H5N1 Avian Flu news thread

[Preciouslife1]

I am setting up this new thread to post current and relevent news on the H5N1 Influenza threat. There is so much information coming out on this that it deserves its own thread and it also stops the bifurcation of the PPHM/Tarvacin board. There can still be posts on the PPHM board about
Avian FLU, especially that the NIAID has been testing Tarvacin against this since October 28th, 2005. They are testing Tarvacin against over 30 known viruses and all enveloped viruses. I have been remiss in not doing this earlier. Any contributions of substance are welcome to be posted on
this new thread. Thank you all for your support and views in the last two months.PLease feel free to comment any positive thoughts about this thread or negative ones if they remain civil. I do this out of love and concern for my fellow man/woman ***PLIFE***

[Preciouslife1]

Alarms ring over bird flu mutations
Declan Butler
http://www.nature.com/nature/journa...ll/439248a.html
Top of pageAbstractTurkish virus shows increased affinity for humans.

Scientists studying virus samples from the human outbreak of avian flu in Turkey have identified three mutations in the virus's sequence. They say that at least two of these look likely to make the virus better adapted to humans.

The Turkey outbreak is unusual, because of the large family clusters of cases; the fact that many of those infected have only mild symptoms; and the speed with which infections have arisen — twenty cases, including four deaths, in less than two weeks. So scientists are urgently trying to establish whether the virus is behaving differently in this outbreak from previous ones in Asia. In particular, international teams are investigating the possibility that the virus is moving between people.

"With such a large number of cases within such a short period of time, human-to-human transmission is something that we've had to consider," says Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman at World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva.

As Nature went to press, samples from the first two teenagers in the country to die had been sequenced by a WHO collaborating centre at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in London.

The results so far are not comforting. The first mutation found, announced last week, involves a substitution in one sample of an amino acid at position 223 of the haemoagglutinin receptor protein. This protein allows the flu virus to bind to the receptors on the surface of its host's cells.

This mutation has been observed twice before — in a father and son in Hong Kong in 2003, and in one fatal case in Vietnam last year. It increases the virus's ability to bind to human receptors, and decreases its affinity for poultry receptors, making strains with this mutation better adapted to infecting humans.

The same sample also contained a mutation at position 153 of the haemoagglutinin protein, Nature has learned. Cheng says this information was not included in WHO statements, because "it is not clear what role this particular change plays".

Finally, both samples from the Turkish teenagers show a substitution of glutamic acid with lycine, at position 627 of the polymerase protein, which the virus uses to replicate its genetic material. This mutation has been seen in other flu sequences from Eurasian poultry over the past year. It was also present in the one person who died during an outbreak of H7N7 in the Netherlands in 2003, and in a few people in Vietnam and Thailand.

The recent outbreak of bird flu in Turkey has thrown up viruses with mutations that threaten humans.
The polymerase mutation is one of the ten genetic changes that gave rise to the 1918 pandemic flu virus. Like the 223-haemoagglutinin mutation, it signals adaptation to humans, says Alan Hay, director of a WHO influenza laboratory at the NIMR. "There is this glutamic acid–lysine flip," he explains. "Glutamic acid is associated with flu-virus replication in birds, and lycine is in primates."

The Turkey strains are the first in which the polymerase and receptor-binding mutations have been found together. They could make it easier for humans to catch the virus from poultry. But they might also favour human-to-human transmission. This is because the polymerase change helps the virus to survive in the cooler nasal regions of the respiratory tract, and the haemoagglutinin mutation encourages the virus to target receptors in the nose and throat, rather than lower down in the lungs. The virus is thought to be more likely to spread through droplets coughed from the nose and throat than from infections lower down.

Hay points out, however, that it is difficult to predict how the mutations will actually influence the virus's behaviour. He adds that just two changes are unlikely to create efficient human-to-human transmission on their own.

Establishing what effects these changes are having on the epidemiology of the current outbreak is a top priority for research teams working in Turkey. "We must learn more about the mild cases and be absolutely sure of whether these viruses are behaving differently from those we have seen elsewhere," says Hay. "It is early days in terms of what we know about the viruses causing these infections."

Researchers are sequencing more strains from the Turkey cases, to see whether they share the mutations and to check for further changes. Samples were expected to arrive in London on 18 January, after being held up for more than a week in Turkey because of the Eid ul-Adha holiday period.

[Preciouslife1]

There are some major differences between 1918 and 2006 and in fact H5N1 could be considerably worse than H1N1.

There really is little data to support H1N1 coming from a bird flu. In one sense all flu comes from bird flu, but the polymorphisms in 1918 are almost all contained in either a human H1N1 or a classical swine H1N1. Consequently, 1918 is really a mammalian recombinant and it has the 10 changes that are commonly more specific for a mammalian flu. There is no data showing that any of there were any different in 1917, so the argument that these changed any time near 1918 has ZERO data. The table showing the 10 changes could have been generated without 1918 data, because 1918 was exactly the same as human H1N1 (that wasn't pandemic).

H5N1 has already shown that once inside a person, it has no problem replicating. It has a polybasic cleavage site (which 1918 did not have) and now it has PB2 E627K, which allows it to replicate well at a lower temperature.

The HA S227N increases the binding for the human receptor, but is not as strong as season flu. The affinity for avian receptors is lower, but not as low as season flu. Thus, the H5N1 in Turkey is a switch hitter. It can easily infect birds and humans, which is why the human cases appeared simultaneously across Turkey (and in neighboring countries who are lying - although the jig may be up in Iraq).

Bottom line is H5N1 can now quickly seed humans and pick up the HA changes that make it as efficient as seasonal flu and it doesn't need the other 9 changes in internal genes because it has a formula that is quite efficient in humans.

The acquisition of S227N was via recombination and can happen overnight. More recombination can happen as H5N1 infects more humans, so it gets easier and easier to come up with the right combination (and simply a couple of changes on HA could do the trick).

Thus, a little recombination goes a long way (no reassortment required).

[Preciouslife1]

Bird flu pandemic 'could start in hospitals'
NT Online News
posted on 18 01 2006

A World Health Organisation expert has warned that hospitals will be the focus of any potential bird flu pandemic

Dr. Nahoko Shindo, a WHO specialist in emerging and dangerous pathogens, warned that because a hospital is where the infected gather for treatment, it "is the first place a pandemic could start."

"If the virus mutates and gets characteristics of highly transmissible virus, that's the beginning of a pandemic," Dr Shindo said during the session in the eastern city of Van, where all four of Turkey's human bird flu deaths occurred - and where more than 30 people complaining of symptoms were being treated.

[Preciouslife1]

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hospitals may have to adapt military-style triage in case of a bird flu pandemic, and must get plans into place now for dealing with one, a Canadian expert said on Wednesday.
Toronto hospitals that had to deal with the 2003 SARS outbreak learned the hard way that it pays to have plans and procedures in place before an emergency happens, said Dr. Laura Hawryluck, of the University of Toronto, and a member of the Critical Care Pandemic Triage Provincial Committee.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spread out of southern China in 2003 and eventually was spread to spots around the world by air travelers, killing about 800 people and infecting close to 8,000 before it was brought under control in July 2003.
It killed 44 people in Toronto and forced the quarantine of more than 10,000.
A pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza would be worse. The disease now mostly affects birds but it has occasionally jumped to people, killing just around 80 in six countries.
The fear is that the virus could mutate into a human influenza, spread quickly and kill millions globally.
World health leaders say no one is ready to deal with this. Canada learned some lessons from SARS but will not have all the resources needed to cope, said Hawryluck.
"What we have been told is to expect about a 34 percent attack (infection) rate over a six-week period," Hawryluck told an Internet-based seminar of medical professionals.
That would overload current capacity for intensive care units with influenza patients alone -- not including all the other needs for an ICU, which are already almost full to capacity every day, she said. During SARS, many ICUs were overwhelmed, she said. "Our staffing was reduced because of illness, because of quarantines and because of fear," she added

Military-style battlefield triage may be needed at peak times when patient numbers outpace the number of beds, ventilators, the supplies and drugs and the number of people needed to tend to them, Hawryluck told the seminar, sponsored by hospital supplier Pall Corporation.
"The military had used triage systems for many years," she said. Her system has already adopted the military color codes for patients, she said.
"The red people would be the highest priority for ICU care," she said. "Yellow -- those are the people you know they might do well with ICU care, they might do well without, it would be nice if the resources were available," she added.
People deemed "blue" or "black" would receive only palliative care -- to reduce pain and suffering while they died, while people given a "green" rating would not require immediate attention.
Hospitals also should plan for equipment needs now, she said, and also negotiate any government contracts and agreements ahead of time, so that bureaucracy does not bog down things in an emergency.
Controlling media-generated rumors may be impossible so it will also be useful to set up a clear communications system with all workers, she said.
"During SARS we created our own teleconference," she said.
"It is hard to separate fact or fiction. The front-line workers are usually the last to find out about things and that needs to change."
Counseling, psychological support and little touches like supplying cold drinks to workers sweating under gowns and masks also are useful, Hawryluck said.
Health care workers were especially likely to be infected with SARS because the virus spread during lifesaving procedures such as inserting a breathing tube into a coughing patient. "We were treated as pariahs by the rest of the community and by the general public and that was very difficult," Hawryluck said.

[Preciouslife1]

China reports ninth bird flu death

A Chinese woman has died from bird flu in the country's south-west, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
If confirmed by World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised laboratories, it would be the country's six human death from the virus.
The 35-year-old woman surnamed Wei died in Sichuan province on January 11, the ministry said in a brief statement on its website.
The woman - a poultry slaughterer - lived in a village where domestic birds had died, the statement said, though it did not say if they had succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus to which the victim tested positive.
This is the ninth human case of bird flu reported in China, the official Xinhua news agency added.
The Chinese Health Ministry said the new case had been reported to the WHO.
The WHO was not immediately available for comment.
- Reuters

[Getbetter]

I know that avian influenza virus has many subtype ex: H1N1, H5N1, ... depend on its surface protein hemaglutinin(H) and neuraminidase(N). But how can we determine the difference among these proteins H (or N), to know which sutype of the virus we concern belongs to.

[Preciouslife1]

Most H5N1 Cases Now Linked to Human to Human Transmission
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/02..._H2H_Most.html
Recombinomics Commentary
February 4, 2006

Almost all cases of H5N1 human infection appear to have resulted from some form of direct or close contact with infected poultry, primarily chickens. In addition, a few persons may have been infected through very close contact with another infected person, but this type of transmission has not led to sustained transmission.

The above comments from the prepared statement for the Senate appropriations committee seriously underplay the involvement of human-to-human transmission of H5N1. The role was even more distorted in the actual testimony, which indicated that strong evidence of human-to-human existed for only two familial clusters. Familial clusters have made up an ever increasing percentage of the official H5N1 cases and virtually all such clusters involve human-to-human transmission among family members.

Although exposure to sick or dying poultry can be frequently linked to the index case in a cluster, this linkage does not necessarily extend to other family members. These members frequently have exposure to both the index case and poultry. To distinguish between a common poultry source and a common family member, the dates of disease onset are used. Since transmission from bird to human is rare, the likelihood of two independent transmission is low. Therefore, if the common source is poultry, the index case and other family members would be expected to develop symptoms over a short time course (1-2 days). If however, the index case transmitted the H5N1 to other family members, the time interval between disease onset in the index case and disease onset in other family members would be long (5-10 days).

The number of family clusters in the various countries reporting H5N1 outbreaks since 2004 has now exceeded thirty. Almost all of these clusters have a time gap of 5-10 days between disease onset of the index case and other family members. This gap indicates that most of the familial clusters involve human-to-human transmission.

The clusters date back to early 2004 in Vietnam and later in Thailand. By early 2005, these clusters account for almost one third of H5N1 cases. In Indonesia, the number of H5N1 patients in familial clusters grew to about two thirds of cases. The initial 15 clusters were described in a recent CDC/WHO publication. At that time, WHO changed wording in their characterization of the H5N1 outbreak. They had indicated that there was little evidence for human-to-human transmission. This changed to little evidence for efficient human-to-human transmission, acknowledging the growing number of familial cases which involved human-to-human transmission.

Recently, the size and number of these clusters grew, and WHO again changed their description from a lack of evidence for efficient human-to-human transmission to a lack of evidence for sustained human-to-human transmission. Although this terminology suggests the increased frequency has been noted by WHO, public comments and media reports still leave the impression that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is rare or non-existent.

This impression is particularly misleading at the present time because a genetic change has been noted in H5N1 from the index case in Turkey. The change in the receptor binding domain of HA, S227N (also called S223N), increases the affinity of the HA for human receptors. This change coupled with another change, PB2 E627K, increases the efficiency of H5N1 infection in humans, especially in cold weather. These genetic changes have led to very large clusters in Turkey as well as linkage between clusters.

The linked cluster included the index case for Turkey. Index cases from familial clusters have in fact been the index cases for countries since 2005. The index case for Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Turkey, and Iraq all were familial index cases and all clusters included a 5-10 day gap in disease onset dates.

These data leave little doubt that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is quite common and now represent the majority of human cases. Representations to the contrary are cause for concern

[Preciouslife1]

11 More Suspected Cases in Indonesia
Looks like Indonesia's problem is growing worse--

Eleven more suspected bird flu cases await WHO confirmation

JAKARTA (AFP): Indonesia, which has already registered 16 bird flu deaths, is awaiting test results from the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 more suspected infections, a health official said Sunday.

"The latest report we have shows that there has been a total of 23 cases of confirmed infection, 16 of them fatal, while we are still awaiting the result of WHO tests on 11 other probable cases, four of them fatal," said an official at the health ministry's bird flu information center.

The official, who identified himself as Nurdin, said local tests on the 11 probable cases had tested positive but that only tests conducted by the WHO laboratory in Hong Kong would officially confirm infection cases.

"But from experience, the WHO tests have only confirmed the results of our tests," Nurdin said.

The latest WHO test results obtained at the weekend showed that a 22-year-old chicken vendor who died last month and a 15-year-old teenager who died on Wednesday were Indonesia's latest deaths from the H5N1 virus, health ministry official Hariyadi Wibisono has said.

"Two more cases had also been confirmed by the Hong Kong-based laboratory, but the patients remained alive bringing the total of confirmed bird flu cases in Indonesia to 23, of which 16 have died," Wibisono told AFP.

Nurdin could not give details of the two new surviving bird flu cases.

The virus has now killed some 87 people in Asia since 2003. Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, was initially accused of covering up the virus, which is transmitted by close contact with infected poultry.

Many Indonesians live with chickens around their homes, even in urban areas, creating ideal conditions for infections to pass from the birds to humans.

Experts fear that H5N1 could mutate into a form easily transmissible by humans, sparking a global pandemic that would have the potential to kill millions.


http://www.thejakartapost.com/detai...05161554&irec=0

[Preciouslife1]

from:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N0257209.htm


U.S. experts expect to be overwhelmed by bird flu

02 Feb 2006 22:53:15 GMT

Source: Reuters





By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) -

U.S. flu experts are resigned to being overwhelmed by an avian flu pandemic, saying hospitals, schools, businesses and the general public are nowhere near ready to cope.

Money, equipment and staff are lacking and few states have even the most basic plans in place for dealing with an epidemic of any disease, let alone the possibly imminent pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza, they told a meeting on Thursday.



While a federal plan has been out for several weeks, it lacks essential details such as guidance on when hospitals should start to turn away all but the sickest patients and when schools should close, the experts complained.



"There is no way at this time that we can even plan for this epidemic," said Dr. Roger Baxter of the University of California San Francisco and associate director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center.



"We could be easily overwhelmed," Baxter told the meeting organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.



"A lot of our facilities are old, with no isolation facilities," Baxter said.



H5N1 avian influenza has swept through flocks across Asia and into Europe, killing or forcing the culling of 200 million birds. It sometimes infects people and has infected 161 documented patients, killing 86 of them.



Experts say the virus is mutating steadily and poses the biggest threat yet for a long-expected global influenza pandemic if it acquires the ability to pass from person to person.



The world has not seen a flu pandemic since 1968, and that one was mild by most measures. The global public health system has crumbled as people enjoyed the respite from disease, experts say.



Now they are scrambling to fix it up, but say it is too big a job to do it quickly.



NOWHERE TO TURN

Dr. Dan Hanfling, director of emergency management and disaster medicine at the Inova Health System in Falls Church, Virginia, said hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area would be flooded with patients with nowhere to put them.



"There are going to be many, many people coming to the hospital because they are worried they may have been exposed," Hanfling said.



If there was just a 10 percent infection rate, that would mean 500,000 sick people in the Washington, D.C., area, Hanfling calculated. Some models assume that 20 percent of these people would need to be treated in hospitals.



"We are talking about finding 100,000 places," Hanfling said. "We have 7,800 staffed beds."



And hospitals are already filled to capacity with everyday illnesses.

"We'll still have heart attacks. We'll still have strokes. We'll still have babies to deliver," Hanfling told the meeting.



He cited one survey that showed only 66 percent of health care workers would show up for work if they thought patients might infect them. And an expected 25 percent could be out sick themselves, or caring for sick family members.



Dr. Trish Perl, president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and director for infection control at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore said she did a quick estimate of how many masks, for instance, a hospital would need to get through a pandemic outbreak.



A protective face mask is standard equipment for use in caring for patients with respiratory disease such as flu.



A 600-bed hospital would need 1.6 million masks to get through six weeks -- and that is assuming the hospital eases up on rules requiring workers to wear a fresh mask at each encounter with each patient, Perl said.

[Preciouslife1]

AFRICA FACES "ENORMOUS RISK"

On Thursday, US intelligence chief John Negroponte told a Senate committee looking into the range of threats to the United States that Washington was monitoring the bird flu situation in countries "where we cannot be confident that adequate information will be available through open sources."

Powell said Washington hoped the lessons learned by Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam - the epicenter of the disease - could be applied to Africa and other vulnerable regions.

The flight paths of migratory birds, blamed for the spread of bird flu, crossed eastern Africa, where countries are poor and ill-prepared for epidemics, said William Steiger, a senior US health official.

"The risk is enormous. There's no question that the migratory flyways, especially down the Rift valley, present a great deal of concern to African governments," he said.

"We have worked pretty intensively in the past few weeks to figure out inside the US government what our strategy is going to be toward Africa," said Steiger, head of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Washington supported an emerging infections detection and response system in Kenya, and the US Agency for International Development was investing in surveillance projects in Ethiopia and Tanzania along migratory bird flyways, he added.
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Bird Flu: Anxiety Rises Over Dead Birds In Kano
Bird Flu: Anxiety Rises Over Dead Birds In Kano

http://www.independentng.com/news/nnfeb070624.htm

The Federal Government has sent samples from birds that died on a poultry farm in Kano State to the veterinary laboratory in Vom, Plateau State for testing in a bid to ascertain whether the birds were killed by the deadly H5N1 bird flu.

Junaidu Maina, Acting Director of Livestock, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, said in Abuja that the birds died in abnormally high numbers on the Sovat farm in Danbare village, Kano State adding that samples had to be sent to Vom to identify the cause of the deaths.

“From what we know for now, it’s most likely to be Newcastle disease. But we’ve sent samples just to check,” Maina said.

Newcastle disease is a highly contagious viral disease in poultry for which there is no treatment. The virus causes in worst in fections only minor illnesses in humans.

On the other hand sick birds suffering from bird flu typically develop diseases of the nervous, respiratory or reproductive systems and morbidity is usually high. The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has killed more than 70 people in Asia, has spread from Asia to Europe and the Middle East, but has not been detected in Africa.

Experts have warned that any outbreak of the deadly virus could have devastating consequences in Africa, where millions of people live at close quarters with poultry.

Lola Sadiq, official in charge of bird flu in the Nigerian office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in said in Abuja that WHO was aware of the poultry deaths in Kano and was liaising with the federal ministries of agriculture and health over the issue.

She said the laboratory in Plateau would try and identify the cause of the deaths and if it was unable to do so it would send samples abroad for further testing. It was not immediately clear how long the testing would take.

The official in charge of bird flu at the Federal Ministry of Health, Jide Coker, said Nigeria had a plan of action to react to any suspected outbreak of the H5N1 virus.

Experts fear the strain, which mostly affects birds, but could mutate to a form that can easily be transmitted between people, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.

While the strain has not yet been detected in Africa, experts say Africa is on the flight-path of migratory birds thought to carry the disease and the close proximity between poultry and humans in towns and villages provides an ideal environment for the virus to jump to humans.

Delegates to a WHO conference in Congo last month said shortage of money and scientific know how could leave Africa struggling to detect and combat bird flu.

Africa
Nigerian officials blame fowl cholera for chicken deaths

Kano, Nigeria
07 February 2006 08:12

An epidemic has killed 60 000 chickens in northern Nigeria, officials said on Monday, while attempting to calm fears that the deadly bird-flu virus had spread to the country.

Salihu Jibrin, director of veterinary services in Kano state's agriculture ministry, said initial evidence suggests that the devastating outbreak was fowl cholera, a bacterial infection, rather than influenza.

"We have so far recorded the death of 60 000 chickens in this epidemic and, from preliminary results of laboratory tests conducted on samples of the dead birds, the presence of fowl-cholera bacteria," Jibrin said.

"Further tests are being conducted at the National Veterinary Research Institute in Vom and Ahmadu Bello University Veterinary Teaching hospital in Zaria for comprehensive laboratory diagnosis," he added.

The sudden death of so many chickens, coming at a time when the world is nervously monitoring the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can prove deadly to humans, has caused concern in northern Nigeria.

Officials have broadcast television and radio messages to try to calm such fears and place the blame on bird cholera, a disease that causes birds to die from fatigue and dehydration as they lose control of their bowels.

Shehu Bawa, the head of a team set up to monitor the disease, said that until the test results are back, a virus such as Newcastle disease, which has similar symptoms to cholera, cannot be ruled out. -- Sapa-AFP


http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.asp...rticleid=263495

[Preciouslife1]

The reality that Avian flu could mutate within HIV and HIV/HCV patients is just another deadly reminder why an antiviral like Tarvacin is so needed. Tic, toc, tic, toc....it's ticking and people
are dying........

Quote:
"People are malnourished and their immune systems are down. Also, with the high rates of HIV/Aids infection, this has the potential to be a catastrophe.


Many people have been worried about HIV/AIDS patients getting bird flu, because they could carry the virus a long time and give it the chance to recombine with another flu virus. What has not been discussed much is that these people have immune deficiencies that will probably allow them to catch H5N1 much easier than a person without immune deficiencies. I would think that the HIV and malnourished population could be infected on a wide scale, even though it is primarily spreading B2H.

Even if the Cytokine Storms do not affect the HIV/AIDS/Malnourished crowd the way it does the healthy people, I believe the side effects could be deadly for this group. People with immune deficiencies tend to suffer much worse through pneumonia and other complications from sickness, because their immune systems do not react to the danger.

If the bird flu has a much easier time infecting HIV/AIDS patients, and if its effects are deadly to them, we could see a huge loss of life, even if the disease does not go H2H. There are roughly 40 million people in the world with HIV, and most of them are in Africa. We should try to keep track of the bird flu patients that also are reported to have AIDS, and see what effect the virus has on this group.

credit to Thefourhorsemen on CurEvents..... P*L*1

[Preciouslife1]

Posted by: Preciouslife1
In reply to: None Date:2/11/2006 9:57:55 AM
Post #of 4169

FYI..H5N1 in Italy and Africa:
niman
Valued Member
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 3,564

Probable H5N1 in Sicily Italy

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/0...5N1_Sicily.html

Recombinomics Commentary
February 11, 2006

Italy is testing birds for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus after finding "probable cases" of the disease in birds in the southern island of Sicily.

A health ministry statement said that "Tests are under way for probable cases of Avian Flu in our country," and added that Health Minister Francesco Storace would brief the cabinet on developments later on Saturday.

A source close to the laboratories carrying out the tests said they involved diseased birds from Sicily, and said results of the tests were expected later on Saturday or on Sunday.

The above comments indicate H5N1 has been detected in Italy. Italian media indicates that at least two infected swans are being tested. These results are likely linked to recent results for H5N1 infected swans in Bulgaria, Greece, and Cyprus. H5N1 infected swans have been previously reported in Croatia, Romania, and Askatran.

Recent sequence data from isolates in Nigeria indicate that the H5N1 identified there is closely related to the Qinghai strain that was first detected in May 2005 at Qinghai Lake in China. It has subsequently been found in Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tula, Askatran, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Iraq, and Azerbaijan.

The latest result in Italy raises serious questions about the failure to detect H5N1 in adjacent countries in Europe, the Middlle East, and Africa. Moreover, migration of birds from Qinghai Lake to northern India casts more doubt on their continual denials of H5N1. Since the H5N1 positive bar-headed geese at Qinghai Lake in May 2005 originated in India, India's continued failure to detect H5N1 raises questions about the origin of the Qinghai strain.

WHO was given added authority to investigate infectious diseases with the potential to cross international borders. Use of that authority is long overdue as countries continue to deny the obvious, further endangering the world's health.

http://www.recombinomics.com/H5N1_Map_2006_AfricaF.html

It is worth noting that on the same day, further west of Sicily, hundreds of storks were reported to have died at two locations in southern Spain. Two days later, the first report in the coastal city of Oran, Algeria was made regarding a family with bird flu symptoms. Then 12 days later, hundreds of cattle egrets were found dead in northern Morocco. In other words, once countries open up about it, you can see unbelievably clear patterns. Personally, I think this is unrelated to Nigeria. It appears to be independent. Bird flu was already in Nigeria a month or two ago. Some of the birds in Greece, Italy and Spain have stopped and are waiting for warm weather to return north. Others however will be hooking around the west coast of Africa, through Morocco, etc. and on down through Nigeria towards South Africa. Considering that many of the countries on the west coast of Africa are in a state of complete disruption from numerous wars, do not expect to hear any more news until it reaches Ghana--either from the east or from the west or both, and then again not until Cameroon, and then South Africa. Ironically, on November 28th, bird flu was reported to be in the Southwest Province of Cameroon, but no further information was ever given, and South Africa has already had "Newcastle Outbreaks" that have devastated it's poultry industry in the last three months. Unbelievably, I read a report a couple weeks ago that one of it's tern colonies near Cape Town is completely empty for the first time in living memory--blamed on misbehaving seals.

Just a heads up for those that follow this...PL1

[Preciouslife1]

http://www.physorg.com/news10790.html

Factfile on bird flu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is an updated factfile on H5N1 avian influenza, following the first detected outbreak of the disease in the European Union:




WHAT IS BIRD FLU? Bird flu is also called avian influenza. There are 15 strains of flu that affect birds, but the one behind the global health scare is the sub-type known as H5N1. The first known cases of bird flu were detected in Hong Kong in 1997 and also involved H5N1.

HOW IT SPREADS TO HUMANS: Almost all the human cases of bird flu have been people who were directly exposed to infected fowl. They made contact with the virus through the birds' saliva, nasal secretions and faeces, which become dry, pulverised and are then inhaled.

THE TOLL: As of February 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) had confirmed 88 deaths from H5N1 out of 165 cases of human infection. Vietnam has the most fatalities, with 42, followed by Indonesia (16), Thailand (14), China (seven), Cambodia (four), Turkey (four) and Iraq (one). This list does not include an Iraqi Kurd whose death was reported by local authorities on Monday, two Indonesian women who died Thursday and Friday respectively and a woman's death reported by China on Friday.

SYMPTOMS: Bird flu in humans causes symptoms that are like human flu, such as fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches, conjunctivitis, pneumonia and other severe respiratory diseases.

IS CHICKEN SAFE? Avian flu is not a food-borne virus, so the risk from eating properly cooked poultry is considered negligible.

THE RISK: At present, H5N1 is not easily transmitted from bird to human. In other words, a person would have to pick up a lot of virus in order to be infected. Nor is it easily passed from human to human: there have been only three suspected cases in which this is believed to have happened. The big worry is that H5N1 could pick up genes from conventional human flu viruses, mutating into a form both highly lethal and highly infectious. As it would be a radically new pathogen, no one would have any immunity to it. The mutation could occur if H5N1 co-infects a human who already has ordinary flu or the agent is picked up from poultry by an animal such as a pig that can carry both bird and regular flu strains.

PAST PANDEMICS: The 20th century saw three flu pandemics, in 1918-19, 1957-58 and 1968-69. The 1918-19 pandemic killed as many as 50 million people -- larger than the death toll from AIDS in more than two decades. Jet travel, the world's huge population today and the larger number of people with compromised immune systems (from HIV and cancer, for instance) compared with 1918 could contribute to a far heavier toll.

ECONOMIC COST: A global pandemic of any scale would cost hundreds of billions of dollars because of the disruption to economic life. The World Bank estimates a bill of 550 billion dollars (465 billion euros) for rich countries alone. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates costs for Asia ranging from 99 billion to 283 billion dollars. As a comparison, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed fewer than 800 people in its 2003 outbreak, cost more than 30 billion dollars.

VETERINARY CONTROLS: These are the time-honoured first line of defence in any outbreak of animal disease. The task is to identify farms where there is an outbreak of H5N1, quarantine the area, kill all fowl suspected to be in contact with it, disinfect machinery, vehicles and clothing, and bar sales of poultry products from the affected region. But these controls are only really dependable if a country has a good surveillance network and responds quickly and effectively to an outbreak. Adequate compensation, too, is essential for encouraging honest reporting by farmers.

COUNTER-MEASURES: An international conference in Beijing drew more than 1.5 billion dollars in pledges to help fight bird flu, after experts estimated that around that amount would be needed over the next three years to help poor countries shore up their defences. An action plan drawn up in November stresses greater veterinary surveillance to detect outbreaks, preventative vaccination of poultry, culling of infected flocks and compensation for farmers. Its other focus is on strengthening health monitoring systems, stockpiling of antiviral drugs to dampen the spread of an outbreak and exercises to train medical personnel and the public.

VACCINE: No definitive vaccine against the viral threat is available as no one knows the precise shape the virus would take after mutating. Several prototypes are being explored. But the risk is that they could be only partially effective or even useless because the genetic shape of the virus will have changed and thus will not be recognised by antibodies. If a pandemic does occur, the big concern is about the delay. It could take up to six months to formulate and test the right vaccine, which will only be available in limited quantities immediately thereafter. Traditionally, flu vaccines take up to nine months to manufacture, using egg-based technology, although ways of speeding this up using genetic "reverse engineering" are being intensively explored.

DRUG ARSENAL: The range of antiviral drugs is small, but especially so when it comes to bird flu. Only two are considered effective against H5N1: zanamivir (commercialised as Relenza) and oseltamivir (Tamiflu). These medications are called neuraminidase inhibitors, which block the virus from replicating. If taken within a couple of days of the onset of illness, they can ease the severity of some symptoms and reduce the duration of sickness. The WHO recommends that countries stockpile antivirals, but does not give a figure as to how big that stockpile should be. It hopes to have its own stockpile, sufficient for three million people, by early 2006. A looming worry is whether the shifting virus might become resistant to Tamiflu.

Sources: WHO, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US National Institutes of Health (NIH), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), Nature, British Medical Journal (BMJ), The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), US Department of Health and Human Resources, news reports

[Preciouslife1]

Bird Flu Discovery Stokes Fears in Africa

Posted February 11, 2006

DAKAR, Senegal -- The discovery of the fatal bird flu strain in Africa has raised concerns the continent may not be equipped to cope with the disease, especially as many villagers are unaware of the threat.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu was reported Wednesday on a commercial farm in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, the first time the virus has been documented in Africa. On Thursday, Nigerian authorities reported the same virus in two other states.

"Are there more out there that we do not know of?" said Juan Lubroth, a senior animal health officer at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Beset by poverty, war and hunger, sub-Saharan Africa is particularly ill-equipped to deal with a major health crisis. It will need money, drugs and protective suits. Health authorities worry the virus may have already spread undetected to other parts of the continent.

Nigeria imposed a quarantine on poultry farms across the north and has began slaughtering birds at farms believed to be infected. Other countries like Mauritania and Gabon have announced they're blocking poultry imports from affected nations.

But officials in Ethiopia and Uganda said they don't have testing equipment to detect the H5N1 strain, which began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003, forcing the destruction of more than 100 million birds and jumping to humans.

The World Health Organization has confirmed 88 human deaths, mostly in Asia, though the disease recently has been detected in Europe and the Middle East. Almost all the deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, setting off a pandemic.

"Our fear is that most of the countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, don't have enough resources, manpower and other related necessities to tackle the problem," said Mulugeta Debalkew, a spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Even if the flu strain only affects birds, it could devastate the livelihoods of millions of Africans who make their living from agriculture.

If birds are killed on a large-scale in Africa "there has to be a compensation program ... that will reimburse these farmers for their losses," said Alex Thiermann, an expert for the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris.

"Otherwise, their losses are going to be immense and very quickly we are going to find that nobody is reporting" suspected bird flu cases, he said

Questions have also arisen over the time it took in Nigeria to confirm the H5N1 strain. Nigerian Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello said samples were first taken from birds on Jan. 16. The disease may have spread between then and Wednesday, when the birds were confirmed to have the strain.

Thiermann said the Nigerian farm's owner reportedly first gave the sick birds antibiotics, "clearly" showing he was not thinking bird flu could have been the culprit. That underlined the need for public awareness campaigns -- a tough challenge on a continent with poor infrastructure and high illiteracy.

In Africa, "the farmers are not thinking about avian influenza as the most likely cause," Thiermann said. "These are areas where they have high mortality in chickens due to a number of chicken diseases."

Money is also a major issue. Most African governments are deeply impoverished, crippled for years by debt and corruption.

Debalkew said Ethiopia does not even have protective suits that health and veterinary experts investigating and working to control outbreaks need to ensure they do not become infected.

In Uganda, Winyi Kaboyo of the East African country's Flu Task Force, said the government had tried to educate the public through newspaper ads, but could not afford to do the same on radio or television.

"We don't currently have enough resources ... we require more funds," Kaboyo said.

Experts from the WHO, the FAO, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Organization for Animal Health are expected in Nigeria over the next few days to help.

But getting enough foreign experts to Africa may be difficult with experts already spread thin by bird flu outbreaks in Asia and the Middle East.

"Hopefully, we can contain it within Nigeria," Thiermann said. "Just to deal with the whole continent of Africa, I don't know where we are going to get the people to help us."

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