th human avian influenza case. The H5N1 strain has infected people in more than half of Indonesia's 33 provinces since July.

Indonesia has reported the most H5N1 cases this year. The nation of 238 million people is attracting international attention after seven members of a family from the island of Sumatra were infected, representing the largest reported instance in which H5N1 may have been spread among people and the first evidence of a three-person chain of infection.

New human cases provide opportunity for the virus to mutate into a pandemic form that may kill millions of people, according to the World Health Organization. Clusters of cases may signal the virus is becoming more adept at infecting humans, not just birds.

``We're trying to get on top of the virus, but time is running out,'' Supari said. ``It seems people perceive bird flu happens on television, and they aren't aware that they too are at risk if they don't follow the required steps,'' such as avoiding contact with sick or dead poultry, she said.

Indonesia raised about 1.25 billion chickens last year, or about 7.5 percent of the global total, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Last month, Indonesia confirmed 16 H5N1 infections, including 12 fatalities. Worldwide, the virus has sickened at least 225 people in 10 countries, killing 128 of them since late 2003, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday.

Reporting Delays

More than eight of every 10 H5N1 cases occurred in Asia. Human infections in the Asia-Pacific region aren't being reported to international agencies fast enough, threatening to delay a response to a flu pandemic, according to a draft report prepared for government and agency officials meeting in Vienna this week.

Human cases are taking seven days on average to be reported to world health officials, and national governments in the Asia- Pacific region are finding out five days after symptoms appear, according to the draft report. Delays in finding and isolating cases risk exposing people to the virus and increase opportunities for it to mutate into a pandemic form.

The report, written by organizations donating funds to combat avian and human influenza threats, is being discussed at the Influenza Partners' Senior Officials Meeting. The two-day meeting, which began yesterday in Vienna, is being hosted by the European Union, the U.S. and China.

Many Indonesians infected with avian flu are discovered too late in their illness to respond well to medical treatment, Supari said.

``It's often too late because sometimes doctors don't detect the symptoms'' early enough, she said.

Health secretary says states to decide who gets bird flu vaccines​

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/top/3_1_EL07_A1BIRDFLU_S1.htm

By Lauran Neergaard
the associated press

WASHINGTON — States will get to decide how to ration scarce vaccine if bird flu triggers a worldwide epidemic, the nation's health secretary said Tuesday — a decision that means where people live could determine their protection.

"Let's acknowledge the fact that for the first six months of any pandemic, we're not going to have a vaccine," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.

Once doses start being produced, "this is a battle that'll be fought in thousands of communities simultaneously. What's working in one community may not work as well in another," Leavitt said in a joint interview with Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

The U.S. is girding against the deadly H5N1 strain of bird influenza on two fronts: What to do if this virus one day mutates into a form easily spread among people and makes its way here via ill travelers — and, more immediately, what to do if it wings its way here in a migrating wild bird.

Testing of wild birds, a total of 100,000 by year's end, has begun in an attempt to catch the virus early if it does arrive that way — with some laboratories beginning to use a new test that can tell within just four hours if a bird is possibly infected, Johanns said.

The first announced test results could generate false alarms: Influenza is a common infection in birds, and Johanns cautioned that it still will take about a week to confirm whether a suspect bird really has the deadly Asian strain, so-called "highly pathogenic" H5N1 flu.

Johanns said there have been no worrisome discoveries in the testing to date. But it is considered likely that an infected bird could fly to North America as early as this year, perhaps mingling with native birds on breeding grounds in Alaska which in turn would bring H5N1 south and infect other birds.

Even if that happens, an infected bird isn't a threat to the average American, but it is a signal to protect poultry in the area from infection.

"That will not be a crisis," stressed HHS' Leavitt.

Mutation concern


For people, the bigger concern is watching H5N1 for signs that it's mutating to become more easily spread. Today, H5N1 is very difficult for people to catch: It has killed at least 127 people worldwide since it began spreading in Asia in late 2003, and on to Africa and Europe in the past year. At the same time, it is blamed for the death or slaughter of some 200 million birds.

The vast majority of the human casualties involved close contact with infected birds or their droppings. Only in a handful of cases have people apparently spread it to each other while caring for sick relatives, the latest an Indonesian family last month that sparked international concern because it was the largest cluster to date.

In case a human pandemic happens, the government is stockpiling both anti-flu medication and a small amount of vaccine that might give some protection until inoculations that are a direct genetic match to the illness could be brewed. That will take six months — even longer to produce enough for everyone, Leavitt warned.

Who gets first doses? Vaccine factory employees and front-line health workers head the Bush administration's list. But scientists are fiercely debating who's next: school-age children who are flu's prime spreaders? The frail elderly who may be at highest risk of death? Police, firefighters, utility workers who would have to keep order and essential services running?

Leavitt said supplies will be divided among the states according to their population. It will be up to the states to decide who is first in line.

"You could make a case for many different segments of the community being a priority," Leavitt said Tuesday. "You could also see different situations in each state that would warrant those decisions being different."

"The federal government has a very important role, and we'll play it," in developing and stockpiling vaccines and drugs, he added. But, "when it comes down to managing the public health in a pandemic situation, it will be up to local public health authorities."

Containment unlikely


More sobering, Leavitt said there's only a very low chance that doctors could contain a human bird-flu outbreak and thus stop a pandemic at its source.

Asia is considered the likely hot zone, largely because there are so many impoverished families who live in close quarters with chickens — not just the backyard, but also sometimes inside the house — that they need to survive, and thus they won't slaughter infected flocks willingly.

Leavitt recalled how a health minister in Cambodia told him it was "difficult to get farmers in rural areas to think a few dead chickens are a serious problem" when 14,000 people there died of rabies last year.

The stark reality: "We'll do all we can to help other nations," Leavitt said. But if a bird flu outbreak "occurs anywhere in the world, it's just a matter of weeks before it will be in the United States."

The Threat Of Avian Flu​

http://www.forbes.com/healthcare/2006/06/06/montagnier-avian-flu-cx_lm_0607avian.html?partner=rss

Dr. Luc Montagnier 06.07.06, 6:00 AM ET

Paris - The epidemic of avian flu in poultry does not appear to be fully controlled in Southeast Asia and in some Eastern European countries such as Romania.

Further, the risk of human-to-human transmission of the unmutated avian virus already exists and should not be underestimated. Consider the evidence: In Indonesia, an entire family was decimated by the virus--and without any record of contact with contaminated birds. Because time is working against us, we must prepare all of our defenses now.

Scientists, international institutions, governments and pharmaceutical companies have been working hard to identify effective solutions. But the current focus is on only two areas: discovering a new preventive vaccine and relying on inhibitory drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza.

Given a worst-case scenario--the mutation of this virus, rendering it highly transmissible from human to human--is this enough?

Our past history with epidemics, from the Spanish flu of 1918 (which killed millions) to AIDS, requires us to consider some complementary approaches.

HIV has a remarkable ability to mutate, which allows it to escape a single course of treatment and makes the hunt for effective vaccines more difficult. In fact, initial efforts to use a single drug to control the virus were complete failures. We learned that the only way to control the virus's multiplication and improve the condition of infected patients was to combine three drugs acting on the virus at different levels.

If we apply this lesson to avian flu, it means we need to combine several inhibitors acting differently to make the emergence of resistant mutants much more difficult, protect those not yet ill and help cure patients who have been exposed to the virus.

Recent studies of the reconstructed Spanish flu virus have unraveled the molecular basis for its high virulence. Unlike other strains, this virus was able to induce a fulminant pneumonia, killing healthy young adults within three days. Its aggressiveness seems to be due in part to the neutralization, by a viral protein, of a very important natural defense mechanism against viruses: interferons.

Interferons are made by our cells and represent the first line of defense against viruses. The body mobilizes them within hours of the first exposure to a virus. The H5N1 avian virus, like the Spanish flu virus, appears to possess the potential to neutralize interferons by a specific viral protein.

This is the race we have to win: to sufficiently mobilize the interferon system early enough so it will knock out the virus multiplication before the virus launches its dangerous missile against interferons.

One prime candidate for this task already exists. It's a substance called Alferon LDO (low-dose oral), the Hemispherx Biopharma (amex: HEB - news - people ) version of the body's systemic alpha interferons, prepared from blood cells obtained at transfusion centers. An injected form of Alferon, already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is currently being used in the treatment of a certain viral infection and has the potential to act on native avian virus as well as on its humanized form.

It's time to pick up the mantle and protect those most at risk before they are stricken with the avian flu virus: health care personnel, farmers and poultry workers.

Think of it in these terms: What do we have to lose? Countless lives across the globe. What do we have to gain? A population safe from a virulent strain of avian flu. Any immediate measures will also help buy time to develop an efficient vaccine that can be made generally accessible.

We have the skills, the experience and the resources to meet this new challenge. In the best traditions of science, history and humanity, let's resolve to work together, draw on what we know and find a solution.

And let's do it now.

Dr. Luc Montagnier is the co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and HIV. He is President of the Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention. He serves as an unpaid adviser on the Scientific Advisory Board of Hemispherx Biopharma, which discovered Alferon.

Jun 8, 2006

China plagued by bird-flu coverups​

By Xu Xiang

YANGZHOU, CHUZHOU and CHENZHOU, China - Having learned a bitter lesson from covering up the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in early 2003, the central government of China now is said to be taking a more positive, responsible attitude in dealing with avian influenza, or bird flu. But that hasn't filtered down to the provinces.

As the market economy has taken root in China, the country has become increasingly decentralized. Because of this, Beijing's tough orders regarding the prevention of a bird-flu outbreak may not necessarily be carried out at all levels. Overwhelmingly concerned with economic growth, some local officials still tend to cover up any outbreak of bird flu, defying Beijing's order to report new cases immediately.

Beijing has punished some local officials for their incompetence in dealing with bird-flu outbreaks. For instance, in May it was announced that five officials in Dazhu county in Sichuan province had been sacked for of dereliction of duty because they did not report and contain the local outbreak in time.

But during an investigative reporting trip to three locations in China, Asia Times Online found that in rural areas, local officials and residents really don't like any action that might expose a possible bird-flu outbreak, fearing the damage it would do to the economy. Because of this, they hate individuals who dare to inform authorities of any bird-flu case.

Qiao Songju, a resident of Gaoyou county in Jiangsu province, attained a brief heroic reputation for informing authorities of a massive bird-flu outbreak in Anhui province last October. Tipped by Qiao, the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu among geese and chicken in Liangying village of Chuzhou city.

Qiao gained overnight fame as the first informer of a bird-flu outbreak. But his joy did not last long. One month later, Gaoyou police paid a midnight visit to Qiao's home and "invited" him to the station for a "chat", which turned out to be the prologue to detention. The next day, Qiao was arrested on suspected fraud and blackmail activities. His arrest happened two days after he attempted to report another bird flu outbreak - this time in his own hometown. His arrest made headlines.

On condition of anonymity, a Gaoyou police officer told ATol that they had to arrest Qiao because he was suspected of being involved in illegal production of vaccines for chicken. But observers pointed out that the timing of Qiao's arrest suggested it was hardly coincidental. Many believed he was being framed. The Guangzhou-based and often outspoken South Metropolis News pointed out Qiao's arrest took place when he was preparing to expose the bird flu outbreak in Gaoyou.

Qiao was tried on April 21 and on April 26. The court has yet to hand down a verdict. In China, it is rare for such a case to be tried twice without a court ruling. Analysts said it was likely that the central government intervened, so the case now seems to be moving to Qiao's advantage.

"It is beyond comprehension why the onetime hero was arrested on fabricated charges at such a time," said Qiao's lawyer, Kong Weizhao, denying that his client was guilty of the charges.

When ATol interviewed Kong in April, the lawyer lamented that all officials who could help Qiao's defense had refused to give testimony. When the lawyer went all the way to the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, even those officials were reluctant to testify.

Ever since Qiao was detained, many domestic news media have tried to contact the Ministry of Agriculture on whether it would provide a crucial witness for the defense. However, the ministry declined any interview and would not comment on whether Qiao had served as an informant for the ministry.

Chen Linxiang, an official with Gaoyou's Agriculture and Forestry Bureau, made it explicit, "Qiao Songju is a sinner to all Gaoyou farmers."

Owing to wide coverage of Qiao, the poultry market in Gaoyou has slumped. "The price of eggs has dropped from 3 yuan [37 US cents] to 1 or 2 yuan per 500 grams, chicken prices are also down from 5 yuan to 2 yuan for half a kilo, even below the raising cost," Chen noted. "So no one wants to raise chickens now, even though chicks are free."

Now, the local government is considering various incentives, mainly allowances, to subsidize poultry farmers and revive the their business.

Near the Jiangsu provincial capital Nanjing, Gaoyou abounds in geese and ducks. Poultry and eggs provide almost the entire gross domestic product (GDP) to Gaoyou. For the locals, an outbreak of bird flu there could mean the end of the world.

The outbreak in Tianchang
More than half a year has passed since the bird-flu epidemic in Tianchang city, Anhui province, was exposed to the outside world. A recent visit by ATol found residents there still eager to see their hated local informer turned into a criminal defendant, while little attention has been paid to prevention of a possible return of the epidemic.

Ducklings and goslings roamed all over Liangying village, showing that no one was paying attention to the Animal Epidemic Prevention Law. Among other things, the law stipulates a six-month ban on breeding poultry after an outbreak, and the current ban only expired on May 24. "We started raising poultry after the Chinese New Year, and village leaders never stop us," a local farmer said.

The poultry population of Liangying village and the surrounding area is growing again, and some households even raise birds, dogs and lambs together, despite warnings to separate them to prevent cross-breeding of diseases between various kinds of livestock. "We're poor, and raising poultry is the only way to enrich our tables and honor guests," an elderly farmer said, herding a gaggle in the fields.

All these words and scenes reveal a complete and willful ignorance of basic precautions against a possible revival of bird flu, as well as a deadly apathetic attitude toward epidemic prevention that is shared by the local authorities and residents alike.

To the local farmers in Tianchang, Qiao was just a "bad guy". Because of his tip-off, the government decided to destroy all reared poultry in the neighborhood, but the state compensation did not suffice to cover the colossal loss. This seething resentment against Qiao even extends to his his fellows from Gaoyou. "Gaoyou guys dare not come here to trade anymore. They are afraid we will beat them up," grinned a local Tianchang farmer.

An unreported death in Chenzhou
The death of Li Juhua, a female farmer in Chenzhou, has not been reported by the Chinese media. Yet a lot of fanfare was extended to her son, six-year-old Junior Ouyang, who is to date the youngest person to catch bird flu in China, according to official records. Junior Ouyang has recovered and been discharged from hospital.

To Ouyang Xihua, now the widower, so many questions are unanswered. He is certain that his late wife and the boy showed the same symptoms, and that was why he wasted no time rushing the son to hospital in Changsha, Hunan's provincial capital, after his wife died. Yet he fails to understand why the diagnoses were so different.

He cannot understand either why, when the media of the whole country were enthusiastically reporting the progress of his little son, not a single word had been given to the son's ill-fated mother.

The bereaved family lives in rural Guiyang, a county under Chenzhou city. With his wife gone, widower Ouyang Xihua is now a single parent taking care of a pair of twins.

Last December 21, the family had dinner to celebrate the winter solstice. They were not rich enough to kill a live bird and could afford only dead chickens dumped by owners, which the poor collect and preserve for festivals.

The wife, Li Juhua, soon felt sick and was taken to the county hospital on December 23. At that moment, a grisly thought occurred to Ouyang that his wife might have been infected with bird flu, as he had watched news of the epidemic on television. Yet none of the doctors heeded his fears. Li died the next day, to which the hospital only gave a single-sentence explanation citing some rare dermatological disease.

A few days later, the son developed the same symptoms as his deceased mother. At the county hospital, the diagnosis given was tuberculosis. Ouyang dared not take a chance with the county hospital again and took the little boy to a hospital in Chenzhou, where the medical staff were concerned and referred the child to Changsha. There his affliction was finally diagnosed as bird flu infection.

"It is all due to that damned plagued chicken!" moaned Ouyang.

It is odd that Li, with bird-flu-like symptoms, did not attract the attention of Guiyang county hospital, nor did she have the chance to receive the treatment that her son later got to survive.

Under current regulations, all local-level medical institutions must report immediately to the Ministry of Health any discovery of human infection of bird flu, and patients suspected of infection must be given virus tests and treatment accordingly.

In a sense, the mother gave up her life to save the child. Her quick demise fortified her husband's belief that the sickness was no small thing and should not be allowed to stay in the hands of irresponsible county medicals.

Doctors in the provincial capital eventually cured Junior Ouyang. But in the official announcement of his survival, not a single word was mentioned about the infection of his departed mother.

According to a notice published by the Ministry of Health, on discovering the infection, local medical authorities should waste no time in taking preventive measures, giving appropriate treatment and necessary observation to the patient and whoever was in close contact with that patient.

When Junior Ouyang was making a steady recovery, reporters from across the country waited outside his segregated ward. There was once even a real-time online videotaping of his medication. The child was said to be happy, despite the fact that he had already lost his mother.

On the child's discharge, the Ministry of Health issued a statement saying no one in close contact with Junior Ouyang had developed unusual conditions. Again, it skipped the crucial fact that Junior Ouyang and his mother had been living together before death broke them apart. Or did the ministry take the mother's demise as nothing unusual?

In answering questions from ATol, a spokesman of Guiyang county hospital said he did not have detailed information about Li's case and refused to comment on why the case was not reported to higher authorities or why it could not be diagnosed as bird flu when it was so obvious.

Throughout the three months the ATol correspondent roamed among infested provinces, a lot of coverups were detected. This case of covering up a human death closely related to avian flu was, however, the most repugnant.

Xu Xiang is a Chinese correspondent for the Chinese edition of Asia Times Online.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HF08Ad01.html

China plagued by bird-flu coverups
By Xu Xiang

YANGZHOU, CHUZHOU and CHENZHOU, China - Having learned a bitter lesson from covering up the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in early 2003, the central government of China now is said to be taking a more positive, responsible attitude in dealing with avian influenza, or bird flu. But that hasn't filtered down to the provinces.

As the market economy has taken root in China, the country has become increasingly decentralized. Because of this, Beijing's tough orders regarding the prevention of a bird-flu outbreak may not necessarily be carried out at all levels. Overwhelmingly concerned with economic growth, some local officials still tend to cover up any outbreak of bird flu, defying Beijing's order to report new cases immediately.

Beijing has punished some local officials for their incompetence in


dealing with bird-flu outbreaks. For instance, in May it was announced that five officials in Dazhu county in Sichuan province had been sacked for of dereliction of duty because they did not report and contain the local outbreak in time.

But during an investigative reporting trip to three locations in China, Asia Times Online found that in rural areas, local officials and residents really don't like any action that might expose a possible bird-flu outbreak, fearing the damage it would do to the economy. Because of this, they hate individuals who dare to inform authorities of any bird-flu case.

Qiao Songju, a resident of Gaoyou county in Jiangsu province, attained a brief heroic reputation for informing authorities of a massive bird-flu outbreak in Anhui province last October. Tipped by Qiao, the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu among geese and chicken in Liangying village of Chuzhou city.

Qiao gained overnight fame as the first informer of a bird-flu outbreak. But his joy did not last long. One month later, Gaoyou police paid a midnight visit to Qiao's home and "invited" him to the station for a "chat", which turned out to be the prologue to detention. The next day, Qiao was arrested on suspected fraud and blackmail activities. His arrest happened two days after he attempted to report another bird flu outbreak - this time in his own hometown. His arrest made headlines.

On condition of anonymity, a Gaoyou police officer told ATol that they had to arrest Qiao because he was suspected of being involved in illegal production of vaccines for chicken. But observers pointed out that the timing of Qiao's arrest suggested it was hardly coincidental. Many believed he was being framed. The Guangzhou-based and often outspoken South Metropolis News pointed out Qiao's arrest took place when he was preparing to expose the bird flu outbreak in Gaoyou.

Qiao was tried on April 21 and on April 26. The court has yet to hand down a verdict. In China, it is rare for such a case to be tried twice without a court ruling. Analysts said it was likely that the central government intervened, so the case now seems to be moving to Qiao's advantage.

"It is beyond comprehension why the onetime hero was arrested on fabricated charges at such a time," said Qiao's lawyer, Kong Weizhao, denying that his client was guilty of the charges.

When ATol interviewed Kong in April, the lawyer lamented that all officials who could help Qiao's defense had refused to give testimony. When the lawyer went all the way to the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, even those officials were reluctant to testify.
Ever since Qiao was detained, many domestic news media have tried to contact the Ministry of Agriculture on whether it would provide a crucial witness for the defense. However, the ministry declined any interview and would not comment on whether Qiao had served as an informant for the ministry.

Chen Linxiang, an official with Gaoyou's Agriculture and Forestry Bureau, made it explicit, "Qiao Songju is a sinner to all Gaoyou farmers."

Owing to wide coverage of Qiao, the poultry market in Gaoyou has slumped. "The price of eggs has dropped from 3 yuan [37 US cents] to 1 or 2 yuan per 500 grams, chicken prices are also down from 5 yuan to 2 yuan for half a kilo, even below the raising cost," Chen noted. "So no one wants to raise chickens now, even though chicks are free."

Now, the local government is considering various incentives, mainly allowances, to subsidize poultry farmers and revive the their business.

Near the Jiangsu provincial capital Nanjing, Gaoyou abounds in geese and ducks. Poultry and eggs provide almost the entire gross domestic product (GDP) to Gaoyou. For the locals, an outbreak of bird flu there could mean the end of the world.

The outbreak in Tianchang
More than half a year has passed since the bird-flu epidemic in Tianchang city, Anhui province, was exposed to the outside world. A recent visit by ATol found residents there still eager to see their hated local informer turned into a criminal defendant, while little attention has been paid to prevention of a possible return of the epidemic.

Ducklings and goslings roamed all over Liangying village, showing that no one was paying attention to the Animal Epidemic Prevention Law. Among other things, the law stipulates a six-month ban on breeding poultry after an outbreak, and the current ban only expired on May 24. "We started raising poultry after the Chinese New Year, and village leaders never stop us," a local farmer said.

The poultry population of Liangying village and the surrounding area is growing again, and some households even raise birds, dogs and lambs together, despite warnings to separate them to prevent cross-breeding of diseases between various kinds of livestock. "We're poor, and raising poultry is the only way to enrich our tables and honor guests," an elderly farmer said, herding a gaggle in the fields.

All these words and scenes reveal a complete and willful ignorance of basic precautions against a possible revival of bird flu, as well as a deadly apathetic attitude toward epidemic prevention that is shared by the local authorities and residents alike.

To the local farmers in Tianchang, Qiao was just a "bad guy". Because of his tip-off, the government decided to destroy all reared poultry in the neighborhood, but the state compensation did not suffice to cover the colossal loss. This seething resentment against Qiao even extends to his his fellows from Gaoyou. "Gaoyou guys dare not come here to trade anymore. They are afraid we will beat them up," grinned a local Tianchang farmer.

An unreported death in Chenzhou
The death of Li Juhua, a female farmer in Chenzhou, has not been reported by the Chinese media. Yet a lot of fanfare was extended to her son, six-year-old Junior Ouyang, who is to date the youngest person to catch bird flu in China, according to official records. Junior Ouyang has recovered and been discharged from hospital.

To Ouyang Xihua, now the widower, so many questions are unanswered. He is certain that his late wife and the boy showed the same symptoms, and that was why he wasted no time rushing the son to hospital in Changsha, Hunan's provincial capital, after his wife died. Yet he fails to understand why the diagnoses were so different.

He cannot understand either why, when the media of the whole country were enthusiastically reporting the progress of his little son, not a single word had been given to the son's ill-fated mother.
The bereaved family lives in rural Guiyang, a county under Chenzhou city. With his wife gone, widower Ouyang Xihua is now a single parent taking care of a pair of twins.

Last December 21, the family had dinner to celebrate the winter solstice. They were not rich enough to kill a live bird and could afford only dead chickens dumped by owners, which the poor collect and preserve for festivals.

The wife, Li Juhua, soon felt sick and was taken to the county hospital on December 23. At that moment, a grisly thought occurred to Ouyang that his wife might have been infected with bird flu, as he had watched news of the epidemic on television. Yet none of the doctors heeded his fears. Li died the next day, to which the hospital only gave a single-sentence explanation citing some rare dermatological disease.

A few days later, the son developed the same symptoms as his deceased mother. At the county hospital, the diagnosis given was tuberculosis. Ouyang dared not take a chance with the county hospital again and took the little boy to a hospital in Chenzhou, where the medical staff were concerned and referred the child to Changsha. There his affliction was finally diagnosed as bird flu infection.

"It is all due to that damned plagued chicken!" moaned Ouyang.

It is odd that Li, with bird-flu-like symptoms, did not attract the attention of Guiyang county hospital, nor did she have the chance to receive the treatment that her son later got to survive.

Under current regulations, all local-level medical institutions must report immediately to the Ministry of Health any discovery of human infection of bird flu, and patients suspected of infection must be given virus tests and treatment accordingly.

In a sense, the mother gave up her life to save the child. Her quick demise fortified her husband's belief that the sickness was no small thing and should not be allowed to stay in the hands of irresponsible county medicals.

Doctors in the provincial capital eventually cured Junior Ouyang. But in the official announcement of his survival, not a single word was mentioned about the infection of his departed mother.

According to a notice published by the Ministry of Health, on discovering the infection, local medical authorities should waste no time in taking preventive measures, giving appropriate treatment and necessary observation to the patient and whoever was in close contact with that patient.

When Junior Ouyang was making a steady recovery, reporters from across the country waited outside his segregated ward. There was once even a real-time online videotaping of his medication. The child was said to be happy, despite the fact that he had already lost his mother.

On the child's discharge, the Ministry of Health issued a statement saying no one in close contact with Junior Ouyang had developed unusual conditions. Again, it skipped the crucial fact that Junior Ouyang and his mother had been living together before death broke them apart. Or did the ministry take the mother's demise as nothing unusual?

In answering questions from ATol, a spokesman of Guiyang county hospital said he did not have detailed information about Li's case and refused to comment on why the case was not reported to higher authorities or why it could not be diagnosed as bird flu when it was so obvious.

Throughout the three months the ATol correspondent roamed among infested provinces, a lot of coverups were detected. This case of covering up a human death closely related to avian flu was, however, the most repugnant.

Xu Xiang is a Chinese correspondent for the Chinese edition of Asia Times Online.

http://www.birdflubreakingnews.com/...p://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HF08Ad01.html

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07381552.htm



FEATURE-U.S. states plot how to handle pandemic flu threat
07 Jun 2006 11:59:59 GMT

By Carey Gillam

TOPEKA, Kan., June 7 (Reuters) - Kansans are practicing using a football field-sized tent as a portable hospital. Hawaii plans to find the sick by doing nasal swabs on tourists, and Seattle is issuing instructions on how to bury the dead.

Across the United States, local and state officials are spending millions of dollars to plot strategies for dealing with a still hypothetical -- but experts say inevitable -- pandemic flu crisis forecast to kill upwards of 2 million Americans.

The fears are tied to the current spread of a deadly strain of avian influenza known as H5N1 that has surfaced in Asia, Europe and Africa.

"There is no cookbook for pandemic. There is no one who says this is how this works," said Tod Bunting, who leads Kansas' emergency management operations, including the state's National Guard troops, who would be on the front lines of pandemic response. "The picture is unclear but we're just going to have to plan as best we can and then go with the flow."

The H5N1 avian influenza virus has infected at least 224 people in 10 countries and killed 127 of them, according to the World Health Organization. Experts evaluating the spread of this type of avian influenza believe it will ultimately mutate into a strain that could pass easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic that could sweep the globe in weeks or months.

The United States has not yet seen a case of H5N1, either in fowl or in a human, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. But federal officials have spent the past few months criss-crossing the country, warning of the possibilities of pandemic and pushing states to come up with plans for how to handle a deadly flu outbreak if it strikes.

'OVERDUE, UNDER-PREPARED'

"We are overdue and we are under-prepared," HHS Deputy Secretary Alex Azar told a group of Kansas emergency responders at a meeting in Topeka last week. "The more and better we prepare, the more lives we will save."

Azar said the federal government won't be able to provide a safety net if a pandemic hits. States will have to rely on their own ingenuity to provide health care, keep essential services operating and distribute food and medicines.

The state efforts have been augmented with $100 million in federal money so far, including $1.2 million earmarked for Kansas. HHS will distribute another $250 million to states later this year, according to Azar.

Taking the concerns to heart, community leaders and local and state officials have a mix of plans on the drawing board.

In Hawaii, officials at the Honolulu airport are planning to have nurses take nasal swabs of airline passengers who appear ill to screen them for the flu, and a jetload of people could be quarantined if any one passenger tested positive for the H5N1 strain, according to the Hawaii State Department of Health.

In Boston, thousands of healthcare professionals are being asked to sign up as volunteers for a "Medical Reserve Corps" who could help treat flu victims.

BURY IN THE BACKYARD

In Illinois, the DuPage County Health Department, which encompasses 1 million people in suburbs west of Chicago, last month sent out a mailer to 350,000 homes warning residents of pandemic flu and offering tips on how to personally prepare, including stocking up on food and water.

The county is also planning outreach kits to businesses, churches and schools along with a series of conferences in the fall, and it is launching a bird flu Web site.

"People are concerned and are asking for information," said DuPage County Health Department spokesman Dave Hass.

In South Carolina, representatives from all state agencies are meeting monthly with American Red Cross volunteers and other volunteer organizations to develop a plan of action.

The Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania is readying technology and personnel to transform the college quickly into a command center capable of handling hundreds of hotline calls should pandemic hit.

And in Washington state, the King County public health department in Seattle has warned people that if body bags and refrigerated trucks are in short supply, flu victims should be buried in backyards, provided the graves are far from septic systems.

In Kansas, where state officials estimate a pandemic would claim some 2,500 lives, military units in Topeka spent last weekend practicing an emergency setup of the state's "EMEDS" (expeditionary medical support system), a portable system of tents that was deployed for use along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The system is designed to accommodate 25 intensive care beds, a surgical wing and a pharmacy. Another EMEDS is on order and the state anticipates it would be critical in handling waves of flu patients.

"We have never really had a public emergency of this magnitude in our lifetime," said Bunting. "But we can rally the country to win this thing. We can do this."

Bird Flu Perched on Bulgarian Border​

Top news: 7 June 2006, Wednesday.

The latest site with the lethal H5N1 bird flu in Romania was confirmed to be just 40 km away from the northern Bulgarian border, in the Gurgevo province.

A statement posted on a municipal website denounces earlier refusals on the availability of the lethal virus in the area.

The site with detected infection is located around the village of Balbukata, and Romanian authorities are pledging it has been disinfected. The settlement is under quarantine and some 800 birds were culled, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) informed.

On Tuesday, the first laboratory responsible for testing birds for the deadly H5N1 virus opened at the National Veterinary Diagnosis Center in Chisinau. The lab's equipment worth EUR 144,000 was purchased from the financial resources allocated by the European Commission.

The World Bank and European Commission have established a new USD 70 M trust fund to help countries prepare for a possible outbreak of bird flu.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, they said the Avian and Human Influenza Facility (AHI) will provide grant handouts for countries in Central Asia, South and East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=64651

This graphic suggests that H5N1 is tracking an exponential growth function and approaching a major inflection point!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_H5N1

Excellent video primer for anyone new to Pandemic Preparedness:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8153259847548931048


Thed original video is found here: http://www.srhd.org/health/disease/pandemic.asp

Click on the link for your appro[iate Internet connection.

Here is another 24/7 news site focused on Bird Flu:

http://www.pandemic-news.info/

To be quite blunt, yep I'm a wallflower , it's just Mother Nature, nobody elses fault, there is no conspiracy theory going on here, perhaps the coverup is...JMHO

Of course you could read the title thread as:

So W.H.O. is really to blame for bird flu.

Bill P said:

Of course you could read the title thread as:

So W.H.O. is really to blame for bird flu.

Click to expand...

Yep, conspiracy 101.

<table width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bordercolor="#000000" height="43"><tr><td bgcolor="D08153"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="4" color="#FFFFFF">China confirms new outbreak of bird flu in poultry</font></b></font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#f5f5dc" height="2"><div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="2">
http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=PEK263312</B>

BEIJING, June 8 (Reuters) - China has confirmed a fresh outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus among poultry in the western region of Xinjiang, the official Xinhua News agency reported on Thursday.

It said that the Ministry of Agriculture had confirmed on Wednesday that poultry on a farm in Hetian country had died from the bird flu virus.

The report did not specify how many many birds were infected.

The Agriculture Ministry has sent experts to Hetian to control the outbreak, and officials were inspecting and disinfecting people and vehicles passing in and out of the effected area, Xinhua said.

China has reported about 40 outbreaks of bird flu in birds across a dozen provinces over the past year, and 12 people are known to have died from the virus and six have survived.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu can strike down domestic and wild birds, and also infect humans who have close contact with them. Scientists fear it could mutate into a strain that can pass from human to human, potentially triggering a deadly outbreak over a wide area.

In late May, China said that bird flu killed about 400 wild birds in the remote western Qinghai province and in Tibet.

On Monday, a leading Chinese bird flu specialist said the government should review the effectiveness of measures to control bird flu and intensify efforts to wipe out the disease among birds.

</font></font></div></td></tr></table>

Link to tomorrows (6/8) Bird Flu thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=200087

Mother Nature deals the cards, it's how we respond or not, alot of unsaid going on at the CDC, WHO, and God knows the affiliations...Boys and girls, we're on our own here...just best to keep abreast of the news here and elsewhere and prepare accordindly...don't think Sue would disagree here.......