Avian flu updates page 12

[Kim99]

Thought I'd throw this one in to lighten the mood, because it's always good to hear from the "India Daily Technology Team"

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/4629.asp

Avian Flu can wipe out human civilization by 2012 – polar reversal of earth and Sun can cause it
India Daily Technology Team Sep. 18, 2005


Avian Flu is real and it is experiencing a stealth spread all over the world.

The polar reversal of the sun and the earth is changing the electromagnetic properties of the earth. The migrating birds that use earth’s electromagnetic fields for navigation are getting confused and this will just intensify more and more as we approach 2012. If the migrating birds move to wrong spots and get confused about where they are going, they will spread the Avian Flu all over the world rapidly.

That will cause the Avian Flu to spread fast and can threaten the whole human civilization in 2012.

Bird flu, or avian influenza, is a Type A influenza virus that affects mostly birds and occasionally pigs. The virus can pass from bird to bird when it is inhaled and from contact with infected droppings. Contaminated equipment, infectious particles carried on the feet and bodies of animals, and migratory waterfowl can spread the disease. Since December 2003, a highly pathogenic strain has devastated dozens of Asian domestic poultry stocks, and several human infections have been reported.

According to the Center for Disease Control, which offers a basic fact sheet on the virus, bird flu is especially pernicious to humans because we lack the necessary immune protections against the disease.

All influenza viruses are dangerous because they are prone to change; the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 killed 34,000 people in the United States. The World Health Organization notes that no human-to-human transmissions have been reported.

There's much warranted concern about the latest outbreak -- it has spread rapidly and is highly pathogenic.

The Avian Flu is spreading very fast through confused migrating birds and is about to hit an epidemic all over the world simultaneously.

 

[Kim99]

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20050918p2g00m0in007000c.html

Bird flu's human transmission high on agenda at WHO meeting

SYDNEY -- Stemming a possible deadly outbreak of bird flu in humans will be high on the agenda during a World Health Organization meeting this week in the South Pacific nation of New Caledonia.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, will inform health ministers from more than 20 countries of efforts to prevent possible human-to-human transmission of avian influenza, WHO said.

An Asia-Pacific strategy to avert a global bird flu pandemic -- which many health officials say could kill millions of people -- will also be discussed, it said in a statement.

The meeting begins Monday in Noumea, the capital of France's archipelago nation of New Caledonia, and wraps up Friday.

Last week, Indonesia confirmed its fourth human death from bird flu, taking Asia's death toll to 63.

Bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia, and its spread is being monitored by health officials in parts of Russia and Kazakhstan.

So far, most human cases have been traced to direct contact with infected birds, but health experts have warned that the virus could mutate and become easily communicable from human to human, triggering a deadly global pandemic.

Last month, pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG announced it would donate 3 million treatment courses of a bird flu drug to a reserve stock managed by WHO. The antiviral drug, known commercially as Tamiflu, is the only treatment proven to be effective in humans against avian influenza.

Many developed countries have already begun stockpiling Tamiflu, but many poor countries in Southeast Asia -- where a pandemic is most likely to begin -- have not acquired the drug or only obtained minimal supplies.

Two of the last three global pandemics originated in Asia. The Asian flu of 1957-58 , first identified in China, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 each killed more than 1 million people.

Neither compared to the Spanish flu of 1918-19, however, which killed up to 40 million people and sickened an estimated 20 percent to 40 percent of the world's population.

Other topics on the agenda at the WHO meeting are child health, managing health crises resulting from natural disasters, and the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, according to the statement. (AP)

September 18, 2005

 

[Martin]

Avian flu shuts down zoo
18/09/2005 19:48 - (SA)


Jakarta - The main zoo in Indonesia's capital was shut down after 19 of its birds died of the avian influenza that has killed four people in the sprawling country, doctors and government officials said on Sunday.

Three patients, meanwhile, were being treated as suspected bird flu cases at the Sulianti Saroso infectious disease hospital, said Dr Santoso Suroso, who was awaiting lab tests to confirm whether or not they had the illness.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu virus has swept through poultry populations in large swathes of Asia since 2003, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds - and 63 people, including a 37-year-old woman who died last week in Indonesia.

So far, most human cases have been traced to direct contact with infected birds, but health experts have warned that the virus could mutate and become easily communicable from human to human, triggering a deadly global pandemic.

Young children appear to be especially vulnerable to the disease.

Rusman, an agriculture ministry official who goes by one name, said on Sunday 19 chickens and other birds had died of bird flu at the Ragunan Zoo in the south part of the capital, Jakarta, and that it would be closed for at least three weeks pending an investigation.

Birds that test positive for the disease will be killed and all others will be vaccinated to protect them from the deadly virus, he said.

Indonesia recorded its first human fatalities from bird flu in July when a father and his two daughters died after contracting the virus. Officials have linked those deaths to droppings from an infected bird.

Officials have carried out limited vaccinations of some of the estimated 2 billion birds in the country, but say they lack funds to carry out culls of flocks in areas where the virus is prevalent.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1772607,00.html