Bird Flu Guard

2007-08-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Indonesia confirms two more bird flu deaths

Jakarta (VNA) - The Indonesian Health Ministry on August 13 confirmed the deaths of a woman and her daughter in Bali as a results of bird flu, bringing the country's total death toll from the disease to 83.

These were the first human deaths from bird flu on the resort island, where the H5N1 virus was identified more than a year ago.

The 29-year-old woman died on August 12 and her five-year-old daughter on August 3, Bayu Krisnamurti, head of the national commission for bird flu, said.

Laboratory tests provided by the Eikman Institute and the Health Ministry confirmed the presence of H5N1 in both cases, Bayu told reporters.

2007-07-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Baxter says trial on new flu shot promising

Baxter International Inc., working to modernize the production of influenza vaccines, this morning said its seasonal flu product is showing "strong antibody responses and good tolerability" in an early stage clinical trial in humans.

Although Baxter is still several years from winning approval of the product, the study shows Baxter's reformulated seasonal flu vaccine is tolerable. In late 2004, Baxter had to suspend final-stage human sudy of its seasonal flu vaccine because it was causing fevers in some patients.

The Deerfield-based medical product giant is trying to develop a flu vaccine produced with cell tissues, which is a method that would allow manufacturers to quickly brew vaccine by the vat and likely eliminate shortages like the one that rattle U.S. consumers and health-care providers from time to time.
The cell-based approach is a sharp contrast to the tedious, 1940s method still used today that involves hand-processing millions of chicken eggs in labs. For each dosers shine a light through the shell of an egg to find the fluid surrounding an embryo, inject a strain of the flu virus and let it incubate for several months.

The current method is a long months-long process fraught with risk, while cell-based vaccines are more consistent and could be produced in as little as nine to 12 weeks.

In the latest clinical trial, Baxter said more than 900 patients were studied. Baxter said the preliminary data show its cell-based seasonal influenza vaccine's "tolerability profile" to be similar to egg-based seasonal flu vaccines on the market. There were, however, some side effects that included headaches and some injection site reactions, Baxter said.

Baxter is building momentum for its vaccines business. The company is also in the final stages of testing for a vaccine against strains of the Avian influenza, also known as the bird flu and is working with governments around the world interested in stockpiling the product in the event of a pandemic outbreak. Chicago Tribune

2007-07-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

GlaxoSmithKline ready to work with Japanese drugmakers on bird flu vaccine

TOKYO: GlaxoSmithKline PLC is ready to work with Japanese pharmaceutical companies if the Japanese government agrees to stockpile the company's pre-pandemic vaccine for bird flu, the head of the company's vaccine business said Wednesday.

"We are in contact with all the local vaccine manufacturers" and the Japanese government to discuss the need to prepare for a possible bird flu outbreak among humans, said Jean Stephenne, president of GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals at a news conference in Tokyo.

Britain-based GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world's largest makers of vaccines and is calling on governments to stockpile pre-pandemic influenza vaccine to deal with outbreaks in their early stages.

If a bird flu pandemic hits, Japanese companies could manufacture vaccines using GlaxoSmithKline technology, while its adjuvant system could be applied to existing vaccines.

GlaxoSmithKline's adjuvant system can reduce the dosage from a vaccine for protection and assists in providing protection against similar strains of a virus, improving the chances of controlling mutated versions of the H5N1 bird flu virus, according to Stephenne.

Japan's vaccine market is tightly closed, and major vaccine makers are government-affiliated organizations that don't have very strong funding or research capabilities.

Japan's vaccine development guidelines also differ from those of other major markets and the World Health Organization, making it difficult to import vaccines made overseas. (The Associated Press)

2007-06-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

Veterinarians Could Be First to Get Bird Flu

MONDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) -- Because veterinarians who work with birds are at increased risk of infection with bird flu viruses, they should be included on lists of people with priority access to pandemic flu vaccines and antiviral drugs, U.S. researchers say.

A team at the University of Iowa College of Public Health analyzed blood samples from a group of American veterinarians who worked with chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese or quail.

They found that their blood had increased levels of antibodies against the H5, H6 and H7 avian influenza viruses. These increased levels indicated that the veterinarians had previously been infected by these viruses.

These mild forms of bird flu occasionally circulate among wild and domestic birds in the United States. But experts fear that the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that emerged in Asia may mutate into a form that's easily transmitted between humans and trigger a global pandemic.

"Veterinarians and others with frequent and close contact to infected birds may be among the first to be infected with a pandemic strain of influenza," study author Kendall Myers, a doctoral student in occupational and environmental health, said in a prepared statement.

"They have the potential to spread the illness to their families and communities. Because of this, we suggest that veterinarians should be considered for inclusion on priority access lists for pandemic influenza vaccines and antivirals," Myers said.

The study is published in the July 1 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

2007-05-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

WHO reaches bird flu vaccine deal

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- The U.N. health agency Tuesday reached a preliminary agreement Tuesday seeking to ensure all countries share their H5N1 virus samples with the World Health Organization and that poor countries get a portion of future pandemic flu vaccines.

The draft resolution, which is expected to be formally adopted by the World Health Assembly on Wednesday, says that the agency will work out rules to guarantee "timely sharing of viruses" between affected countries and WHO, and ensure "fair and equitable distribution of pandemic influenza vaccines at affordable prices in the event of a pandemic."

The text, the result of strenuous negotiations between WHO member states, is written in very general terms without defining what a fair distribution of vaccines or timely sample sharing actually means. It also does not specify the details surrounding the formation of a pandemic flu vaccine stockpile, or how the stockpile would be distributed.

The discussion on virus sample sharing was among the predominant subjects at WHO's annual meeting against the backdrop of an ongoing battle with Indonesia over H5N1 virus samples.

Several experimental pre-pandemic vaccines based on H5N1 exist, but as the virus continues to mutate, scientists need to match the latest circulating strains to that in the vaccine, to ensure that the vaccines would work.

Indonesia, China have shown reluctance in sharing

Indonesia has not shared any bird flu samples since last December, arguing that the pharmaceutical companies that could develop vaccines would make them too expensive for its population.

Though Indonesia's health minister last week announced that the country had shared three viruses with a WHO-accredited laboratory in Japan, it is uncertain whether further viruses will be shared.

China has also been reluctant to share samples. No H5N1 viruses have been received from China for nearly a year -- during which time Beijing has reported several human bird flu cases. China is preparing five virus samples to share with WHO, but it is unknown when they will actually be sent, according to WHO.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan last week harshly criticized countries that do not share their H5N1 virus samples, accusing them of crippling the world in the fight against a possible flu pandemic.

An Indonesian-led draft proposal by developing countries had asked WHO to give H5N1 virus samples to vaccine manufactures only with the consent of the donor country.

But the resolution passed by Committee A today said that "in times of public health emergencies of international concern," manufacturers should be given "full access" to viruses from WHO. Although the text falls short of defining what constitutes a public health emergency, WHO officials said it would apply in the case of a flu pandemic.

Keeping the resolution rather vague, much work remains to be done by a WHO working group that is supposed to formulate the terms and conditions for virus and vaccine sharing.

2007-05-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Bird flu kills 5-year-old Indonesian girl

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A 5-year-old Indonesian girl from Central Java province has died of bird flu, a health ministry official said on Wednesday.

The girl from Wonogiri died last Thursday after being hospitalized on May 17 suffering from fever and respiratory problems, said Suharda Ningrum of the ministry’s bird flu center.

Authorities were still investigating the case, but at least 20 chickens had died suddenly near her home, the official said.

In Vietnam, a man infected with bird flu has been admitted to a hospital in Hanoi, becoming the first confirmed human case since November 2005, the state-run Tien Phong newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Tests confirmed the 30-year-old man was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus. The man comes from Vinh Phuc province near the capital, the newspaper said.

Officials and doctors at the Hanoi hospital could not be reached for comment. (Reuters)

2007-04-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

U.S. Approves Bird Flu Vaccine

U.S. regulators Tuesday approved the first vaccine against bird flu, which is aimed at protecting people from a pandemic. The government plans to buy enough doses of the Sanofi Aventis product to immunize 20 million people in the event of a global outbreak triggered by H5N1, the avian virus now causing a pandemic in birds.

The vaccine will not be available commercially but will be added to the government's stockpile of emergency supplies.

"The threat of an influenza pandemic is, at present, one of the most significant public health issues our nation and world faces," Andrew von Eschenbach, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said in a statement. "The approval of this vaccine is an important step forward in our protection against a pandemic."

H5N1 has infected more than 300 people since 2003, and more than half of them have died. H5N1 was first identified in Hong Kong 10 years ago.

Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

2007-04-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

$26 million NIH contract to establish new flu/bird flu Center of Excellence

A research team at the University of Rochester Medical Center has been awarded $26 million to establish a research center with the goal of making seasonal influenza and future influenza pandemics less deadly.

The seven-year contract, announced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will create the New York Influenza Center of Excellence (NYICE), a collaboration of the University of Rochester, Cornell University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and community partners.

NYICE will be one of six centers nationally that together will receive approximately $138 million in new flu research funding over seven years.

The flu pandemic of 1918 ki lled more than 50 million people worldwide. Despite new vaccine technologies developed since then, flu remains the most common cause of vaccine-preventable de ath in the United States, causing 36,000 de aths annually and up to 200,000 hospital stays. In addition, the H5N1 subtype of avian flu viruses ("bird flu") continues to spread with migrating waterfowl, increasing the risk of bird-to-human infection and the chance that the virus will become more easily passed from person to person.

Drugs are available to treat influenza – amantadine, rimantadine, zanamivir and oseltamivir – but many flu strains have developed drug-resistant strains. Researchers do not yet know the degree of protection that experimental bird flu vaccines currently under development will provide, and authorities do not yet have the ability to stockpile approved, effective vaccines in advance of an outbreak.

Each of the six new centers will focus on basic research, surveillance studies or both. Teams will breakdown the molecular and environmental factors that influence the transmission and evolution of flu viruses and further study the immune system’s reaction to them. Others will seek to identify strains with pandemic potential, to create new vaccine candidates or to bolster pandemic preparedness. Along with the University of Rochester, recipients of the new contracts are Emory University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University of California at Los Angeles and University of Minnesota at Minneapolis.

"The current strategy of relying on vaccines that match each year’s particular strain imposes severe limitations on our ability to prepare for a pandemic," said John J. Treanor M.D., professor of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "Our goal is to transform our understanding of influenza through intensive and synergistic exploration of the virus, the human host, and the immune system. We hope that this will lead to more effective control of the viruses through a single vaccine that can be effective against many strains," said Treanor, principal investigator for the new center.
(www.spiritindia.com)

2007-03-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

Indonesia Defiant on Refusal to Share Bird Flu Samples

JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 26 — Indonesian health officials remained defiant today at the start of a three-day meeting with the World Health Organization saying Indonesia refused to share its H5N1 bird flu samples with the organization’s researchers unless their country is guaranteed affordable access to vaccines.

Indonesia’s announcement in February that it would not share its samples has been criticized by researchers as a major departure from a 50-year-old worldwide system of free virus sharing, one that would severely limit the ability of the World Health Organization to monitor the ever-changing virus.

But the country has stood firm on the need to change a system that it says keeps life-saving pharmaceuticals out of the reach of poor countries.

“We must work together to change the perverse incentives that have resulted in developing countries being disadvantaged,” the Indonesian health minister, Siti Fadillah Supari, said today in her opening remarks.

Supari said she also urgently wanted assistance for poor nations in developing “domestic vaccine production.”

Indonesia has had the greatest number of human cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Of 281 cases worldwide, 81 were recorded there, and 63 of those were fatal.

David Heymann, assistant director general for communicable diseases at the World Health Organization, said today that he recognized the inequalities in the current virus-sharing system. But he also emphasized the importance of sharing viruses to help protect global health.

“It is critical that all developing countries have access to pandemic vaccines,” Heymann said. “At the same time it is critical that the world share its novel influenza viruses” for risk assessment and the development of vaccines.

Countries now send samples of the virus to research centers accredited by the World Health Organization in the United States, Britain, Japan and Australia. Those centers develop potential vaccines that are freely shared with pharmaceutical companies, which then manufacture vaccines that are often too expensive for most developing nations.

Triono Soendoro, director general of Indonesia’s National Institute of Health, said in an interview that it often takes weeks to send the virus abroad and to receive the resulting research. He said a way must be worked out to allow more research to be done in Indonesia.

Officials said they hoped to reach an initial agreement by Wednesday that would spur Indonesia to resume sharing its samples. Changes in the sharing mechanism is to be discussed in April and May.

Public health officials have long feared that the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which now mainly infects poultry and other birds, could mutate into a form more easily passed between humans, sparking a pandemic. (www.nytimes.com)

2007-03-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Egyptian boy, 2, tests positive for bird flu

By Aziz El-Kaissouni

CAIRO, March 19 (Reuters) - A 2-year-old Egyptian boy has tested positive for bird flu, bringing the number of people who have contracted the disease in the most populous Arab country to 26, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

The ministry identified the boy as Youssef Mohamed Mahmoud and said he was admitted to hospital on Friday in Aswan, the same southern city where a 10-year-old girl tested positive for the disease last week. She has since recovered.

"He's in good condition now because Tamiflu was given within 24 hours after the onset of symptoms," John Jabbour, a World Health Organisation official in Cairo, told Reuters.

Jabbour said there was no apparent link between the two Aswan cases, and the Health Ministry said in a statement that members of the boy's family were under observation.

Since the virus first surfaced in Egyptian poultry in early 2006, 13 Egyptians have died from the disease. Most of those who fell ill were reported to have had contact with sick or dead household birds, primarily in northern Egypt.

Egypt has the largest number of confirmed human cases outside of Asia, and with eight confirmed cases this year is among the hardest-hit countries worldwide for 2007.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's chief veterinary officer Joseph Domenech said on Thursday that Egypt was one of three countries that still do not have sufficient bird flu controls in place.

Health experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from human to human, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions. The virus has killed 169 people worldwide since 2003, according to WHO. (Additional reporting by Alaa Shahine)

2007-03-15T12:41:00.001-07:00

Indonesia refuses to share bird flu samples with WHO without legally binding agreement

(Mar 13, 2007) JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia will not share bird flu samples with the World Health Organization without a legally binding agreement promising the virus won't be used to develop an expensive commercial vaccine, the health minister said Tuesday.

Siti Fadilah Supari, digging her heels in following a weekslong standoff with the global body, said a letter of guarantee from WHO's director general Margaret Chan late last month was not good enough.

"We will not share the virus before there is a Material Transfer Agreement,'' she told reporters, adding that she hoped one would be drafted during a bird flu meeting in Jakarta in late March between Asia Pacific health leaders and WHO.

Several countries are developing vaccines to protect against H5N1, the bird flu virus strain blamed for 167 human deaths worldwide - more than a third of them in Indonesia.

The virus remains mainly an animal disease, but experts fear it may mutate into a form that easily spreads between humans, potentially killing millions.

Indonesia is worried that large drug companies will use its bird flu samples, sent to WHO affiliated laboratories to confirm human infections, to make vaccines that will ultimately be unaffordable for developing nations.

Chan told Supari in a Feb. 28 letter seen by The Associated Press that WHO would use Indonesia's strain of the virus "for public health risk assessment purposes only.''-AP

2007-03-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

China denies being source of bird flu virus

BEIJING - China’s southern Guangdong province is not the source of the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus as claimed in a report published in the United States this week, a major state-run Chinese newspaper said on Wednesday.

“The findings, which say Guangdong is the source of the multiple avian flu virus strains spreading both regionally and internationally, are the wrong conclusion to the evidence and lack credibility,” the China Daily quoted He Xia, a Guangdong agricultural official, as saying.

It did not elaborate.

The team at the University of California Irvine reported that Guangdong appeared also to be the source of renewed waves of the H5N1 strain, which has killed or forced the destruction of hundreds of millions of birds.

The researchers looked at samples of the virus taken from across China and as far west as Russia.

The researchers said China’s northwest Qinghai province was another source of bird flu’s spread.

Since 2003, H5N1 has spread to more than 50 countries as far away from China as Nigeria and Britain. The real fear is that the virus could mutate into a form that can easily pass from person to person, sparking a pandemic.

So far it has infected 277 people and killed 167, according to the World Health Organisation.

A woman farmer in southeast Fujian province was last week confirmed as China’s 23rd human case of bird flu.

China, with the world’s largest poultry population and millions of backyard birds roaming free, is seen as key to the fight against bird flu.

Tibet has recorded China’s latest outbreak of the disease in birds, the Ministry of Agriculture said on its Web site (agri.gov.cn) on Wednesday.

2007-03-04T20:12:00.000-08:00

Stockpiling bird flu vaccine could help poor countries

By Margie Mason

Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Building a stockpile of bird flu vaccine would help ensure poor countries don't lose out if a virus starts killing people worldwide, the World Health Organization's top flu official said Friday.

Up to 500 million doses of vaccine can now be produced, far short of the amount needed if people begin falling ill from bird flu en masse. Indonesia and other developing countries in Asia fear the limited supply of vaccine would be out of reach for them, even though they provided the viruses to make it.

A so-called virtual stockpile, which can be built from countries that agree to donate a portion of their vaccine, could guarantee some vaccine would be equitably distributed within the developing world in the event of a pandemic, Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top flu official, told The Associated Press.

A long-term goal would be for poor countries to receive enough technology and training to produce vaccines. (AP)

2007-02-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

Egyptian child recovers from bird flu - agency

CAIRO, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A five-year-old Egyptian boy who tested positive for bird flu has recovered, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported on Saturday.

Mohamed Ahmed Suleiman recovered after treatment with frontline antiviral Tamiflu and was allowed to go home, MENA quoted Yusri Ragab, director of the Cairo hospital where the child was treated as saying.

Suleiman was the 22nd case to test positive for the H5N1 virus in Egypt, which has the largest bird flu cluster outside Asia. Of the 22 cases, 13 have died.

Most people infected in Egypt had been in contact with live birds kept at home. Bird flu initially caused panic across the country and did extensive damage to the poultry industry, although the sector has largely recovered.

World Health Organisation officials have said a delay in reporting symptoms in Egypt, where many people keep poultry at home, made the virus harder to fight.

2007-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

Bird flu outbreaks confirmed in Afghanistan flocks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two outbreaks of bird flu in small flocks in Afghanistan have been identified as the dangerous H5N1 strain, world animal health officials said on Friday.

The World Animal Health Organisation or OIE said it had confirmed H5N1 in a flock of backyard poultry in Nangarhar province and in turkeys in Kunar province.

Just last Sunday, Afghanistan banned poultry imports to prevent the spread of the feared virus, which forced the destruction of a flock of turkeys in Britain and killed birds at a zoo in Pakistan.

The H5N1 strain was found in poultry in at least four Afghan provinces last year, leading to the killing of thousands of birds, but there were no human deaths.

Afghanistan imports a large amount of poultry, mostly from Pakistan. The ban imposed last week also applies to other countries hit by H5N1, including Britain, Turkey and Indonesia.

The country lies at the junction of Central and South Asia and is on the migration route for several species of wild birds.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that jumps easily between people and start a global flu pandemic. Although only 274 people are known to have been infected so far worldwide, 167 have died.

2007-02-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

Progress in producing vaccine against human bird flu: WHO

(Feb 17) The United Nations health agency has reported "encouraging progress" in producing vaccine against human bird flu which, in worst case scenario, could mutate to cause pandemic with the potential of killing millions.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) said the bad news is that the world does not have the capacity to meet potential global demand even as some independent experts said that the efficacy of the vaccine in humans is yet to be fully demonstrated.

The agency is negotiating with 16 manufacturers in ten country developing prototype of the vaccine against H5N1 virus, five of whom are developing focusing on other strains including H9N2, H5N2 and H5N3.

The results presented at just concluded experts meeting, WHO said, have "convincingly demonstrated" that vaccines can bring about a potentially protective immune response against strains of H5N1 virus found in a variety of geographical locations, WHO said.

Some of the vaccines, it said, work with low doses of antigen, which means that significantly more vaccine doses can be available in case of a pandemic.

But it warned that in spite of the encouraging progress, the world still lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet potential global pandemic influenza vaccine demand as current capacity is estimated at less than 400 million doses per year of trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine. (hindustantimes.com)

2007-02-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

Matthews could be prosecuted over hygiene at bird flu factory

Bernard Matthews could face prosecution over sloppy biosecurity at the Holton factory in Suffolk where the avian flu virus infected turkey chicks and 160,000 birds had to be destroyed.

Unprotected waste, including scraps of dead turkey, was left outside the processing plant in breach of EU animal byproduct disposal laws.

Scientific experts believe that infection may have spread from discarded carcasses, feathers or other detritus by scavenging gulls, rats or mice and been carried to the turkey-rearing part of the premises.

The poor hygiene conditions on the premises reported in The Times last week were described in a preliminary veterinary report from the Government yesterday.

A spokeswoman at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed that investigations were continuing with a view to possible prosecution.

Bernard Matthews — which has a turnover of £400 million a year — and its trade links with Hungary remain a central focus of the investigation.

The unresolved mystery is how the lethal H5N1 virus, an almost identical strain to the infection found in geese in the Csongrad county of Hungary, arrived in Holton, near Hales-worth. Experts said that the virus match was 99.96 per cent similar.

Experts at the Veterinary Laboratory Agency are testing for the virus in meat products held in cold storage at the Holton plant. The tests can take five to ten days and are not conclusive.

So far, state vets, inspectors for the Food Standards Agency and the Meat Hygiene Service have been unable to find any specific link between the two outbreaks, but government experts believe that the poultry imports are the “most plausible” cause of the Bernard Matthews outbreak.

Hungarian officials have started a trawl through the export papers that accompanied consignments of turkey carcasses from Bernard Matthews’ subsidiary, SaGa Foods in Sarkow, and from Gallfood in Keskemet, a plant near the infected Hungarian zone, to Suffolk between January 1 and February 1.

The authorities are also looking for possible evidence of any illicit trade, or for shoddy biosecurity that allowed infected bird faeces to travel to Britain on a lorry, a boot, a wheel arch, packaging or tool — which could have led to the spread of the virus in Suffolk.

Experts at the European Commission are to assist Britain and Hungary in determining the route of the avian flu strain that has killed at least 166 people worldwide since 2003 — when it first appeared in Asian poultry.

Raw meat that was sent to Hungary from Bernard Matthews since the bird flu was confirmed on February 3 is also to be tested for the virus. The meat had been kept in cold storage and was not being allowed into the food chain until further checks were made, Hungarian sources said yesterday.

Despite the mystery over the virus transmission and biosecurity lapses on the farm, Bernard Matthews has been given approval to resume exports to Hungary. The company, however, has decided to continue its voluntary suspension of trade with Hungary.

Problems with gulls feeding from open waste bins was first raised with Bernard Matthews management last year by its own firm of pest controllers. They had also identified holes and openings in rearing sheds that could easily allow a bird or a rodent to mix with chicks and for water or bird droppings to get into enclosed units.

Meat Hygiene Service records also reveal that inspectors issued warnings about a range of “deficiencies and noncompliance”. Though not specified, they are also related to possible breaches of animal byproduct regulations.

Bernard Matthews was served another warning last month about problems on the site. Pest control reports on January 10 and January 24 noted that gulls were carrying meat scraps half a kilometre away and then roosting on the top of the farm sheds. Poly-thene bags containing meat products and residual liquids were also thrown into the open bins and were easily blown across the site. Birds or rats may also have infected wood shavings that are stored outdoors and used to refresh bedding inside the sheds.

The virus may also have been introduced into sheds on contaminated footwear or clothing. After the disease was confirmed in turkeys in one shed it is possible that staff may have spread the disease to three other sheds on the site.

This catalogue of biosecurity failures is in stark contrast to the glowing appraisal of the company by Bernard Matthews himself. Mr Matthews spoke this week about his pride in his business, which he said had always abided by EU rules.

He denied that the company had acted evasively since the outbreak and said: “There has been absolutely no cover-up at our end. I’ve been upset about allegations that we may have withheld information. That is completely untrue.”

In a further statement the company welcomed the government report, saying it showed that the company had always acted legally.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat rural affairs spokesman, said: “This report high-lights serious biosecurity lapses at Bernard Matthews’ plant in Suffolk. Allowing wild birds to feed on raw poultry meat left in the open is highly irresponsible as it could lead to widespread contamination. The impression is still of an organisation in denial about the seriousness of events at its plant.”

Conservation experts are waiting to see whether the virus has spread into wild birds. (timesonline.co.uk)

2007-02-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

Egypt reports 22nd human bird flu case

(Feb 17) A five-year-old Egyptian boy from the Nile Delta region was tested positive to the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the number of bird flu human cases to 22 in this populous Arab nation, the official news agency MENA reported on Friday.

The latest case came from Al-Sharqiya governorate, some 65 km north of Cairo, and he was under treatment, said Health Ministry spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shaheen, without giving more details.

Earlier in the day, the ministry said a 37-year-old woman has died of the deadly virus, bringing the death toll of the infectious disease to 13 in Egypt.

The woman was identified as Nadia Mohammed Abdel-Hafez and she died on Thursday evening, said the ministry.

Abdel-Hafez came from Fayoum, a countryside town located some 85 km south of Cairo. She checked into Fayoum's fever hospital on Feb. 12 after suffering from high temperature and pneumonia, according to the ministry.

The ministry announced that the woman was tested positive to the deadly H5N1 virus on Wednesday.

Egypt found the first bird flu case in dead poultry on Feb. 17, 2006 and then the virus spread to 20 of the country's 26 governorates.

The populous Arab country reported first human bird flu case on March 18 of 2006.

Before the latest case of the five-year-old boy, 21 human cases of the disease have been reported in Egypt, of which 13 have died of the fatal virus and the other eight recovered.

2007-02-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

Some People May Be Immune to Bird Flu, Mouse Study Suggests

By John Lauerman

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Some people already may have at least partial protection to the deadly bird flu spreading in Asia, possibly because of getting seasonal flu shots, scientists said today.

The conclusions, published online today by researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, are based on a study of mice that were protected against the deadly virus after gaining immune proteins found in many people.

The findings open a window into how the body gains immunity against influenza, a highly contagious virus that kills about 36,000 Americans annually and causes deadly pandemics a few times each century. It also might give an unexpected boost to the use of seasonal flu shots, made by Sanofi-Aventis SA and other companies, for the strains that spread around the world annually.

``This makes seasonal immunization more important because it might provide some partial protection,'' said William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist in Nashville, Tennessee, who didn't participate in the study. The study may become ``an additional argument to get people to line up and get immunized either by inoculation or nasal spray.''

Countries and companies have stepped up their anti-influenza efforts as a deadly bird flu has spread through Asia, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe. Scientists say the disease might kill millions if it becomes contagious in people.

H, N Proteins

Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Novartis AG and other drugmakers design new vaccines annually to find and destroy two constantly changing proteins, called ``H'' and ``N'' for short, on the surface of the flu virus. Vaccine specialists have long considered the more important of these two to be hemagglutinin, the ``H'' protein that attaches the virus to the surface of human cells, Schaffner said.

The St. Jude's research team, led by virologist Richard Webby, focused on immunity to the other surface protein, called ``N,'' or neuraminidase. Similar versions of the neuraminidase, known as ``N1,'' sit on the outside of both H5N1 bird flu and another influenza strain, called H1N1, that has been circulating among people for decades.

Webby's group wanted to see if immunity to the N in H1N1 would also protect against the deadly H5N1 bird flu. About half of animals with genes programmed to give immunity to H1N1's ``N'' protein survived H5N1 infection; every animal in a comparison group died.

``It's very weak protection,'' Webby said, ``but I was surprised we saw any protection at all because of the differences in the neuraminidase proteins.''

Descendants of H1N1

The most deadly pandemic known in history, the 1918 Spanish flu that killed about 50 million people worldwide, was caused by a virus in the H1N1 family.

Since then, descendants of that virus have circulated widely in people, and vaccines against different versions of H1N1 are included in seasonal vaccines. Mice who were given human serum, a blood component that contains immune cells, also gained some protection against H5N1.

Statistics released last week by the World Health Organization showed that 90 percent of people infected with H5N1 since 2003 are less than 40 years old. At least 272 people have been sickened by the virus, and 166 of them have died, WHO said Feb. 6.

The findings, published today in the Public Library of Science, Medicine, may explain why H5N1 bird flu infections have been so rare, particularly in older people, researchers said. Years of exposure to annual outbreaks and vaccines may have given people antibodies that protect against the N1 protein.

``This could be a matter of considerable relief,'' said David Fedson, a former vaccine developer for Aventis Pasteur, a unit of Paris-based drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA.

Mice, Ferrets, Humans

Still, results in mice don't always predict what will happen in humans, Fedson and other scientists said. Ferrets are thought to mimic more closely the human response to influenza and vaccines, said Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan School of Public Health epidemiologist.

``The proof of the pudding is going to be in whether this can be replicated in other testing systems,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``We need to see if it works in other animals like ferrets.''

The real answer won't be known until when and if H5N1 begins spreading in people, Fedson said.

``To think that we know from lab tests all we need to know about this virus would be risky,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net .

2007-02-06T08:08:00.000-08:00

Nigerian death highlights West African bird flu risks

By Alistair Thomson

DAKAR (Reuters) - The death of a young Nigerian woman from bird flu has focused attention on the risk of such human infections in West Africa, where social habits and weak health and veterinary services make the region vulnerable, experts say.

The death, confirmed by the World Health Organization over the weekend, comes a year after Nigeria first found the highly pathogenic H5N1 variety of bird flu in poultry.

"Until a human case appeared, I think there was an impression the linkage with human beings was very remote, so this has come close to home and people are now realizing the seriousness," said Simeon Ehui, the World Bank economist in Nigeria who is coordinating the bank's bird flu response there.

"To the credit of Nigeria, because of the workshops and training of the government, there was a quick detection of that human case, because that person could just have died and the illness could have remained (hidden)," Ehui said.

"Maybe other people have died -- nobody knows," he said.

Since highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu was first detected in Africa, experts have warned that weak human and animal health services there could allow the disease to go undetected -- giving it more chance to mutate into a form that could pass between humans and trigger a pandemic killing millions.

"It doesn't alter the risk, the genetic change of the virus can happen anywhere. I don't think Lagos is any more likely (than elsewhere, but) the longer the virus is in the environment and is present, the greater the risk," said Francois Le Gall, head of the World Bank's Africa bird flu response unit.

So far Nigeria has got off lightly compared to hard-hit Asian countries, or Egypt in North Africa, which reported its 12th bird flu death on Monday.

For many experts, the surprise is not the first death from bird flu in Nigeria, but how long it has been avoided.

"Given the reliance on poultry and close contact between people and domestic poultry in the country, many people could have been exposed to the virus," the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a briefing paper.

This mimics the situation seen in some countries in South East Asia that have reported cases concurrently in poultry and humans. Thus it has almost been surprising that individual human cases have not occurred previously in Nigeria," it said.

Joseph Domenech, chief veterinarian for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, saw cause for hope.

"It's something we were expecting to happen any time.

"Generally speaking, the surveillance in Africa is not as good as it could be ... (but) if there are more outbreaks being declared, it's also because programs are working: there is better transparency, communications and reporting," he said.

Foreign donors meeting in Mali in December pledged nearly $500 million in extra funds to fight bird flu, mostly for Africa. But money alone is not enough.

The World Bank's Ehui said public perceptions toward bird flu were crucial to identifying and eradicating infections fast.

"In the neighboring countries they think of it (human infection) as a distant possibility. In my own country, the Ivory Coast, they have even made a song and dance out of it," he said, referring to a dance that took Ivory Coast's nightclubs by storm last year, imitating a chicken in its death throes.

2007-02-06T08:05:00.000-08:00

Two more Indonesians have bird flu, new Pakistan case

By Achmad Sukarsono

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Two more Indonesians were confirmed to have bird flu on Tuesday and Pakistan reported its first case in a year after finding the deadly virus in a small flock of chickens near the capital Islamabad.

Concern has grown since the H5N1 virus flared again in Asia in recent months, spreading through poultry flocks in South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

A chicken is seen at a poultry shop in Jakarta February 5, 2007. Two more Indonesians were confirmed to have bird flu on Tuesday and Pakistan reported its first case in a year after finding the deadly virus in a small flock of chickens near the capital Islamabad. (REUTERS/Crack Palinggi)

The H5N1 virus has spread into the Middle East, Africa and Europe since it reemerged in Asia in 2003 and outbreaks have now been detected in birds in around 50 countries.

On Monday, Britain killed 160,000 turkeys following the discovery of bird flu on a turkey farm in eastern England. South Korea and Hong Kong on Tuesday joined Japan and Russia in banning British poultry.

In Indonesia, which has the highest human bird flu death toll, the latest human case was a girl from an upscale Jakarta neighbourhood who had caught a wild bird which died two days later, Joko Suyono of the health ministry's bird flu centre said.

The other was a West Java man who lived in an area where many poultry had died.

Indonesia, where many people keep chickens in their backyards, has had 63 human deaths from the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, six of them this year.

The government has stepped up efforts to stamp out the virus which is endemic in poultry in most of the provinces in the country of 17,000 islands where most bird flu victims have caught the disease from contact with infected fowl.

"CONTAINED"

In Pakistan, Mohammad Afzal, Livestock Commissioner at the Ministry of Agriculture, said all the chickens in the flock of about 40 birds at a house in Rawalpindi, a city adjoining Islamabad, had died or been culled as a result of H5N1.

"It has been contained and there is no danger of the spread of this virus because there are no poultry farms near this house," he told Reuters.

Pakistan's first reported cases of H5N1 bird flu were found in chickens in February last year in North West Frontier Province. In all, about 40,000 chickens were culled. There have been no human cases in Pakistan.

The two new Indonesian cases came as Jakarta said it had stopped sharing human genetic samples of the most deadly strain of bird flu with foreign laboratories because it wanted to keep control of the intellectual property rights of the H5N1 strain.

"We can't share samples for free. There should be rules of the game for it," said the health ministry's spokeswoman, Lily Sulistyowati.

"Just imagine they could research, use and patent the Indonesia strain. We can't give the samples but we can share data in the gene bank."

Sulistyowati said Indonesia would sign a Memorandum of Understanding with U.S. medical products maker Baxter International on Wednesday to collaborate on making a human bird flu vaccine.

"The vaccine is to prevent poultry-to-human infection. That's what we need for the current situation and not for the future pandemic," she said.

Baxter confirmed it expected to conclude a "framework for future collaboration" with Indonesia this week, but said it would still abide by World Health Organisation rules on sharing virus samples, the Financial Times newspaper said.

No comment was immediately available from Baxter.

(Additional reporting by Mita Valina Liem in JAKARTA, Kang Shinye in Seoul and Nao Nakanishi in HONG KONG)

2007-01-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

Taiwan eyes mass production of bird flu vaccines in 2008

TAIPEI - A Taiwanese research team said Monday it had produced a bird flu vaccine that had passed initial animal tests.

‘The vaccine against the H5N1 strain has passed tests on mice,’ said Pele Chuang, the head of a 25-member team at the National Health Research Institute.

The H5N1 bird flu strain is potentially deadly to humans.

The vaccine, using cell culture technology, needs validation by the health ministry before human tests are undertaken.

They are due to be completed before the end of June next year.

If all goes to plan, mass production of the vaccines -- running up to a million doses a year -- would begin late 2008, Chuang said.

‘This is a milestone considering when we started last year, we started from scratch, and now we have developed the capability to produce vaccines,’ he said.

The research project has cost the government some 40 million Taiwan dollars (1.22 million US). Institute officials said the ability to produce indigenous vaccines could be crucial in the event of an outbreak.

Bird flu has killed more than 160 people worldwide since late 2003 and there are fears it could mutate and trigger a deadly human flu pandemic.

A less virulent H7N3 strain was twice detected in samples of bird droppings in Taiwan in 2005 and again in January 2006.

In 2003, Taiwan slaughtered 467,000 birds, mostly chickens, after the H5N2 strain was discovered on chicken farms on the offshore island of Kinmen. (khaleejtimes.com)

2007-01-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

EU lab confirms Hungary bird flu

The European Union has confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found on a farm in Hungary.

A spokesman said tests at the EU's approved laboratory in Weybridge, south of London, had confirmed the results announced by Hungary last week.

A flock of 3,000 geese on the infected farm near Szentes in southern Hungary has been destroyed.

It is the EU's first case of bird flu for about six months.

Hungary alerted the EU last week after it detected the outbreak.

The virus first appeared in the country in February last year in wild geese, swans and domestic poultry.

The current tests were carried out after an abnormally high mortality rate was reported in the flock of geese.

Croatia reacted by immediately banning poultry imports from Hungary.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is deadly to humans and has killed more than 150 people, mostly in Asia, since it emerged in late 2003.

Scientists fear it could combine with a human flu virus to mutate into a disease similar to the Spanish flu that killed millions of people after World War I. (BBC news)

2007-01-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

Boy's death in Azerbaijan not from bird flu

BAKU, January 29 (RIA Novosti) - A boy who died Sunday morning of what was initially suspected as the H1N5 strain of bird flu succumbed instead to bilateral pneumonia, Azerbaijan's health officials said Monday.

Azhdar Askerov, 14, was hospitalized in the capital, Baku, Wednesday with a pulmonary infection thought to be bird flu. Last year, three of his relatives died of the disease.

The Health Ministry official said Azerbaijani experts detected no bird flu virus in Askerov's blood, which has now been sent to the World Health Organization's laboratory in London for further tests. The results are expected later this week, Azerbaijan's APA news agency said.

Viktor Gasimov, head of the epidemiological department in the ministry, told APA that the H5N1 virus could not have survived in the boy's home village of Dayikend, in the Salyansky Region, where it broke out last spring, killing five people.

"The virus can only survive for 40 days," he said. "It cannot withstand the heat, and could not have lived through the summer." (en.rian.ru)

2007-01-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

Japan says bird flu outbreak from H5N1 strain

OKYO (Reuters) - An outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm in southwestern Japan was caused by the H5N1 strain of the virus, farm ministry officials said on Saturday, confirming the second such case in Japan this month.

There have been no reported cases of human infection from the virus in Japan.

Local officials were in the process of culling all 50,000 birds on the farm after 3,200 of them died of the disease. Another 50,000 at an adjacent farm will also be slaughtered as a precautionary measure, a local official said.

Initial tests had shown the chickens on the farm in Miyazaki prefecture were infected with an H5 subtype of bird flu virus, but further testing had been needed to determine whether it was the feared H5N1 strain.

The H5N1 strain is known to have killed 164 worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia. Some 200 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled to prevent its spread.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form which passes easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.

Later on Saturday, the Japanese Agriculture Ministry said that an outbreak of bird flu was suspected on a farm in Okayama prefecture in western Japan.

Seventeen birds have died on the farm in Takahashi, Okayama, since Friday, an Agriculture Ministry official said. An official at Okayama prefecture said the farm had 12,000 chickens.

"We are doing more detailed tests, and nothing is determined until then," the Agriculture Ministry official said.

Earlier this month, Japan suffered its first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in poultry in more than three years, also in Miyazaki, the country's biggest poultry producing region.

Cases of the virus have flared up across Asia in recent weeks, as in previous winters, taking the death toll in Indonesia to 63, the country hardest hit in terms of fatalities.

A 14-year-old boy in Azerbaijan has been sent to hospital as a suspected case, while Vietnam is trying to control the spread of the disease among birds in the Mekong Delta.

The first outbreak of bird flu in the European Union this year was confirmed on Wednesday after the H5N1 strain was detected in geese in Hungary.

2007-01-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

Indonesia asks troops to fight bird flu

Indonesia has called on the military to help fight bird flu, a day after a young girl became the country's sixth victim this month.

In Azerbaijan, officials feared a return of the H5N1 bird flu virus after a 14-year-old boy was sent to hospital as a suspected case.

Adding to global worries, Japanese officials were awaiting test results to confirm if the virus had killed poultry at a farm in the south, while Vietnam is trying to control the disease spreading among birds in the Mekong Delta.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the military chief to deploy soldiers to help fight the disease, Cabinet Secretary Sudi Silalahi told reporters.

"He called on governors, regents, mayors to be more active in leading efforts to fight bird flu in affected areas," Silalahi said after ministers held talks with Yudhoyono.

The sense of alarm was highlighted by the country's welfare minister earlier in the day.

"Even though our continued effort is giving some significant progress, we are still on highest alert," Aburizal Bakrie, said at a ceremony to receive 100,000 sets of protective equipment donated by the United States.

Indonesia has the highest bird flu death toll and is stepping up efforts to stamp out the disease after a flare up in cases this year.

"Indonesia is very serious in addressing this threat," Bakrie said a day after a six year-old girl died - Indonesia's 63rd victim of the disease that has killed 164 people globally since 2003.

He said the government had succeeded in containing human infections in nine of the 30 high risk provinces.

The disease, however, remains endemic in fowl in some of the most densely populated parts of Indonesia, including Java.

In Azerbaijan, health authorities said the 14-year-old boy's sister was one of five people who died last year in an outbreak of H5N1 in the former Soviet republic between Turkey and Russia.

A health ministry official said tests by a laboratory in Azerbaijan were negative for bird flu and doctors were awaiting results from a laboratory in London that is endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The first outbreak of bird flu in the European Union this year was confirmed on Wednesday after the Commission said the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain had been detected in geese in Hungary.

EU governments have approved security measures taken by Hungary against the spread of the virus detected in the south-east of the country, saying the outbreak likely stemmed from wild birds. Russia has banned poultry imports from Hungary to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus, the Agriculture Ministry said.

The WHO says bird flu has infected 269 people worldwide since late 2003, not including the latest death in Indonesia. Experts fear the more the virus spreads in birds, the greater the chances it might mutate into a form that causes a flu pandemic in humans. Millions of people could die.

Japan confirmed another case of H5 bird flu at a poultry farm in the south-western prefecture of Miyazaki on Friday, an agriculture ministry official said. Further tests were needed to confirm if the virus was H5N1.

Earlier this month, Japan suffered its first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in poultry in more than three years. No human infections have been reported.

In southern Vietnam, the virus has flared up in seven provinces and a city since last month, but the spread of the disease has slowed in recent days.

Animal health officials said the danger was still very high because authorities were unable to stop farmers letting their ducks roam rice fields to eat spilt grain.

Ducks can carry the H5N1 virus without showing symptoms and the waterfowl has been the main source for outbreaks in the country where 42 people have died of the disease since 2003. Vietnam has not detected any human cases since November 2005. (www.theage.com.au)

2007-01-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

Bird flu strain shows resistance to Tamiflu

Geneva - Two people who died of bird flu in Egypt last month had a strain of the H5N1 virus which has shown "moderate" resistance to the frontline antiviral Tamiflu, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday.

Known as "294S", the mutated strain was first detected in 2005 in a teenage girl in Vietnam who survived, but this is the first evidence of it spreading beyond Asia, it said.

The United Nations agency said the latest cases did not change its recommendation to treat bird flu patients with Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir. Made by Swiss-based Roche, the flu drug is being stockpiled by governments worldwide for use in the event of an influenza pandemic.

"What we've confirmed is that H5N1 viruses isolated from two patients in recent cases in Egypt both showed this so-called 294S change," Keiji Fukuda, co-ordinator for the WHO's global influenza programme, told Reuters.

In a statement confirming the mutation, the WHO said the public health implications of the findings were "limited".

"At this time, there is no indication that oseltamivir resistance is widespread in Egypt or elsewhere," it said.

"WHO is not making any changes in antiviral treatment recommendations for H5N1-infected persons... because the clinical level of resistance of these mutations is not yet well established. Current laboratory testing suggests that the level of reduced susceptibility is moderate," it added.

The mutated strain was found in a 26-year-old Egyptian factory worker and his teenage niece in the Nile Delta province of Gharbia, both of whom died in December along with another female relative, according to Fukuda.

The uncle and niece, who lived in the same house, were given Tamiflu in the second hospital in which they were treated, after the disease was already more developed, he said.

Egypt, which announced on Wednesday it was treating another bird flu patient, has recorded 10 deaths among 19 confirmed human cases - the largest toll outside Asia.

Worldwide, there have been 161 fatalities among 267 known cases since 2003, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

The WHO reaffirmed last May that patients should get Tamiflu as a frontline treatment, but said in certain cases, doctors may consider using it along with amantadine, an older class of effective flu drugs.

Its recommendations, based on a consensus of international experts, also said that zanamivir - marketed as Relenza by GlaxoSmithKline - was a second choice.

Both Tamiflu and Relenza belong to a new drug class called neuraminidase inhibitors and can prevent the virus from infecting cells in the first place. (iol.co.za)

2007-01-18T14:16:00.000-08:00

Australia: Researchers doubtful over deadly bird flu discovery

Researchers from James Cook University are not expecting to find the deadly strain of bird flu when they conduct tests in north Queensland.

Next month, blood samples will be taken from black ducks, whistling ducks and magpie geese to determine the levels of infection.

The state's far north is an entry point for many migratory birds from countries such as Indonesia, where the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found.

Dr Graham Burgess is not expecting to find H5N1, but says it is possible that birds could bring it into the country.

"We've got two potential entry points," he said.

"One is with birds coming to Australia, that's not extremely likely, but it can happen and the other one is humans getting infected and developing a new strain of the disease and then bringing it to Australia.

"That's the one that we're really worried about with H5N1." (abc.net.au)

2007-01-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

Japan burns 12,000 chickens following bird flu outbreak

TOKYO: Local authorities in southwestern Japan began incinerating 12,000 dead chickens on a farm Monday as part of efforts to stop the spread of a recent bird flu outbreak.

"We will proceed by giving the utmost care to safety so as not to cause any fear to residents in the area," Kazuo Kuroiwa, an agriculture official of Miyazaki prefecture, said of the work which was expected to take until early Tuesday.

On Saturday, the government confirmed the outbreak after 3,900 chickens were found dead at the farm in the prefecture, some 900 kilometers (558 miles) southwest of Tokyo.

Agricultural officials of the prefecture culled the remaining 8,100 chickens at the farm on Sunday, and all 12,000 birds there will be incinerated.

It was still not clear if the outbreak involved the H5N1 strain, which is potentially deadly to humans.

Another prefectural official, Hisanori Ogura, said earlier Monday, "So far, we have not received any reports of a spread of the outbreak. Also, there has been no panic among local residents."
The officials put the farm under a massive sanitation program while ordering 11 other poultry farms within a 10-kilometer (six-mile) radius not to move chickens and eggs.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government banned all poultry imports from Japan. Hong Kong, which was the scene of the world's first reported major bird flu outbreak among humans in 1997, imported some 1,800 tonnes of frozen poultry products from Japan from January to September last year.

Japan confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in January 2004. Since then, the nation has seen several more outbreaks of the H5N1 strain, as well as the less serious H5N2 virus.

Health experts have warned that four bird flu deaths in Indonesia and a spate of new poultry outbreaks in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia were signs the virus could make resurgence this northern winter.

Bird flu has killed more than 150 people worldwide since late 2003. There are fears it could mutate and trigger a deadly, global pandemic. (thenews.com.pk)

2007-01-10T08:29:00.000-08:00

China reports farmer contracted and survived H5N1 strain of bird flu

BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese farmer contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu but has recovered, state media said Wednesday, in China's first reported human case of the disease in six months.

The 37-year-old farmer fell ill in December but "fully recovered" and was released from a hospital Saturday, the China News Service and Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Health Ministry.

It was China's first reported human case of bird flu since a farmer died of the disease in July in the far west, becoming the mainland's 14th fatality.

The farmer had poultry in his backyard but Chinese experts were still trying to determine whether he caught the virus from them, said Joanna Brent, a World Health Organization spokeswoman in Beijing.

People who had close contact with the farmer, identified only by the surname Li, were put under medical observation but showed no signs of the disease, CNS and Xinhua said. They said he lived in the eastern city of Tunxi in Anhui province.

Human cases of bird flu have been traced to birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that can pass between people, setting off a pandemic. For now, the virus is difficult for people to catch.

China reacted quickly to the case, notifying the WHO on Tuesday, a day after tests confirmed the Anhui farmer had bird flu, according to Brent.

"It's certainly been a case of very fast and timely reporting on the part of the Chinese government," she said.

China has been criticized in the past for its slow response to health threats such as bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The communist government has created a national monitoring network and ordered local authorities to report disease cases quickly.

Brent praised Chinese authorities for ordering additional tests after a first round came back negative for the virus.

"We think both the way the central government and the provincial government responded were excellent," she said.

The China News Service said authorities in Anhui took disease-control measures but did not give details.

China reported its first human case of bird flu in 2005, while the virus was tearing through Vietnam and Thailand. The government disclosed last year that new tests on the body of a 24-year-old soldier who died in 2003 confirmed that he succumbed to the disease.

China has suffered dozens of bird flu outbreaks in its vast poultry flocks. Authorities have destroyed millions of chickens, ducks and other birds to contain outbreaks on farms.

The Anhui farmer was China's 22nd human case of bird flu.

Out of the previous 21 cases, only one was preceded by an outbreak in poultry, according to Brent.

The H5N1 virus also has been found in migratory birds in China.

Concern about potential outbreaks increases in the winter, when wild birds fly south.

2007-01-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

Report: Japan to stockpile prototype bird flu vaccines for 10 million people

(Jan 3, 2007) TOKYO: Japan plans to buy prototype bird flu vaccine solutions for up to 10 million people, a news report said Wednesday, amid concerns that the country lacks an adequate stockpile of drugs to fight the virus.

The Japanese government will earmark 4.5 billion yen (US$37.9 million; €28.56 million) in its supplementary budget for the fiscal year ending March 31 to build up the stockpile, Kyodo News agency reported, citing unidentified Health Ministry officials.

Four Japanese vaccine makers are expected to complete production of two types of prototype vaccine for 10 million people by around February, Kyodo cited the officials as saying.

Manufacturers cannot produce an actual vaccine until a flu outbreak has occurred, so they are creating a stopgap prototype vaccine based on samples of the H5N1 strain of the virus detected in Vietnam in 2004 and in Indonesia in 2005, Kyodo added.

Health Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment Wednesday evening.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 157 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. There have been no known human deaths in Japan.

So far, the virus still cannot move easily from human to human — but if this changes, experts fear it could lead to a deadly flu pandemic.

Preparing for the worst, Tokyo planned to have enough of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu for 25 million people under a program set up in December 2005. The program, however, set no timetable for reaching that target, government health officials say.

Under the plan, the central government was to stock enough Tamiflu for 10.5 million people, and local governments would have stocks for another 10.5 million people. Stocks available in the market would cover an additional 4 million people.

Stocks, however, are still short of those targets.

The central government had Tamiflu for 7.5 million people and local governments had planned to buy enough for another 5.25 million people by March 2007, Health Ministry officials said in late November. That would cover only about 60 percent of the amount called for under the plan.

The officials did not know whether stocks available on the market had reached the target. (AP)

2006-12-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

South Korea reports fourth bird-flu outbreak in poultry in month

(Dec 22) SEOUL - A highly infectious form of bird flu was discovered in a duck 90 kilometres south of Seoul in the fourth farm in South Korea to be hit with avian influenza in a month, the Agriculture Ministry said Friday.

More tests were required to see whether the latest case at a duck farm in Asan represented an infection with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has proven dangerous to people, a worker in the ministry’s department of animal health said.

About 770,000 birds have already been culled in Iksan, south of Asan, after H5N1 infections were discovered at two poultry operations there. Another 365,000 birds were killed nearby in Gimje, also because of an H5N1 outbreak.

About 23,000 poultry are also to be killed in a 3-kilometre radius from the affected Asan farm. The Agriculture Ministry said bird flu also broke out on the duck farm in February 2004.

According to the UN’s World Health Organization, 258 people have been infected with H5N1 in 10 countries in Asia and Africa since late 2003. Of them, 154 have died.

No human cases of the disease have been reported in South Korea, but from 2003 to 2004, a bird-flu outbreak among poultry there led to the killing of 5.3 million birds in an effort to stop the spread of the disease, which is virulent among poultry.

It’s transmission to people is more difficult, and most human patients have contracted the disease through close contact with infected birds. Health experts fear, however, that the virus could mutate into a form that could spread from human to human.

2006-12-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

Wildlife crews test for bird flu strains in Utah

(Dec 12) BRIGHAM CITY - A state biologist takes a fecal sample from a tundra swan and sends it to a lab.

It is a small but significant step to determine whether bird flu has reached Utah.

There is no sign that the deadly Asian strain has hit U.S. soil, but the possibility is keeping wildlife officials in Utah on the perch.

The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said it has samples from 1,180 birds and hopes to have 120 more when the duck-hunting season ends Jan. 20.

The state is taking fecal samples from ducks shot at Farmington Bay and Migratory Bird Refuge. They include tundra swans, northern pintails, northern shovelers and green-winged teal.

There could be a chance that the birds nested on Alaska's northern coast and had contact with a migratory Asian bird that nested nearby in Russia.

''It's a long shot for one of our birds to actually come in contact with the birds from Asia, but, hey, who knows?'' said Spencer Atkinson, a state biologist.

At least 154 people have been killed by the H5N1 virus since it turned up in Asia in 2003. The disease has spread to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Most human cases have been traced to people who work on large poultry farms.

Except for a steady stream of human cases in Indonesia, the current flu epicenter, the past year's worries about a catastrophic global outbreak largely disappeared.

Some experts suspect poultry vaccination has complicated detection. Vaccination reduces the amount of virus circulating, but low levels of the virus may still be causing outbreaks - without the obvious signs of dying birds.

It might be seasonal in part. Bird flu tends to be most active in the colder months, as the virus survives longer at low temperatures.

''Many of us are holding our breath to see what happens in the winter,'' said Malik Peiris, a microbiology professor at Hong Kong University. ''H5N1 spread very rapidly last year,'' Peiris said. ''So the question is, was that a one-off incident?''

The virus could mutate into a pandemic strain, said Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the World Health Organization's global influenza program, but it could also go the other direction, becoming less dangerous for humans. (www.sltrib.com)

2006-12-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

S.Korea says third bird flu case confirmed

(Dec 11) SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's agriculture ministry said on Monday it had found a third case of highly pathogenic bird flu in North Cholla province south of Seoul.

Last month South Korea confirmed its first two outbreaks of the H5N1 strain in about three years, saying the virus had been found at two poultry farms close to each other in North Cholla province.

The third case was discovered at a quail farm in the same province about 170 km south from Seoul, some 18 km from the original outbreak, according to the ministry.

"The case has been confirmed as the H5N1 strain of avian influenza," the ministry said in a statement, adding thousands of birds at the farm had died over the past four days.

The fresh case emerged after South Korea had completed culling all 760,000 poultry near the two farms already discovered to have been infected with H5N1.

Between December 2003 and March 2004, about 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu.

During that outbreak, the country destroyed 5.3 million birds and subsequent testing in the United States indicated at least nine South Korean workers involved in the culling had been infected with the H5N1 virus, but none developed major illnesses.

2006-12-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Bird flu loss $2 billion

JAKARTA: The world's poultry industry suffered approximately $2 billions in losses due to the bird flu epidemic between September 2005 and September 2006, an official said on Saturday.

``The global poultry industry has suffered direct losses of $2 billions due to lower prices.

This is equal to 14 per cent of the total value of world trade,'' said National Avian Influenza Control Commission chairman Bayu Krisnamurthi, reported The Jakarta Post.

2006-12-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

Use of bird flu vaccine considered

(TNA) - A committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives committee is reviewing the pros and cons of using bird flu vaccines to innoculate Thai poultry against possible contagion, and should recommend whether or not to use the vaccine approach by late January.

The ministry will soon decide whether or not to allow bird flu vaccine to immunise poultry against the H5N1 virus within two months, according to Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Thira Sutabutr.

Mr Thira said that he assigned Yukol Limlamthong, director-general of the Department of Livestock Development, as chairman of the vaccination review committee, to research and prepare guidelines on using the vaccine.

The committee will consider the implications, positive and negative, of using available avian influenza vaccine by analysing scientific research reports and case studies of vaccinations being applied in other countries.

It is expected that the committee report its findings by the end of January, he added. The committee will also recommend guidelines on how to use the vaccine safely and efficiently.

The ministry committee will also discuss alternative methods to combat avian flu--such as adopting closed farming systems and bio-security measures to contain the spread of the virus.

An effective bird flu vaccine has only recently been developed and improved, he said.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) allowed any country severely hit by the outbreak to use the bird flu vaccine to contain the disease.

Although Thailand has succeeded, so far, in fighting the disease, the committee will also review negative effects of using the vaccine--as well as the possibility that mutation of the H5N1 virus before the decision to use a vaccine is made.

In winter, migrating birds from further north are heading south and the lower temperatures in Thailand provide suitable living conditions for the H5N1 virus.

As a result, anti-bird flu measures are needed to prevent any outbreaks, according to the ministry.

2006-12-02T08:42:00.000-08:00

$1.3 billion more needed for bird flu, U.N. says

(Reuters) WASHINGTON - As much as $1.3 billion more is needed to fight bird flu, with more than $500 million of that going to Africa, World Bank and U.N. experts said Tuesday.

This is on top of the $1.9 billion pledged at a World Bank conference in Beijing last January, said World Bank Economic Adviser Olga Jonas, who will present her official estimates to a meeting of bird flu experts that begins next Wednesday in Bamako, Mali.

“We foresaw only a very small amount that would be needed in Africa,” Jonas said in an interview.

But since January, H5N1 avian influenza has spread out of Asia, across Europe and into Africa. Now more than 50 countries have battled the virus, which mostly affects birds but which has infected 258 people and killed 153 since 2003.

Among them are some of the poorest countries in Africa — Uganda, Niger, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Djibouti, as well as Egypt.

U.N. bird flu coordinator Dr. David Nabarro said the money pledged worldwide in January was being spent rapidly but said much more needs to be done to prepare for a pandemic, or to try to prevent one.

Jonas said globally, between $980 million and $1.3 billion is needed over the next two to three years to fight bird flu. The money would go for everything from rubber gloves and disinfectants to cash compensation to people whose birds are culled if H5N1 is detected.

Some money has gone to African countries, but $566 million more is needed, she said, quoting figures prepared for the 4th International Conference on Avian Influenza, sponsored by the European Union, European Commission and the African Union.

Unforseen severity

Indonesia is now the nation worst hit by H5N1, with 30 of its 33 provinces affected. Out of 74 reported human cases of infection in Indonesia, 57 have died.

“In Indonesia, the problem is just very, very severe and the programs to deal with it are also going to require more resources than we foresaw,” Jonas said.

Not only does the virus threaten poultry — more than 200 million fowl have been slaughtered or died — but experts fear it could cause a human pandemic.

Just a few genetic mutations could make H5N1 spread easily from person to person, sparking a global epidemic that might kill millions and ruin economies.

Jonas said more than $720 million of the $1.9 billion pledged in January has been disbursed. Nabarro has been trying to keep tabs on it.

Doctor is 'quite scared'

“I am upbeat because I have seen fantastic work being done, but I remain personally quite scared because I have seen the way in which this virus is still knocking around and not going away,” Nabarro said.

2006-11-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

Korea kills animals to fight bird flu

(Nov 29) Seoul (Agency reports) A second outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu at another poultry farm has been confirmed by South Korean authorities; the farm is just 3 km from the first case in North Cholla province in the country's southwest.

According to the agriculture ministry, as many as 600 chickens have died but no people in or around both infected farms appear to have been infected; 6,000 chickens died in the first outbreak.

The officials say test results have shown that the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu was the culprit and strict quarantine measures have been imposed around the area.

The South Korean health ministry says all poultry within a 500 metre radius of the latest infected farm will be culled, this amounts to 236,000 poultry; 75,500 poultry have already been culled and 6.6 million eggs disposed of.

Authorities are also said to be considering culling as many as 600 cats and dogs living in the area despite the fact that no scientific evidence exists which indicates humans can catch bird flu from them, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, says the culling of such creatures is unnecessary.

The two farms lie directly under a flight path for migratory birds heading south from Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and are about 170 km south of Seoul.

There is widespread concern that other parts of South Korea might have also been hit and the situation is a setback for the country as this is the first outbreak of the deadly virus in three years.

That outbreak, between December 2003 and March 2004, resulted in 5.3 million birds being killed and over $1 billion being spent on preventing the spread of the disease.

At the time nine South Korean workers involved in the culling were infected with the H5N1 virus, but fortunately none developed major illnesses.

The vast majority of human bird flu cases involving the H5N1 virus have been linked to direct or indirect contact with infected fowl.

Indonesia said on Tuesday a 35-year-old woman died of the disease, bringing that country's death toll to 57, the highest for any nation.

H5N1 bird flu remains essentially a disease of birds and almost all those infected had been in close contact with diseased birds.

Since 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed in about 50 countries and territories and according to the World Health Organisation it has killed in excess of 150 since then and sickened another 260.

China has banned imports of poultry and poultry products from South Korea along with Japan.

Chinese authorities are also urging those provinces nearest to South Korea to monitor and penalise for the smuggling of poultry products across the borders and to intensify their efforts in combating the spread of the disease, by closely monitoring personnel and vehicles entering China.

2006-11-29T18:17:00.000-08:00

New bird flu figures

Nov 29 (Reuters) - A 35-year-old woman died in Indonesia from H5N1 avian influenza on Tuesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed on Wednesday.

The virus has killed 154 people since 2003, according to WHO. Some 200 million birds have died or been culled.

Following is a list of confirmed human cases of H5N1 from WHO in Geneva. Total cases include survivors.

Deaths /Total cases:

AZERBAIJAN 5 /8 CAMBODIA 6/ 6 CHINA 14 /21 DJIBOUTI 0 /1 EGYPT 7 /15 INDONESIA 57 /74 IRAQ 2/ 3 THAILAND 17 /25 TURKEY 4 /12 VIETNAM 42/ 93 TOTAL 154 /258

Initial testing usually takes a day or two to confirm if someone has H5N1. More detailed testing by government laboratories or those affiliated with the WHO can take a week or more.

The H5N1 virus remains mainly a virus of birds, but experts fear it could change into a form easily transmitted from person to person and sweep the world, killing millions within weeks or months.

So far, most human cases can be traced to direct or indirect contact with infected birds.

2006-11-27T17:31:00.000-08:00

Awaiting Lengthy Lab Confirmation of Bird Flu Risks Treatment Delays, Studies Find

(Nove 26) Because detecting Avian flu with standard tests is so difficult and time-consuming, waiting for laboratory confirmation of an outbreak would cause dangerous treatment delays, according to new studies of two flu outbreaks.

The studies, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, were of family clusters of flu cases in Turkey and Indonesia.

Rapid tests on nose and throat swabs failed every time, and in Turkey, so did all follow-up tests known as Elisas. The only tests that consistently worked were polymerase chain reaction tests, or PCRs, which can be done only in advanced laboratories and take several hours.

“It’ll be a disaster if we have to use PCRs for everybody,” said Dr. Anne Moscona, a professor of pediatrics and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College. “It just isn’t available at a whole lot of places.”

If the A(H5N1) flu mutates into a pandemic strain, rapid tests “will be really key,” she said.

The studies followed clusters in three families in Indonesia in 2005 and in what appears to have been one extended family near Dogubayazit, in eastern Turkey, in January. Case clusters particularly worry public health authorities because they raise the possibility that the flu is mutating to spread faster between people.

In the Indonesian cases, the authors, from Indonesia, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, concluded that human-to-human transmission had probably taken place in two of the three family clusters. In one case, a 38-year-old government auditor appeared to have caught the flu from his 8-year-old daughter or her 1-year-old sister. All three died; his wife and two sons did not get sick. No one in the family had any known contact with poultry, wild birds, animals or sick people, so the source was a mystery.

“But you can’t always tell what a young child has done,” said Dr. Tim Uyeki, a Centers for Disease Control flu specialist and an author of the study. “There’s no magical test, and you don’t always get a perfect explanation.”

The Dogubayazit cluster was a cause célèbre for some Internet flu-watchers following Turkish news reports in January. They contended that widespread human-to-human transmission seemed to be taking place, and that it may have begun at a banquet attended in late December by members of two related families named Ozcan and Kocyigit. The Turkish government and the World Health Organization did not link the cases or families and tentatively blamed birds for all transmission.

The studies showed how wide a net was cast: 290 people were tested at one hospital because they either had flu symptoms or contact with dying birds, or both. All were given the antiviral drug oseltamivir, which is also sold as Tamiflu, and about half were hospitalized. That accorded with health organization recommendations: widespread testing and use of antivirals, both to save lives and to snuff out any suspected outbreak of a mutant strain.

Only 10 came up positive on PCR tests, and 8 of those were confirmed by a World Health Organization laboratory. All were children; four died. The studies confirmed suspicions that the families were linked; 7 of the 8 children were related or lived near each other. The December banquet was not mentioned.

It was impossible to tell whether the other argument made by the Internet flu-watchers was correct: that poor testing and the oseltamivir had disguised the extent of the outbreak. But the lead author, Dr. Ahmet Faik Oner, a professor of medicine at Yuzuncu Yil University in Turkey, said in a telephone interview that he believed that there had been no human-to-human transmission because all the children had been in close contact with poultry within seven or fewer days before they fell ill and none of their parents or the hospital staff members that treated them had become sick.

Dr. Uyeki declined to comment on the Turkey outbreak, but said both studies lent support to the theory that some people were genetically more susceptible to the flu. (nytimes.com)

2006-11-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

New vaccine being tested offers protection against most avian flu strains

(Nov 22) SINGAPORE : A new vaccine that promises protection against a wide range of avian influenza virus has been developed.

The vaccine which is produced using a cell-based technology is still in its early phase of clinical trials.

The bird flu virus has been detected in many countries - mostly in Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand with different strains reported.

Now preliminary findings of clinical trials of the vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Baxter show that it can induce antibodies that neutralise widely divergent strains of the H5N1 virus.

Dr Noel Barret, Vice President - Global R&D Vaccines, Baxter AG, said: "It reacts not only with the strains from which the vaccine is made but it also reacts with highly divergent H5N1 strains so the expectations is that such a vaccine could protect against strains which will be emerging in maybe 6 months', 12 months' time and 2 years' time."

The vaccine was produced using a cell-based technology which takes about 11 weeks to produce.

Today most influenza vaccine is produced using the egg-based method where the virus is introduced into the embryos and takes up to 28 weeks to produce.

This method has been used for nearly 50 years.

Baxter says some benefits using the cell-based system for the production of influenza vaccines include doing away with constraints of depending on the supply of eggs which can pose a challenge if a pandemic affects the supply of chickens.

Dr Barret says that the vaccine seems to work well even at the lowest dose level.

The company's study on mice found that 100 percent of mice immunised with the vaccine survived the Vietnam strain, the Hong Kong strain and the Indonesian strain of the H5N1.

The trial on humans shows that more than 75 percent of those injected with the vaccine were able to produce the antibodies.

Dr Barret said: "You cannot talk about efficacy because efficacy means protection against infection. We can't measure that in with H5N1 to date. What we can do is that we can determine the amount of subjects that produce what we anticipate are protective antibodies."

The clinical trial involved 270 healthy adults from Singapore and Austria and was carried out between June and September this year.

Baxter says that Singapore was chosen as a centre for its excellent infrastructure and facilities for conducting research.

Some 115 patients were recruited from Changi General Hospital and the National University Hospital, while the rest were from Austria.

The company says that the side effects from the vaccine are minor, such as fatigue, headaches and a slight fever.

Baxter plans to conduct a larger study involving at least 600 patients.

Among other things, it hopes to determine the optimal dosage in humans for the vaccine to be effective.

There is currently no vaccine against the bird flu on the market. - CNA/ch

2006-11-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Infections rise in deadly flu outbreak

(Nov 22) HEALTH officials in Canberra suspect another person has been infected in an influenza outbreak which has swept through a nursing home and already killed six elderly residents.

The powerful strain has infected 57 people, including at least seven nursing home staff.

Tests were still being conducted yesterday to determine if the latest respiratory illness was part of the same strain, a spokeswoman for ACT Health Minister Katy Gallagher said.

The latest victim was a 90-year-old man who passed away at the Jindalee Nursing Home in Canberra's south on Thursday night. Staff notified authorities on November 1 that an unknown illness had swept through the residence.

Health authorities have offered staff and residents of the home anti-viral medication, including the drug Tamiflu, and have sought assistance from the commonwealth.

ACT Acting Chief Health Officer Charles Guest reassured residents, staff and their families that the outbreak was not connected to pandemic influenza or the deadly H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, following analysis of the virus.

The Australian Medical Association yesterday warned that Australia's pandemic management plan lacked consistency.

AMA president Mukesh Haikerwal said state governments had neglected to share their pandemic plans with doctors, and there was a lack of co-ordination across states and territories on the role of fever clinics and how to direct patients to the most appropriate care.

"General practitioners are keen to properly prepare for a flu pandemic but they're currently trying to do so in a vacuum of information on how jurisdictions propose to mobilise, integrate, finance and protect primary care," Dr Haikerwal said.

Australia has spent $600 million since 2003 preparing for a possible influenza outbreak. (theaustralian.news.com.au)

2006-11-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

Clues to pandemic bird flu found

International scientists believe they have identified some of the key steps needed for bird flu to develop into the deadly pandemic strain of the disease.

The team pinpoints two genetic mutations that would need to occur to the H5N1 virus for it to potentially spread readily between humans.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists said the findings would help them to detect pandemic strains.

At present, H5N1 can pass only from bird-to-bird or, rarely, bird-to-human.

This work shows that at least two changes... are needed for H5N1 to transform to strain that could infect humans
Dr Wendy Barclay, Reading University

So far, there have been a total of 258 cases of H5N1 in humans, causing 153 deaths, according to figures from the World Health Organization.

But flu viruses mutate and evolve quickly, and scientists believe the virus could acquire the ability to pass between humans.

They fear this could trigger a repeat of the devastation of the 1918 flu pandemic, which is thought to have killed 50 million people.

Docking station

To investigate how the virus might do this, the researchers looked at samples of H5N1 that had been taken from birds and also from infected humans.

In a small number of the human samples, they found the virus had acquired small changes to a protein called haemaggluttinin, which sits on the surface of the H5N1 molecule.

This protein helps the flu virus to spread by binding to the receptors on cells, which are like docking stations, allowing the virus to invade and infect the cells.

While the haemaggluttinin in most of the samples could only bind to bird cell-receptors, the researchers discovered that in some of the human samples, the haemaggluttinin had acquired the ability to bind to both bird and human cell-receptors.

It is thought this is a key step needed for H5N1 to be able to spread from human to human.

Further analysis revealed two separate mutations at different positions on the protein had enabled H5N1 to recognise human receptors.

The researchers said the discovery of the location of the mutations would help identify H5N1 strains that might be on the way to developing pandemic potential.

Pandemic pathway

Lead researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, US, said more mutations would be required for the virus to fully adapt to humans, but it is not known how many mutations are needed for such a change.

The team thought these changes were most likely to occur when a human influenza virus mingled with H5N1, particularly if it could already bind to human receptors.

Dr Wendy Barclay, a molecular virologist from Reading University, UK, said: "This work shows that at least two changes in the haemaggluttinin protein are needed for H5N1 to transform to strain that could infect humans, and knowing what these are will help to inform surveillance."

But, she said, the fact these mutations had already been seen in viruses isolated from human H5N1 cases, and a pandemic had not yet struck, suggested a number of other steps might be needed for the virus to be able to pass from human to human. (BBC)

2006-11-15T16:39:00.000-08:00

China urges vigilance against SARS, bird flu

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Health has urged local governments to be on alert for SARS and human cases of bird flu and to strengthen prevention against epidemics as winter approaches.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome first emerged in China's southern Guangdong province, and the country is at the centre of the fight against the H5N1 bird flu virus, with dozens of animal outbreaks and 21 human cases since 2003.

"Experts believe that currently China has already entered the high season for respiratory disease," the ministry said in a statement on its Web site (www.moh.gov.cn) on Tuesday.

"The health ministry demands that all localities strengthen supervision and reporting of cases of pneumonia where the cause is unclear, human cases of bird flu, ordinary influenza cases and SARS," it said.

Local authorities must "immediately report outbreaks and adopt measures to prevent and control epidemics," the statement said.

China was widely criticised for its initial coverup of a SARS outbreak, which contributed to its spread around the world.

Experts say management of outbreaks has improved, but the government has acknowledged a lack of administrative capacity and a willingness among local officials to disclose information.

2006-11-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

Bird flu kills woman, raising Indonesia’s death toll to 57

JAKARTA—A woman died of bird flu on the western outskirts of Indonesia’s capital on Tuesday, raising the country’s death toll from the virus to 57, a senior health ministry official said.

The 35-year-old female from Tangerang city died after four days of hospitalization, said Nyoman Kandun, adding that the source of exposure was still under investigation.

“Her death brings the (country’s) death toll to 57,” he said. (AP)

2006-11-15T16:33:00.000-08:00

APEC leaders to call for fight against bird flu

HANOI, Vietnam: Pacific Rim leaders will endorse a plan to fight bird flu and cooperate in improving regional pandemic preparedness, according to a draft statement to be released this weekend.

Leaders from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, gathering in Hanoi for their annual summit, will support a plan calling for enhanced surveillance, improved infrastructure and expanded technical collaboration in the region.

The plan follows a meeting in May at which health and agriculture ministers from the region agreed on ways to head off a potential pandemic, including calling for the restructuring of some backyard farming practices into larger, more controlled operations.

In the draft statement, the APEC leaders urge a "deepened engagement of the private sector to help ensure continuity of business, trade and essential services in the event of a pandemic.

The virulent H5N1 bird flu virus has killed at least 153 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic.

So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.

The APEC leaders also will call for better cooperation on AIDS, including pushing for rights for those living with the AIDS virus and universal access to prevention, care and treatment by 2010, the draft statement says. (AP)

2006-11-09T13:02:00.000-08:00

Indonesian bird flu cases 'far from pandemic'

(Nov. 9) Jakarta - Indonesia, which has the highest number of human bird flu infections and fatalities, was unlikely to be hit by a pandemic of the disease in the immediate future, an official has claimed.

"We are still far from a pandemic," said Bayu Krisnamurthi, the chief executive of the Indonesian National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (Komnas FBPI).

However, he cautioned the possibility of a pandemic remained, as no one could predict how the H5N1 virus that caused the disease would mutate.

The Komnas FBPI, set up by presidential decree in March, coordinates government responses to H5N1 bird flu cases, which experts fear could mutate into a form that spreads easily between humans, setting off a global pandemic.

The vast majority of bird flu cases in Indonesia and elsewhere have occurred after contact with infected poultry.

Indonesia now has 72 confirmed cases of human bird flu infection, 55 of them fatal.

But Krisnamurthi said the ratio of confirmed cases compared to reported suspect cases was decreasing, from about 30 to 35 percent six months ago to currently about 14 percent.

He said although bird flu had been found in 30 of the country's 32 provinces, human infections were contained to nine provinces.

He said the ratio between confirmed cases and fatalities remained largely unchanged at about 75 percent, due to late treatment following late diagnosis, and limited health facilities. - Sapa-AFP

2006-11-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Chinese Government denies the existence of the Fujian-like new strain

IN A move that is hardly surprising, China has denied the emergence of a new bird flu strain — Fujian-like — that was reported very recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The new strain, first identified in March last year by researchers working at the University of Hong Kong and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, Tennessee, U.S., has been found mainly in birds and in a few cases in humans as well.

The strain first found in Fujian province in China, and hence named Fujian-like, has been found to have spread to six other provinces in southern China from where samples were collected. Incidentally, it has already crossed borders and is found in Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand.

Quick emergence

What is of grave concern is not just the emergence of a new strain but the relative speed at which the strain emerged and spread to neighbouring countries. This makes a third wave of bird flu spreading across the globe highly possible.

Though the mechanism responsible for the emergence is not clearly understood, the researchers say the compulsory vaccination of poultry is a possible reason. Compulsory vaccination in China started in September last.

By not being designed to fully protect against Fujian-like strain, the vaccination indirectly helped the emergence of this strain.

Predominant strain

According to the researchers, the percentage of the new strain increased "dramatically" from October last year. During the period April-June this year, the predominance shot up to reach 95 per cent.

The predominance reflects the replacement of other strains by the Fujian-like strain.

The researchers also found five human cases where H5N1 viruses from different provinces in China belonged to Fujian-like strain and were similar to those found in poultry.

Humans infected

Though no concrete evidence of virulence is available, New Scientist (October 30, 2006) reports that the new strain was responsible for one human death in Thailand and five humans getting infected in China. "As far as I know all 20 human cases recognized since November 2005 were caused by this virus," Y. Gaun one of the authors was quoted as saying in New Scientist.

More than the emergence of the new strain within a very short period and quick spread to many provinces within China and neighbouring countries, it is the denial of its existence by the Chinese Government that is worrying.

Existence denied

"Up to now, the bird flu viruses selected from the south share a high uniformity," Liu Jianchao, Foreign Ministry spokesman told a press conference in Beijing after the findings in the journal became widely known. "There has been no marked change in the biological characteristics of the organisms."

It is not the first time that the Chinese Government has tried to conceal vital information, be it in the case of SARS or bird flu.

According to information provided by the Chinese Government, the first human death from bird flu was in November last year. But most people doubted this. A correspondence published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in June this year by researchers working in laboratories in China confirmed what many had long suspected.

First human death

The first human death was not in November last year, as the Government had claimed, but in November 2003, the researchers pointed out.

The researchers clearly pointed out that the 24-year-old man who died in November 2003 tested negative for SARS; genetically the virus isolated from the man was closely related to H5N1 viruses isolated from chickens.

Failed attempt

Even as this information was in the process of getting published in the journal, the Government tried its last bid at a cover-up. A bogus email was sent in the name of the lead author Wu-Chun Cao to the journal asking it to not publish the findings.

According to New Scientist (June 26, 2006), Cao had told the NEJM that he had never sent the email!

Pushed to a corner, the Chinese Government had to officially admit that the first case was indeed in November 2003 and not in November last year. And soon China enforced severe restrictions on investigation and reporting of suspected cases of bird flu. China's reluctance to become transparent has come in for severe criticism.

"China's lack of transparency... is making it difficult to determine how the deadly virus is mutating and spreading," a leading WHO official was quoted as saying in New Scientist (November 3, 2006).

China has not shared gene sequence data of the 2005 bird flu virus.

Influenza epicentre

More evidence now points to China being the "epicenter" for H5N1 bird flu virus. A paper published in the PNAS journal (February 21, 2006) states "... finding supports the "influenza epicenter" hypothesis, which argues that southern China is the epicenter from which [H5N1] influenza pandemics emerge."

It also said that H5N1 virus has been circulating in Chinese poultry for over a decade and introduced into Vietnam in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

More transparency is needed if bird flu has to be contained.

That indeed is a tall order considering China's unwillingness to be open and do the needful to control it in its backyard. (from www.hindu.com)

2006-11-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

China still reneging on bird flu data

(Nov 3, 2006) The WHO said its efforts to track the spread of bird flu have been complicated by the failure of China's Agriculture Ministry to share samples of a newly discovered strain of the virus.

Scientific research released this week said that the new strain, called H5N1 Fujian-like, had spread widely over the past year, being found in almost all poultry outbreaks and some human cases in China, and now becoming prevalent in Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand.

Despite that prevalence, the ministry has not given the WHO any samples of the new strain, said Julie Hall, an infectious disease expert at the WHO's Beijing office.

"There's a stark contrast between what we're hearing from the researchers and what the Ministry of Agriculture says," Hall said. "Unless the ministry tells us what's going on and shares viruses on a regular basis, we will be doing diagnostics on strains that are old."

While new strains of viruses emerge regularly, health experts need to know when one becomes dominant in order to develop methods to detect and fight the disease, Hall said.

The ministry's reluctance has been an ongoing source of aggravation at the WHO. International health experts have repeatedly complained about Chinese foot-dragging in cooperating on investigating emerging diseases like bird flu and the SARS virus.

Telephones at the Agriculture Ministry were not answered on Wednesday and it did not immediately respond to faxed questions.

Some countries are slow to share genetic information or samples of viruses because they fear they will be pushed aside in the global race to produce a lucrative vaccine.

"This is a new disease. Nobody knows how to tackle it, nobody in the world has all the answers," Hall said. "But if they share, then we will all gain from that."

She said the ministry has not shared bird flu virus samples from poultry since 2004, a key impediment in developing diagnostic tools and vaccines.

Released this week, the year-long study by Chinese and US scientists found that, since June last year, one out of every 30 geese and one out of every 30 ducks in live markets tested positive for H5N1 in six southern Chinese provinces.

In that same period, however, the ministry reported only three outbreaks in the same provinces, Hall said.

The study was conducted in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and Hunan -- densely populated provinces where people live in close proximity to ducks, pigs and other farm animals, making the area a common breeding ground for flu viruses.

Out of 108 virus samples taken from infected poultry between April and June of this year, 103, or 95 percent, had the H5N1 Fujian-like strain, according to the results of the study reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The H5N1 flu has devastated poultry in China and several other Southeast Asian countries and has also claimed more than 150 human lives. Most of the people affected lived close to flocks of chickens or other poultry.

Public health authorities fear that the virus will mutate into a form that can spread easily among people, raising the potential for a worldwide pandemic that could kill millions. (taipeitimes.com)

2006-11-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

China denounces reported discovery of new bird flu strain as inaccurate

BEIJING (AP) - China's Agriculture Ministry on Thursday disputed a scientific study about a pervasive, newly discovered strain of bird flu in China, calling the report inaccurate.

The findings, released this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the new strain - called H5N1 Fujian-like - was found in almost all poultry outbreaks and some human cases in southern China and was now becoming prevalent in Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand.

"China has taken note of the study about the variation of the bird flu virus in southern China published by an academic journal abroad," the ministry said in a statement read aloud to reporters at a Foreign Ministry briefing. "The comments they made do not conform with facts."

The Agriculture Ministry said H5N1 had been monitored in southern China since 2004 and that there had not been any significant mutations to the virus.

"The biological characteristics of the virus do not show apparent changes," said the statement.

The retort follows renewed criticism by the World Health Organization that the ministry has not shared bird flu samples with the international health body since 2004. Sharing is key in helping health experts track the diseases and ultimately develop vaccines.

The Agriculture Ministry defended its actions. "We have shared all the information related to bird flu virus and diseases to international organizations in a timely manner," the statement said.

The H5N1 flu has devastated poultry in China and several other southeast Asian countries and has claimed more than 150 human lives. Public health authorities fear that the virus will mutate into a form that can spread easily among people, raising the potential for a worldwide pandemic that could kill millions.

The study released in the journal Tuesday by Chinese and American scientists charted the spread of the new strain by testing geese and ducks found in live markets in six southern Chinese beginning in June 2005.

Over the course of the year, the new strain became more pervasive, the study said. Among the 108 samples taken from poultry in April and June 2006, 103 - or 95 per cent - were infected with the Fujian-like strain, the study said.

2006-11-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

Bird flu to remain major threat for next decade: UN

CAIRO - Avian influenza is likely to remain a significant global threat for animals and humans for the next decade, top UN coordinator David Nabarro said on Thursday.

“The virus is likely to be with us for the five or ten years to come,” he told AFP in an interview.

According to the UN’s health agency, the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus has been confirmed in 256 humans worldwide since the first outbreak in 2003. It was lethal in at least 152 cases.

Nabarro, who was tasked last year by the world body with containing the crisis, warned that the international community had to remain on high alert for the possible mutation of the virus into one communicable between humans.

“The risk of a mutation to cause pandemic is still very much there,” he said. “As long as the virus is present in birds, there will also be a threat of sporadic human infection, and a possibility of a mutation which would cause at the end of the day a pandemic.”

“Trying to estimate the potential mortality of a pandemic is very hard. What I’ve already said is that you could have of range of between five and 150 million” deaths, said Nabarro.

“It’s the reason why I do think we a have to put now plenty of energy towards a long term reform of the poultry farming techniques, in order to reduce the risks of human infection.”

Nabarro said frequent occurrences of sporadic human infections meant the virus would not be eliminated for some time, but he voiced his hope that efforts deployed to combat the virus in recent months would have increased preparedness for a pandemic.

“The difference now is that countries all over the world are much more geared up to deal with this phenomenon than they were a year ago. It gives me some hope that when the virus appears in a new country, it can be controlled,” he said.

On a recent visit to Cairo to attend a global health research forum, Nabarro praised the Egyptian authorities’ performance in handling the bird flu outbreak.

With seven lethal human cases in less than a year, Egypt is the hardest-hit non-Asian country. (AFP)

2006-10-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Government In Talks With Glaxo Over Bird Flu Vaccine

(Oct 30, 2006) LONDON - GlaxoSmithKline is in talks with the government about a nation-wide bird flu vaccination after signing a similar deal with Singapore, it was reported on Monday.

Chief Executive J. P. Garnier met Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown this month to discuss the possibility of stockpiling tens of millions of doses of the firm's H5N1 vaccine, the Times said, without citing sources.

Glaxo had already reached a deal with Singapore, the newspaper said without revealing any details.

The firm was also close to singing a contract with France and had spoken to the U.S. government about the possibility of a mass vaccination programme although no imminent decision was on the cards, the newspaper added.

A spokesman for Glaxo was not immediately available for comment.

Last week, Europe's biggest drugmaker said it expected to sign more contracts to supply governments with its experimental vaccine for humans following a deal with Switzerland.

The Swiss Federal Office of Public Health has ordered 8 million doses of the vaccine to protect its entire population in the event of an influenza pandemic, which many experts fear may be triggered by bird flu.

The vaccine has not yet won regulatory approval but Glaxo plans to file it with the European Medicines Agency by the end of 2006.

Britain's population is about 60 million while Singapore has a population of 4.4 million. (from Reuters)

2006-10-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

Glaxo says more govts plan to buy bird flu vaccine

LONDON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline Plc expects to sign more contracts to supply governments with its experimental bird flu vaccine for humans, following purchases by Switzerland and an unidentified Asian country.

"Between now and Christmas, I expect we will sign a few more in Europe and elsewhere," Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Garnier told analysts in a post-results conference call.

Europe's biggest drugmaker announced earlier this month that the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health had ordered 8 million doses of its H5N1 vaccine to protect its entire population in the event of an influenza pandemic, which many experts fear may be triggered by bird flu.

The vaccine has not yet won regulatory approval but Glaxo plans to file it with the European Medicines Agency by the end of 2006.

Glaxo's vaccine uses only a very low dose of active ingredient, which should help to stretch scarce supplies.

A key challenge in the race to produce a vaccine for millions of people around the world -- which governments are keen to stockpile -- is how to make the maximum number of shots from the minimum amount of antigen, or active ingredient.

While Glaxo's vaccine offers protection against the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus now circulating, its impact on any mutated strain of virus is not certain.

However, experts say it could "prime" an individual's immune system so they will get stronger effects from a later, better-matched vaccine.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has spread rapidly out of Asia and has killed more than 150 people who have come into close contact with infected birds.

Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic, a global epidemic of flu that could kill millions, if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human.

Rival companies including Sanofi-Aventis , Novartis AG and Baxter International Inc. are also racing to develop pandemic H5N1 vaccines.

2006-10-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Sparrows in China carry bird flu virus

(Oct 26) Chinese scientists recently reported that they found H5N1 bird flu virus in sparrows two years ago, the first time the virus has been detected in the common, non-migratory bird on the Chinese mainland.

Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China's Hubei Province tested excrement samples from 38 sparrows after an outbreak of bird flu in a county in Henan Province in 2004. Some of samples tested positive of H5N1 virus, said Li Tianxian, a researcher with the institute.

"There's no need for the public to panic. The findings are two years old and there is no indication that sparrows pose a risk," said Li, adding that scientists found the bird flu virus in sparrows in the region of Hong Kong in 2002 and also in Turkey and South Africa.

Working with the Beijing Institute of Zoology, both under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the scientists isolated four H5N1 strains among the 25 positive excrement samples.

Li said tests on the four strains have shown they are a new genotype of H5N1, adding that researchers did not find dead sparrows.

It was thought that bird flu was mainly transmitted by migratory water fowl, but this finding proves that non-migratory birds are also a potential channel for bird flu transmission, Li told the Chutian Metropolitan News published in Hubei Province.

The finding was published in December of last year in the U.S-based Journal of Virology, according to the newspaper. (China daily)

2006-10-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

Bird flu take an increasing toll but the world escaped an immediate influenza pandemic, U.N. bird flu chief says

More than 30 countries reported outbreaks of bird flu this year and the number of people dying every month is increasing, but the world escaped an immediate influenza pandemic possibly because of the energetic global response to warnings a year ago, the U.N. bird flu chief said Monday.

Dr. David Nabarro said his warning last year that a mutation of the virulent H5N1 virus which has ravaged poultry stocks since late 2003 could appear anytime and cause an influenza pandemic in humans that kills millions of people was not "overblown."

"There will be an influenza pandemic one day. I don't know — you don't know — when it will be. When it does come along, it will have really major economic and social consequences," he said.

"The one absolutely requirement for this is that we have to get prepared."

The H5N1 virus has affected poultry all over the world except the Western hemisphere and has killed tens of millions of chickens, ducks, geese and other birds, Nabarro told a news conference.

"In 2006, we did see more than 30 countries reporting outbreaks," he said. "Unfortunately, the virus continues to affect humans — with 256 people known to be affected and 151 dying" since 2003.

"The trendline is that the number of deaths per month seems to be increasing at the momnt globally ... and that is primarily because of quite a lot of human death in Indonesia," he said.

Nabarro estimated that the H5N1 avian influenza virus will remain a major animal health issue for most of the world for at least five years, and perhaps 10 years, because it is very virulent but at the same time can survive in certain communities of birds without symptons for long periods.

In addition, he said, bird flu seems to be spread by a combination of wild birds that migrate and trade in infected birds.

One key to tackling bird flu is to change the way people and countries raise chickens and ducks and experts believe it will take five to 10 years to change poultry rearing practices, especially in countries where poultry is plentiful and birds are kept in the backyard, Nabarro said.

While the Western hemisphere has escaped bird flu so far, Nabarro urged countries in the Americas to be be very vigilant in the coming winter months when birds start migrating south from Alaska, through the Mississippi River area and then south. He said countries on another migratory route south from Siberia to the Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Middle East must also be on alert for infected birds.

Nabarro said that in his entire career he had never seen a greater concerted global effort to tackle an issue than he had this year in fighting bird flu and preparing for an influenza pandemic.

"Government ministers are all aware it is their responsibility to prepare for the possibilty of a pandemic and get on top of the avian influenza ... and they're doing it really very energetically," he said.

There have been "huge efforts" by governments in many countries to stop trade in birds which might be infected by H5N1, to restrict movements, to keep different groups of birds apart, and to cull birds when outbreaks occur, he said.

That means many governments now know how to deal with outbreaks, Nabarro said, "and that's a really excellent thing and may well have reduced the probability of pandemic happening immediately, and may well have reduced the probability of H5N1 causing the pandemic."

"But we are never going to drop our vigilance within the U.N. on this issue," he said.

Nabarro said he looked at the present time "as a wonderful breathing space in which we can get prepared so that when the pandemic comes we can deal with it."

He called for stepped up assistance, especially for Indonesia and Africa.

Indonesia accounts for about a third of the human deaths and remains a country of great concern with bird flu in 30 of 33 provinces, Nabarro said.

He praised the government's commitment but said a lot remains to be done and the country needs money to change the way poultry is raised, improve veterinary services and compensate farmers whose birds are culled.

There are also serious concerns about the ability of some African countries to deal adequately with bird flu because of understaffed animal health services and low budgets, Nabarro said, noting a recent outbreak in Juba in southern Sudan.

He praised the successful efforts to combat bird flu in Vietnam and Thailand, the "good and rapid response" to outbreaks in Niger, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, and Myanmar's rapid response to very intense outbreaks earlier this year.

"Myanmar authorities seem to have had better cooperation with the outside world on this issue than they've had on any other issue," Nabarro said. "At the moment, it seems the government is poised so that if there are further outbreaks, the government can deal with them quite quickly." (AP)

2006-10-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

Russia tests bird flu vaccine

(Oct 24, 2006) MOSCOW - Clinical tests of a bird flu vaccine, developed by the Russian Health Ministry's state-owned Science and Production Association Mikrogen in conjunction with the Academy of Medical Sciences, have been conducted in the last three months.

The tests involved 240 healthy volunteers, separated into two groups numbering 120 men and women each. All of them received insurance policies and benefits in line with international standards.

Mikrogen general director Dr. Anton Katlinsky said the tests had produced encouraging results. "We used the World Health Organization's recommendations in our work, as well as our own unique methods and patented technologies," Professor Katlinsky said.

Dr. Vitaly Zverev, director of the Mechnikov Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, said a study of post-vaccination side effects showed the preparation was well tolerated, safe, and did not produce any serious negative effects.

Vaccine developers now have to conduct augmented tests and to officially register the new medication.

Several hundred million rubles have already been spent on this high-priority medical project. This is seen as the only course of action since a possible bird flu pandemic is likely to kill an estimated one-third of the world's population.

Due to efforts by the WHO and numerous national medical and sanitary services, including Russian agencies, no new bird flu outbreaks have been registered to date. But this does not mean that the disease has been eradicated.

Russian authorities have not yet registered any bird flu cases, but this ominous virus killed six people in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, this April.

Wavering global interest in bird flu is directly linked with the manifestations of this disease. A series of bird flu outbreaks, which began in 1997 and lasted until 2006, convinced everyone that the virus was a threat to humans and could cause serious complications and even death.

A major outbreak terrified mankind in December 2003 and fanned rumors of a possible epidemic and even a global pandemic. Many countries, including Russia, rushed to develop prototype bird flu preparations capable of dealing with this new menace.

Of the 15 known bird flu virus strains, H5N1 is the most active and dangerous one. The World Health Organization is worried that there may not be sufficient quantities of the vaccine for everyone if a pandemic breaks out.

At present 360 million flu vaccines are produced annually. What makes the situation grave is that the whole of mankind, or over six billion people, would have to be vaccinated under the worst scenario.

Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research, told journalists she was satisfied with the completion of initial clinical vaccine tests in Russia, a well-known and generally recognized producer of such preparations. She stressed the latest Russian achievements were encouraging, and the WHO will look forward to augmented clinical tests and final results.

Many scientists believe that the H5N1 virus cannot cause a major epidemic in the near future. "I see no reason to agree with assertions that bird flu will wipe out mankind," said Vladimir Ivanitsky, PhD, a lecturer at Moscow State University. He said the bird flu virus had been known for a long time, birds had always contracted this disease, which sometimes affected humans. "Nothing has changed in the nature of the virus and birds," he said.

Globalization and enhanced medical control make it possible to more effectively diagnose and treat various diseases than before. Mankind is now better prepared to deal with a possible bird flu epidemic.

Vitaly Zverev said migrating birds would once again spread the active H5N1 virus all over the world the following spring.

Scientists believe the extremely mutagenous bird flu virus is bound to change within the next few years, and new viruses are a major threat.

The new Mikrogen vaccine is vital because its initial strain can be modified and used against a new strain, say, of the H7N2 virus.

Experts said it would take Russia seven to eight weeks to obtain the first several million vaccines after singling out the initial strain. In short, this country will receive enough anti-flu vaccines in 45 to 60 days.

2006-10-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEW-OIE chief urges world bird flu compensation fund

PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The head of the World Animal Health body OIE said on Thursday an international fund to compensate farmers in poor countries for bird flu culls was urgently needed to ensure reporting of the deadly virus.

Officials from the OIE, World Bank, European Commission and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) met in Paris this week with the aim of setting up a fund by early next year.

"We'd like to convince the international financial institutions to have a world fund reserved for animal health emergencies," OIE Director General Bernard Vallat said.

"Once a crisis erupts in a developing country, it's very rare there are funds available for compensation, which costs a lot of money," he told Reuters.

Experts believe there has been significant under-reporting of the H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry in parts of Asia and Africa, largely because farmers fear heavy losses if they notify the authorities and are then forced into widespread culling.

"If there is not an absolute guarantee that the farmer will be reimbursed in a fair, equitable and rapid way, there is a tendency towards very dangerous behaviour," Vallat said, adding this could mean selling birds on at local open-air markets.

"This could be a powerful vector in circulating the virus."

H5N1 still mainly affects birds, but has killed more than 150 people in nine countries. It re-surfaced in Asia in 2003 and has since spread to Europe and Africa.

The World Health Organisaenv tion believes H5N1 could be the most likely cause of the next flu pandemic if it mutates into a form that could be easily passed among humans.

The World Bank has estimated that a severe flu pandemic could cost the global economy up to $2 trillion.

The OIE says the best way to prevent such a pandemic is by tackling the virus at source by stamping out the disease as quickly as possible in the bird population.

It also says this saves money.

"It's essential that declarations are made rapidly because the hours count in these situations. Without early detection and a rapid response, the spread becomes exponential, and the costs become extremely heavy," Vallat said.

While outbreaks of the virus in Europe have proved relatively short-lived due to tight veterinary controls, H5N1 has become endemic in parts of Asia and Africa, where government budgets in dealing with such crises are severely limited.

Vallat said it took around 18 months for the international community to react properly to the emergence of H5N1 in Asia.

"And that's why the disease spread to Europe and Africa. We need a world fund that can act immediately," he said.

Vallat said it was too early say how much money would be needed. He said officials were now working on more detailed economic assessment of needs and this would be discussed at a major bird flu conference in Mali in early December.

2006-10-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

Swiss place first order for Glaxo bird flu vaccine

(Oct 18. 2006) LONDON (Reuters) - Switzerland on Wednesday became the first country to order a stockpile of GlaxoSmithKline Plc's experimental bird flu vaccine for humans.

Europe's biggest drugmaker said the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health had ordered 8 million doses of its H5N1 vaccine to protect its entire population in the event of a influenza pandemic, which many experts fear may be triggered by bird flu.

Supply and stockpiling of the pre-pandemic vaccine is expected in early 2007 once the Swiss regulatory agency, Swissmedic, has reviewed and approved the regulatory file for the product.

Glaxo said it was also working with other governments across Europe on pandemic preparation plans and remained on track to file its vaccine for approval with the European Medicines Agency by the end of 2006.

Glaxo's vaccine uses only a very low dose of active ingredient, which should help stretch scarce supplies.

A key challenge in the race to produce a vaccine for millions of people around the world -- which governments are keen to stockpile -- is how to make the maximum number of shots from the minimum amount of antigen, or active ingredient.

While Glaxo's vaccine offers protection against the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus now circulating, its impact on any mutated strain of virus is not certain.

However, experts say it could "prime" a person's immune system so they will get stronger effects from a later, better-matched vaccine.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has spread rapidly out of Asia and has killed more than 150 people who have come into close contact with infected birds.

Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic, a global epidemic of flu that could kill millions, if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human.

Rival companies including Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis AG and Baxter International Inc are also racing to develop pandemic H5N1 vaccines.

2006-10-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

Indonesia defends efforts in fighting bird flu outbreaks

Indonesia defended its efforts to fight bird flu yesterday as the number of people killed by the virus continued to climb. The death of a 27-year-old woman, the third in as many days, brought the country's toll to 55.

The government, which has been accused of doing too little to fight the disease since it first appeared in poultry stocks three years ago, said it has worked hard in recent weeks to raise public awareness about the dangers posed by sick chickens.

"We are doing the best we can," Nyoman Kandun, a senior health ministry official said as the WHO announced that a woman from Central Java Province died of the disease on Friday.

The woman identified as Mistiyem, was hospitalised on Oct. 12 and died a day later. Positive results from two Indonesian laboratories mean that the WHO includes the case in its records.

"Both tests showed her to be positively infected with the bird flu virus, making her the 55th fatal casualty" in Indonesia, said Tontro, an official at the ministry's national bird flu information center.

Her death, one day after she was hospitalized, was followed by that of an 11-year-old boy in the capital Jakarta on Saturday and a 67-year-old woman in West Java's town of Bandung on Sunday, health officials announced earlier this week.

The government has been criticized for failing to aggressively deal with the virus in poultry stocks, either by mass slaughters or vaccination. It says it does not have the funds to compensate farmers for birds culled in affected areas.

Kandun said Indonesian officials launched an all-out media campaign last month promoting simple but effective steps people can take to reduce the risks of contracting the H5N1 virus. (from Taipei times)

2006-10-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

Bird flu vaccine may hit many strains

LONDON - Human trials indicate an H5N1 bird flu vaccine developed using a virus isolated in Vietnam can neutralize antibodies from H5N1 viruses found in other countries, the vaccine's manufacturer said Wednesday.

The preliminary trial results raised hopes that vaccines based on older H5N1 bird flu strains might prove effective against future variants of the virus in the event of a pandemic.

In Sanofi Pasteur's trial, 300 volunteers were vaccinated with a strain of the virus isolated in Vietnam in 2004. Antibodies were then examined from their blood, and tests were done using H5N1 viruses from Turkey and Indonesia. The results indicated that the volunteers' antibodies were able to neutralize the other H5N1 viruses, proving that some measure of cross-protection is possible.
"This is a milestone for vaccine development," said Dr. Klaus Stohr, the World Health Organization's top official on pandemic influenza vaccines.

Stohr said that while tests in mice and ferrets had suggested that cross-protection might be possible, this is the first evidence available from human trials.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has been circulating since late 2003 in Asia. Last year, it spread to parts of Europe and Africa. Flu experts believe it is the leading candidate to ignite the next flu pandemic. To date, WHO has recorded 151 deaths worldwide from H5N1.

More than a dozen companies are working on possible pandemic vaccines, based on the Vietnamese 2004 H5N1 strain.

However, tests need to be conducted on these candidate vaccines to determine if they would also protect against newer versions of the virus.

"We don't know enough right now to make any blanket statements about cross protection," said Dr. John Treanor, a flu vaccine expert at the University of Rochester. Sanofi Pasteur's initial results, however, could be reassuring for governments investing in vaccine stockpiles, Treanor said.

"This tells us that stockpiling does make sense," Stohr said. "It gives us another avenue of pandemic preparedness," Stohr said, suggesting that people could be inoculated with a pre-pandemic vaccine, before being given a booster shot once the pandemic strain emerges.

Still, an effective H5N1 vaccine that protects against other H5N1 strains does not guarantee protection against a pandemic. Such a vaccine could offer no protection against other subtypes of influenza.

"We don't know if the next pandemic will be started by H5," said Dr. Angus Nicoll, director of influenza coordination at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

"It's still a very difficult risk judgment," says Nicoll. "While it's good to have a vaccine that offers cross-protection, it is not the ultimate answer." (from AP)

2006-10-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

Swiss announce stockpile of bird flu vaccine

(Oct 18, 06) Switzerland has ordered enough bird flu vaccine to protect its entire population in the event of a pandemic, it was announced on Wednesday.

The government said this amounted to eight million doses of a new pre-pandemic vaccine made by Anglo-American firm GlaxoSmithKline. The cost is expected to be SFr180 million ($142 million).

Supply and stockpiling of the medication is expected to take place from January 2007, said a statement. The cost of the delivery will also have to be approved by parliament.

"If needed, it will therefore be possible to offer a first immunisation to the whole of the [7.4 million] population," said the government.

"This vaccination will be voluntary and will only be administered once its effect against a pandemic virus has been proven."

Advanced development efforts to create an effective H5N1 influenza vaccine are currently based on an H5N1 virus isolated from a Vietnamese patient infected by a chicken in 2004.

Since there is no pandemic among humans, this vaccine is referred to as a pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine. The pre-pandemic vaccine helps prepare the human immune system against the threat of a human pandemic.

Should a pandemic virus emerge that can be easily transmitted among humans, a vaccine based on that specific strain will have to be developed.

The government has therefore concluded a further agreement with Glaxo for 7.5 million doses of a pandemic vaccine should the need arise.

The immunisation programme, part of the government's national bird flu plan, will be carried out by the authorities concerned and the cantons.

Action plan

The government's bird flu action plan, finalised in August, proposes detailed guidelines, plans and responses in the event of an outbreak of the virus in the country.

Experts say that although cross-infection of the virus to humans is rare, there have been almost 150 deaths from the illness in humans, mainly in Asia.

Switzerland has already built up a stock of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu to treat more than two million people and protect health workers.

The country has also continued to protect its borders from a possible outbreak of the virus. The latest measures include locking up poultry kept within one kilometre of major Swiss lakes and rivers.

The restrictions are designed to prevent domestic flocks from coming into contact with migratory birds infected with the H5N1 virus and will remain in place until April 30 next year.

Thirty-two dead wild birds were found with the H5N1 virus in Switzerland in February and March, mainly around lakes. But no new cases have been detected in Switzerland since April. (from www.swissinfo.org)

2006-10-16T20:57:00.001-07:00

Bird flu's spread around the globe

(Oct 16, 06) Bird flu has spread rapidly since late 2003 from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Following are some facts about the H5N1 avian flu virus and its spread around the globe.

* Since the virus re-emerged in Asia in 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed around 50 countries and territories, according to data from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

* Since the beginning of January 2006, more than 30 countries have reported outbreaks, in most cases involving wild birds such as swans.

* The virus has killed 151 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Countries with confirmed human deaths are: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

* In total, the virus is known to have infected 256 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Many of those who have died are children and young adults.

* Vietnam and Indonesia have the highest number of cases, accounting for 97 of the total deaths.

* The H5N1 virus is not new to science and was responsible for an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Scotland in 1959. Britain confirmed a new case in Scotland on April 6.

* H5N1 is not the only bird flu virus. There are numerous strains. For example, an outbreak in 2003 of the H7N7 bird flu virus in the Netherlands led to the destruction of more than 30 million birds, around a third of the country's poultry stock. About 2.7 million were destroyed in Belgium, and around 400,000 in Germany. In the Netherlands, 89 people were infected with the H7N7 virus, of whom one (a veterinarian) died.

* The H5N1 virus made the first known jump into humans in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six of them. The government ordered the immediate culling of the territory's entire poultry flock, ending the outbreak.

* Symptoms of bird flu in humans have ranged from typical influenza-like symptoms, such as fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches, to eye inflammations (conjunctivitis), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia, and other severe and life-threatening complications. (Sources: OIE, WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

2006-10-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

Indonesian woman dies of H5N1 strain of bird flu, lifting death toll to 54

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A 67-year-old woman died overnight of bird flu, the second death in as many days, taking Indonesia's human toll from the disease to 54, Health Ministry and hospital officials said Monday.

The woman, who was also diagnosed with encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, was hospitalized with bird flu symptoms on Oct. 10 after coming into contact with fowl in West Java province, said Runizar Roesin of the National Bird Flu Information Center.

She died late Sunday, he said, a day after an 11-year-old boy succumbed to the disease in a Jakarta hospital.

Health officials were trying determine whether there was any link between bird flu and the woman's brain inflammation, said Hadi Yusuf, her chief doctor at the Hasan Sadikin hospital in Bandung town.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 148 people worldwide - more than a third of them in Indonesia - since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most of those killed have been infected by domestic fowl, but WHO fears the virus could mutate into a form that easily spreads among humans, sparking a pandemic with the potential to kill millions.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and home to millions of backyard chickens, is considered a hot spot for that to happen.

The government has been criticized for failing to aggressively deal with the virus in poultry stocks, either by mass slaughters or vaccination.

It says it lacks the resources to compensate farmers for slaughtered birds and earlier complained that while it needed US$250 million a year to fight bird flu it had received only US$100 million from its own coffers and the international community.

2006-10-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

New study tackles bird flu protection

(Oct. 13) Washington- A unique study suggests a possible way to kick-start people's protection against bird flu just in case the virus triggers a worldwide outbreak years from now.

If a flu pandemic should begin, it would take several months to tailor a vaccine to the precise strain causing illness and then to make enough vaccine. Worse, people almost certainly would require two doses to protect against a flu strain their bodies had never encountered.

Scientists have long wondered if giving shots in advance might help, a vaccine that would not fully protect but would introduce people's immune systems to a new type of flu. Then, once a pandemic had begun, they would need one booster shot of vaccine tailored to the exact strain, which would cut significantly the time it would take to protect a population.

On Friday, University of Rochester scientists are reporting the first evidence that this so-called "prime-and-boost" method could work.

If the findings hold up, they raise the possibility of giving "priming" shots to doctors, nurses and other first-responders who would be on the front lines of a flu pandemic long before much vaccine was ready. A decision also might be made even to offer such shots to whoever wanted them.

"You'd have people who were prepared as much as possible in advance," said Dr. John Treanor, a Rochester vaccine specialist who led the research. "It is something a lot of people are very, very interested in. It does have some major implications for policy."

The researchers tracked down 37 people who had tested an experimental bird flu vaccine in 1998. At the end of 2005, each got a single booster shot designed to fight a different strain of the H5N1 virus.

H5N1 is thought to have made its first jump from poultry into people in Hong Kong in 1997. The Rochester volunteers got their first inoculations with vaccine made from that Hong Kong strain.

The deadly Asian bird flu has continued evolving as it hop-scotched across the globe, and the booster doses were made from a very different strain that emerged in Vietnam in 2004. The booster recipients were compared with people vaccinated for the first time against the Vietnam strain.

The booster method worked better, Treanor and colleague Dr. Nega Ali Goji will report on Friday at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

More than twice as many of the booster recipients had a protective immune response compared with people given their first-ever doses of H5N1 vaccine. They even seemed a little more protected than those who got the optimal two doses.

The findings are intriguing, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the work.

"It really does add some degree of scientific credibility to the issue of priming," Fauci said.

But, he cautioned, much more research is needed before the government would even consider recommending advanced shots for bird flu: "Policy decisions would require considerably more information than we have."

The work reflects what happens every winter with seasonal flu. When small children are first vaccinated against regular flu, they need two doses. After that, one shot a year is enough. Even though the strain that circulates each winter is slightly different, the shot awakens the immune system's memory of influenza just enough.

"Your flu vaccine experience is a constant series of booster doses," Treanor explained. (from AP)

2006-10-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

WHO Western Pacific chief vows to make bird flu priority if elected director-general

(Oct. 12) HANOI, Vietnam He has battled SARS and bird flu in Asia and says the world would be in experienced hands during a flu pandemic if he became head of the World Health Organization.

Shigeru Omi of Japan, currently WHO's Western Pacific regional director, is among 13 candidates nominated by their countries to fill the top job after Director-General Lee Jong-wook died unexpectedly in May two years before his term was up.

A short list will be voted on next month in Geneva by the organization's executive board, and a final candidate will then be proposed to the World Health Assembly on Nov. 9.

The change comes at a time when the U.N. health agency is under increasing pressure to respond to global health threats and prepare the world for a possible pandemic that experts fear could spread rapidly around the world, killing millions and crippling economies.

"Pandemic preparedness is my first commitment," Omi told The Associated Press by phone from Sri Lanka, where he was campaigning this week. "The virus may change all of a sudden so that a human pandemic may happen. That's why we have to prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario."

He said leaders and donors must not become fatigued with the message he's been preaching since the H5N1 bird flu virus began decimating poultry stocks across Asia in late 2003. Initially, many countries paid little attention to the threat, but after bird flu jumped from Asia to Europe and Africa, it became a top health priority.

The virus, which has killed at least 148 people globally, remains hard for people to catch but scientists fear it will mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans. So far, most cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.

Omi said he would push donors to fulfill pledges totaling US$1.9 billion (€1.5 billion) made in January to tackle bird flu and prepare for a possible pandemic. Last month, acting WHO chief Anders Nordstrom said the organization is still lacking about half the funds it needs to help countries in that fight.

Omi, 57, of Japan, who has worked at WHO for 16 years, says his experience in building consensus among countries and pushing WHO to work more closely with other key agencies, such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, makes him the best choice for the job. He has served as regional director since 1999 and was challenged in 2003 when SARS emerged in Asia and spread rapidly across the world, killing nearly 800 people and infecting more than 8,000 before it was stopped.

"The director-general of the World Health Organization, at this point, should go to somebody whose leadership has been tested and proven and whose track record speaks for itself," he said. Member states "feel very comfortable and they think that I can help this international community to go through a very, very difficult period."

Working to increase AIDS prevention and treatment and eradicating polio also are among Omi's top goals. He said using celebrities to increase public awareness and build momentum for fighting disease in poverty-stricken countries would be part of his strategy.

Omi also wants countries to set up national plans to fight chronic killers such as diabetes and heart disease, and to help slim down nations facing obesity epidemics.

The other candidates are Margaret Chan, Hong Kong's former health director and a WHO point person on bird flu; Ecuador's outgoing president, Alfredo Palacio Gonzalez; French politician Bernard Kouchner; Kazem Behbehani, a senior WHO official from Kuwait; Julio Frenk, Mexico's health minister; David A. Gunnarsson, Iceland's health minister; Nay Htun, a former high-ranking U.N. development and environment official from Myanmar; Karam Karam, former Lebanese health minister; Elena Salgado Mendez, Spain's health minister; Manuel Mocumbi, former prime minister of Mozambique; Pekka Puska, head of Finland's national health institute; and Tomris Turmen, a Turkish woman who heads WHO's family health division. (from AP)

2006-10-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

China to start 2nd trial for bird flu vaccine soon

(Oct. 12) A Chinese company that is developing a H5N1 bird flu vaccine for humans plans to kick off a second clinical trial before the end of the year and will have its production capacity expanded ten-fold by mid-2007.

"The second clinical trial should be over by July or August next year, just before the flu season begins," Yin Weidong, managing director of state-backed Beijing Sinovac Biotech Co., told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

He tried to ease concerns over using a strain of the virus found in Vietnam in the vaccine, saying it would offer some protection against other H5N1 strains.

The company needs to obtain the approval of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) for the second trial and will file its application with the agency within the next two weeks.

"The government values this project very highly and it will get going faster," Yin said. He added that the World Health Organisation had provided advice in the first clinical trial and would probably do so again in the second trial.

Sinovac ran its first clinical trial involving 120 volunteers in Beijing this year.

It published its findings in The Lancet medical journal in September, saying the experimental vaccine was effective and well tolerated at low doses.

It used whole-virus vaccine in 1.25, 2.5, 5 and 10 microgram amounts, but the 10 microgram dose was found to be most effective in producing an immune response.

The volunteers, aged between 18 and 60, did not suffer serious side effects, but some experienced pain, swelling and fever.

The second trial will have a wider age limit, taking in people below 18 and over 60, but Yin said the drug administration would make the final decision.

Apart from Beijing, Sinovac will look for volunteers in two other cities, most likely in southern China. There will be two dosages: 5 and 10 micrograms.

By mid-2007, Sinovac will have expanded its production capacity to 20 million doses from a current 2 million, but when the vaccine goes into production will hinge on how soon it secures orders.

Sinovac and several companies around the world are in a race to develop a vaccine to combat what experts fear would be a flu pandemic triggered by the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed 148 people since late 2003.

Although it remains a disease among birds, scientists say it could wreak havoc and kill millions if it mutates and learns to transmit efficiently among humans.

Some experts, however, question the rationale behind designing these "pre-pandemic vaccines" based on a H5N1 strain found in Vietnam in recent years, saying they might not protect against other H5N1 strains and the eventual pandemic strain.

At least two other H5N1 strains have become geographically more widespread; with one spreading across not only Asia, but parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

But Yin said there should be some amount of cross protection.

"Even though the virus is changing, it is still H5N1. We are facing one enemy," he said. (from Reuters)

2006-10-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

Another human case of bird flu in Egypt

CAIRO, 12 October (IRIN) - Egyptian health officials on Thursday blamed the most recent case of human bird-flu infection in Egypt on poor observance of government regulations aimed at stamping out the virus, after it was confirmed on Wednesday that a 39-year old woman in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya had contracted avian influenza.

Ministry of Health spokesperson Sayyid Abbasi said that "people are sticking to their habits, and they are forgetting our message."Earlier this year, the Egyptian government and international agencies embarked on a nation-wide campaign to persuade the population not to keep poultry inside their homes.

The latest victim to be infected with the H5N1 virus , Hanan Aboul Magd, was admitted to hospital on 4 October. She reportedly contracted the virus after buying and slaughtering infected ducks at her home. She is the 15th human case of bird-flu in Egypt since the first signs of the outbreak were seen in the country in February. Six of those patients have since died.Hanan is reported to be in a stable condition, and her family are being tested for the virus.

Egypt's densely populated Nile Valley saw the worst concentration of bird-flu infection this year outside Asia. The Valley lies on major routes for migratory birds, and has a large rural population that has traditionally reared poultry for food and income.

The government has overseen the culling of some 30 million birds since then, and has put into place tough restrictions on poultry keeping. So-called 'backyard birds', which are chickens or ducks kept in small numbers in low-income homes for extra food or cash, have been outlawed.

Dr John Jabbour, of the Communicable Diseases Surveillance Department at the World Health Organization's regional office in Cairo, said that "it is a matter of changing behaviour. People are sometimes not honest [about keeping birds]. They know they are in danger but for other reasons they still have them."Jabbour also added that the government has succeeded in removing poultry from the homes of people in Cairo, "but in more rural areas people are not accepting that they have to get rid of backyard birds."

Minister for Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali said on Tuesday that hospitals across Egypt had been put on a high state of alert. The Ministry's spokesperson Abbassi also added "we are working to 'recharge' the media message, through all the available channels."An incidence of the virus amongst poultry was also recorded last month in the Upper Egypt town of Edfu, although no human infection was reported. (from Reuters)

2006-10-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

An Indonesian woman has bird flu

JAKARTA, Oct 11 (Reuters) - An Indonesian woman being treated in hospital has tested positive for bird flu, a health official said on Wednesday.

Indonesia has become one of the frontlines in the battle against the disease. So far, 52 people have died of bird flu, the highest of any country, with the majority of deaths occurring since the beginning of this year.

"A 67-year-old woman living in the Cisarua area of Bandung had contact with fowl," the official from the bird flu information centre said by telephone. The woman was admitted to the hospital on Oct. 7 and was still alive, the official added.

The woman tested positive to the H5N1 virus after a test at a health ministry laboratory and one conducted by NAMRU, the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit based in Jakarta, the official added.

Hadi Yusuf, the director of the Hasan Sadikin hospital in Bandung, southeast of the capital Jakarta, said the woman was being treated with the anti-viral drug Tamiflu and antibiotics.

"Her condition is bad. For a second day, she has been on a respirator and her blood pressure is high."

Yusuf said the woman had come down with a fever two weeks after being in the vicinity of dead chickens.

Despite the rise in the human death toll, the Indonesian government has resisted mass culling of birds, citing the expense and impracticality in a huge, populous country where keeping a few chickens or ducks in backyards is common.

Worldwide, 148 people have died of bird flu since 2003.

2006-10-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

Bird flu found in pigs in Indonesia's Bali

JAKARTA, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus has infected pigs on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Monday.

"There were two pigs that were infected by bird flu in Bali. These were old cases that happened last July," Musni Suatmodjo, agriculture ministry director of animal health, told Reuters.

Koran Tempo newspaper had reported on the weekend that a team from the veterinary faculty at Udayana University had discovered avian influenza infected two pigs in the regencies of Gianyar and Tabanan in Bali.

It was not clear if the pigs died. Pigs are a concern because they are susceptible to many of the viruses that infect humans. Swines can act as mixing vessels in which genetic material from avian flu viruses can mix with human influenza viruses, potentially producing new and deadly strains for which humans have no immunity.

I Gusti Putu Suwandi, head of the Tabanan agriculture office, said there have not been new cases of avian influenza in the area since July. "As for the pigs' cases, we haven't received a formal report of the finding from the university," Suwandi told Reuters by telephone.

The agriculture ministry's Suatmodjo said bird flu had been detected in 30 out of 33 provinces in the country, with the latest cases in North Sulawesi province.

He said that although that was an increase from 29 provinces last year, the percentage of deaths in poultry was lower thanks to better vaccination and other control measures.

"The number of death cases in poultry due to bird flu were relatively small as commercial farms have done proper vaccination and biosecurity, but the main problems remain on the backyard farms," Suatmodjo said, referring to the many Indonesians who keep a handful of chickens at their homes.

Indonesia has become one of the frontlines in the battle against the disease. So far, 52 people have died of bird flu, the highest of any country, with the majority of deaths occurring since the beginning of this year.

Worldwide, 148 people have died of bird flu since 2003. Although the human death toll has climbed, the Indonesian government has resisted mass culling of birds, citing the expense and impracticality in a huge, populous country where keeping a few chickens or ducks in backyards is common.

Culling at selective farms and their immediate surroundings has been the preferred method. Millions of chickens and other fowl in Indonesia have died from the disease or been killed to prevent its spread since it first surfaced in the archipelago in late 2003.

2006-10-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Don't sleep with your chickens

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 - U.S. preparations against a possible outbreak of the deadly form of the H5N1 avian flu virus are solid, but other countries may not be as ready, a U.S. health safety official warned on Thursday.

"We're ... close to the state-of-the-art in the United States with preparations and strong biosecurity measures," said Ambassador John Lange, the State Department's special representative on avian and pandemic influenza.

But abroad, "it's a mixed bag," Lange said during a meeting of poultry industry leaders in Washington.

The United States is spending $392 million over two years, Lange said, to help other countries prepare for a possible human outbreak of the disease, known as bird flu.

U.S. support has included sending experts and laboratory equipment to other nations, he said.

The H5N1 avian flu virus has killed at least 148 people since 2003, mostly in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and China. Currently, the disease almost exclusively affects birds although health officials fear that it could mutate and be passed easily between humans.

Lange said it was especially challenging for poor countries to gird for an outbreak because they don't have resources for sufficient surveillance, culling, and vaccinations.

Sherrill Davison, director of an avian medicine and pathology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, detailed to industry officials ongoing testing of U.S. bird flocks and other surveillance and safety procedures.

"Over the years our diagnostics have become quicker ... we know that they work," she said.

She said poultry companies and agriculture officials were now working with law enforcement and emergency coordinators to plan a response to a possible outbreak.

In any suspicious case, Davison said, bird flocks would be quarantined and could be killed and buried on-site.

Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, said consumers' fears about getting bird flu from eating eggs and chicken need to be allayed.

Because the virus is normally transmitted by contact with live animals, not by handling or cooking poultry, he pointed to a Nigerian proverb as the best advice: "Don't sleep with your chickens." (Reuters)

2006-10-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Thailand launches anti-bird flu campaign in schools

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand is launching a campaign across its 40,000 schools to teach children how to avoid bird flu, the government said.

Posters and pamphlets will promote frequent hand washing, early reporting of sick or dead birds, and safe poultry-cooking practices, organizers said Friday.

"The majority of those affected by bird flu are children under the age of 18 who contract it from playing with chickens," said Mark Thomas, a spokesman for
UNICEF, which organized the campaign with the education ministry.

As part of the campaign, teachers will be given a new curriculum to educate children about bird flu, and 300,000 bars of soap will be sent to elementary schools.

The organizers hope the lessons the children learn will spread to the families and communities they live in.

Thailand is among the countries hardest hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, recording 25 human cases, 17 of them fatal, since the outbreak began here in 2004. 11 of the deaths have been children under the age of 18.

Almost all cases of the deadly H5N1 infection in humans have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, according to UNICEF.

The most recent fatality announced in Thailand was a 59-year-old farmer who died in August after touching dead chickens with his bare hands.

2006-10-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

Indonesia to help develop rapid bird flu test

JAKARTA, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Indonesian government has teamed up with a Singaporean firm to develop an early diagnostic bird flu test kit for humans, the health minister said on Thursday.

A rapid test for bird flu infections in humans is key for existing treatments to be more effective, potentially saving lives.

Tamiflu, a drug made by Swiss giant Roche AG which has been used successfully to treat some patients, rapidly loses its effectiveness if not used in early stages of the disease.

"With this, case finding will be much faster, so treatment can be done as soon as possible," Siti Fadillah Supari told reporters after a signing ceremony between the health ministry and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory.

"Temasek already has the concept of the development but they need the virus strains, something which we have, to produce the rapid test kit," she added.

The laboratory is part of Singapore's state financial arm Temasek Holdings.

Tan Kok Keng, chief operating officer of Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, said he hoped the diagnostic kit would be produced within a year.

"We have the technology, so we are here to evaluate further for detection of the H5N1 virus. First we have to develop it for animals and farms, subsequently and obviously it will be extended for humans," Keng said.

"We are concerned with the various strains of the virus. We want to make sure the diagnostic kit will have a good coverage of deeper strains of H5N1, whether for Indonesia, Vietnam or elsewhere in the world."

Indonesia has become one of the frontlines in the battle against the disease. So far, 52 people have died of bird flu, the highest of any country, with the majority of deaths since the beginning of this year.

Worldwide, 148 people have died of bird flu since 2003.

The H5N1 virus mainly affects birds but experts fear it could mutate into a strain capable of killing millions of people in a global pandemic.

More deaths are feared in Indonesia because the virus is endemic in poultry across much of the huge archipelago of 17,000 islands.

2006-10-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

Bird flu vaccine shows good results in early trial

CHICAGO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Preliminary results from an early clinical trial of a vaccine for pandemic bird flu suggest the vaccine is safe and well tolerated and may prove effective against divergent strains of the disease, Baxter International Inc. said on Wednesday .

"This is the first clinical demonstration that a candidate H5N1 (bird flu virus) vaccine can induce antibodies that neutralize widely divergent strains of H5N1," said Noel Barrett, vice president of Global research and development for Baxter's vaccines business.

"These preliminary data, which must be confirmed in a larger study, suggest that the vaccine may provide wider protection for a larger number of people before and during a pandemic," he said.

H5N1 mainly affects birds, but experts fear it could mutate into a strain easily transmitted from person to person, capable of killing millions of people in a global pandemic.

An H5N1 virus has killed at least 148 people since 2003, mostly in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and China, according to the World Health Organization.

Baxter said the clinical trial of the experimental H5N1 pandemic vaccine in 270 healthy adults in Austria and Singapore suggested the vaccine had similar side effects to those reported for seasonal flu vaccines.

The preliminary results suggest the vaccine is highly capable of producing an immune response and can create antibodies to H5N1 even at the lowest dose level, it said.

A preliminary analysis of serum samples obtained from study subjects showed the vaccine was able to neutralize the pandemic virus contained in the vaccine as well as other diverse strains of the H5N1 virus.

Baxter plans to begin a late-stage clinical trial of the vaccine early next year and said it will present final results by the end of 2007.

Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter has said its cell-based vaccine production system is more rapid than traditional methods using chicken eggs.

Baxter's H5N1 pandemic vaccine candidate was produced using four different antigen concentrations. Two of the concentrations were with and without adjuvant, a substance added to vaccines to improve immune response.

Baxter and a number of other companies are working to develop a vaccine to protect against a potential bird flu pandemic. GlaxoSmithKline Plc in July said its vaccine could be mass produced in 2007.

There is currently no vaccine against the virus, which is now treated with Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, an antiviral drug made by Roche and Gilead Sciences Inc..

Glaxo also makes the inhaled drug Relenza under license from Australia's Biota , which also appears to treat both types of flu.

2006-10-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

New bird flu outbreak reported in Inner Mongolia

An outbreak of bird flu has been identified in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA).

The national avian influenza laboratory confirmed that the H5N1 virus was found in samples of the dead poultry in Xincheng village, Baotou City.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu had killed 985 chickens. Another 8,990 chickens had been culled to control the outbreak.

The local agricultural department had quarantined the infected area. and the outbreak was under control, the ministry said.

The last outbreak of bird flu in poultry was in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province, in August.

The MOA said 1,805 ducks were killed by the disease and another 217,000 were culled.

The quarantine of the region was lifted on September 6, after no new cases were reported for 21 consecutive days.

China has reported nine outbreaks of bird flu in poultry this year, in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, North China's Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia, East China's Anhui Province, southwestern Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and the central province of Hunan.

The previous eight outbreaks have been controlled and restrictions lifted. (chinadaily.com.cn)

2006-10-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

Docs fear world not ready for bird flu pandemic

The specter of a bird flu pandemic haunts epidemiologists who said US and world preparedness falls short, should the H5N1 virus become transmissible between humans.

"I hope H5N1 won't be able to acquire transmissibility because this is an extraordinary quagmire," Robert Webster, a world-class expert on the virus, said at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy meeting this week in San Francisco.

"Don't become complacent. We need to put into place every possible way" to stop this virus from transmitting from human to human, he said.

"If it does happen, we have to be prepared for a pandemic.

"It would be a pandemic flu, it's an absolute certainty," said the epidemiologist from St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

He said that the extremely pathogenic H5N1 virus causes symptoms in humans similar to those of the H1N1 pandemic of 1918, including diarrhea, which is not a good sign.

"In 1918 at least a half million American died. With the current population structure in the US and nothing else different, two million would die," said Arnold Monto, epidemiologist of the University of Michigan.

"We have learned a lot from seasonal influenza which is applicable to pandemic influenza. The basic thing that will happen is that we have to look very quickly once the pandemic has started to find out what the characteristics are like -- like in 1918 where young adults were dying or if it's like 1957 (and) 1968, which had more the characteristics of a very severe seasonal influenza."

In 1918, the H1N1 or "Spanish" flu killed 20 million to 50 million persons worldwide, because it had mutated into a form that could be transmitted from one human to another.

"Like the Spanish flu, if (the bird flu is) going to acquire transmissibility, it has been estimated it will take something like 10 critical mutations," Webster said.

"So with its huge distribution in the world," Webster said, the virus could become transmissible "anytime."

Worse yet, Webster said, "We know surprisingly little of what constitutes the ability of the virus to transmit" human to human.

That said, "It makes sense to stockpile vaccines even though it doesn't prevent infection, there is a lot of difference between infection and death," he said.

"There is an urgent need to increase the influenza vaccine manufacturing capacities in the world because the capacities are too low."

David Bell of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not look to stopping the epidemic completely.

"The goal of these measures isn't to stop a pandemic but rather to mitigate its impact on the community, to flatten the epidemic, to take the pressure out of the health care system by reducing the number of people getting sick," he said. (turkishpress.com)

2006-09-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

Research into 1918 virus can help bird flu fight

(Sep. 28, 2006) New insights into tackling the threat posed by bird flu have been made in a study into the 1918 flu pandemic, published today.

The outbreak of the 1918 virus - which was described as Spanish flu and is known to scientists as H1N1 - resulted in the deaths of up to 25 million people around the world.

Today's study, published in the science journal Nature, involved infecting mice with a recreation of the virus.

The results suggest the deaths were the result of an immune system overreaction. Previously, it had been believed that the scale of mortality in 1918 had been due to a second wave of infection that struck those already hit by flu.

However, the new findings indicate that deadly inflammation, triggered by an out of control immune response, could have been the real cause.

Researchers, led by Dr John Kash at the University of Washington, in Seattle, studied what happened to the lung cells of mice infected with the reconstructed virus.

Immune system genes were strongly activated, but the animals developed lung disease and died. Other mice infected with more benign flu viruses did not develop such a powerful immune response, and more of them survived.

"We think the host's inflammatory response is being highly activated by the virus, and that response is making the virus much more damaging to the host," Dr Kash said.

"The host's immune system may be overreacting and killing off too many cells, and that may be a key contributor to what makes this virus more pathogenic."

Scientists said the findings suggested that focusing on the immune system would be key to tackling the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Ordinary seasonal flu typically hits children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems the hardest, but the 1918 virus infected many young and healthy adults.

Scientists have long questioned why the 1918 flu strain proved so deadly and why so many victims were people not normally vulnerable to flu.

Similar patterns of mortality have been observed in those infected by bird flu, although the virus has yet to develop into a disease that spreads from person to person.

Dr Christopher Basler, a co-author of the study from Mont Sinai School of Medicine, in New York, said the findings "could help us develop more targeted therapies to combat pathogenic infections, including different types of influenzas or perhaps avian influenza".

Professor Karl Nicholson, the professor of infectious diseases at the University of Leicester, said learning more about "the cause of the high morbidity of H1N1 ... might then open the way for alternative methods of treatment". (from www.guardian.co.uk)

2006-09-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

Bird flu diagnosis 'very unlikely': NSW Health

(September 27, 2006) NSW Health says it is extremely unlikely a man rushed to hospital from an international flight at Sydney Airport this morning has bird flu.

The man aged in his 30s was isolated by quarantine officers at Sydney Airport after falling ill on a Vietnam Airways flight from Hanoi via Ho Chi Minh City with flu-like symptoms.

The man whose nationality is unknown has been taken to St George Hospital for bird flu testing.

NSW Health Communicable Diseases director Jeremy McAnulty said the man had been quarantined as a precaution but initial tests showed it was unlikely he was suffering from bird flu.

"It turns out that that is a very unlikely diagnosis.'' Dr McAnulty said.

"But the person's still being assessed in hospital.

"Our concern is whether a person has a quarantinable disease or avian influenza and at this stage it seems very unlikely that that's the case.''

The man's recent history of being in an area with chickens in Vietnam and having a previous influenza like illness had sparked concern, Dr McAnulty said.

Mildly unwell when he boarded the plane, the man but had become "difficult to rouse" when the flight touched down in Sydney, Dr McAnulty said.

Quarantine officers wearing protective clothing had boarded the aircraft, isolated the man and escorted him to a waiting ambulance.

He was being assessed by experts but bird flu was "way down the bottom" of the list of possible diagnoses, Dr McAnulty said.

He said the chances of the man's travelling companion or other passengers on the flight being infected were the illness bird flu was extremely low.

"At this stage we think that the likelihood that he'd be infectious to other people is extremely low," he said.

"However, if that changes, then we have mechanisms in place to follow up other passengers, but at this stage we don't believe (there is) any risk."

As a routine precaution, the details of the man's immediate neighbours had been taken and if the risk assessment changed these would be followed up.

Despite the relatively low risk of human transmission, authorities took the threat of bird flu very seriously, Dr McAnulty said.

"It's very rare for people to get infected from avian influenza, even if they have close contact with chickens or other birds that are infected with it," he said.

"But rarely it does occur and if people do get infected with avian influenza they could get seriously unwell, so on balance we take it very seriously."

If the man was diagnosed with bird flu he would be placed on anti-influenza drugs and a communicable disease response activated, Dr McAnulty said.

"From a public health point of view, the risk of person-to-person transmission is extraordinarily low, there's only really been one or two of those possibilities around the world in the past," he said.

"However, as a precaution, we'd be contacting (those who had) close contact."

A full diagnosis was expected later this afternoon. (www.theaustralian.news.com.au)

2006-09-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

Thai man who bred fighting cocks dies of bird flu

(Sep. 26, 2006) BANGKOK (AP): A 59-year-old Thai man who bred and raised fighting cocks in northeastern Thailand contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus and has died, bringing the country's human death toll from thedisease to 17, health officials said Tuesday.

The man, from Nong Bua Lamphu province, had been treating his sick fighting cocks with herbal medicines when he was exposed to the disease, said Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control. He became ill on July14 with fever and aches, and died on Aug. 10, said a statement from the Health Ministry.

"He didn't give his full history to the doctor - that he raised chickens, that they were sick, and that they had died," Thawat told The Associated Press. "He was scared that the agriculture officials would kills his birds."

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 146 people worldwide since it started ravaging poultry stocks in Asia three years ago, according to the World Health Organization, not including the most recent death in Thailand.

Most human deaths have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that can easily be passed from human to human, potentially causing adeadly global pandemic.

Indonesia has been the hardest hit nation by the virus with 51 fatalities. The latest victim was a 9-year-old boy, who died Monday from bird flu hours after he was admitted to a hospital in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

The country also reported another suspected death, while four patients showing symptoms of the virus were being treated in hospitals.

In Thailand, Thawat said he had about 50 fighting cocks on his farm and assumed that since there weren't any bird flu outbreaks in the area near his home, his birds couldn't possibly have died of bird flu.

"His wife finally confessed 14 days after he became sick," Thawat said, adding that officials have gone to the man's farm to cull poultry according to standard protocol.

Cock fighting is hugely popular in Thailand, and owners have resisted previous culls by hiding their expensive birds. (from www.thejakartapost.com)

2006-09-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

Indonesia probes possible bird flu cluster in family

(Sep. 26, 2006) JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is investigating a possible cluster of bird flu cases after a man died and his brother and sister were hospitalized, one of them testing positive for bird flu, a doctor said on Tuesday.

The man, 25, died on Sunday with bird flu symptoms after being treated at a Christian hospital in Bandung, the capital of West Java province, said Hadi Yusuf, head of the bird flu ward at the city's Hasan Sadikin hospital.

The dead man's brother, 20, and sister, 15, were being treated in Hasan Sadikin hospital and tests carried out by a government laboratory showed the surviving brother had bird flu, Yusuf said.

It was not clear if samples from the dead brother had been taken for tests when he was treated, the doctor said.

"The condition of the (other) brother is not good. He's on a ventilator," Yusuf told Reuters by telephone.

Results for the girl were expected on Wednesday, he said.

The brothers often bought dead chickens to feed their dog, but the girl had no known history of contact with chickens, the doctor said.

"If it is true that the youngest did not touch chickens at all and she had bird flu, we need to suspect she got it from the brothers," he said.

But he expressed disappointment at the slow flow of funds pledged by international donors to Indonesia for the effort.

Health experts and scientists say it is crucial to control the virus from spreading in poultry to limit the chances of more people contracting the disease. The more it spreads, the greater the risks of the virus mutating into a form that can easily pass between humans.

2006-09-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

WHO names experts who will advise when pandemic risk appears to be rising

(Sep. 25, 2006) The World Health Organization has announced the membership of the panel of experts it will turn to for advice if it believes the threat of a flu pandemic is mounting.

The list of 20 or so international disease experts includes leading avian influenza expert Dr. Robert Webster of St. Jude's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., Dr. Ab Osterhaus, a veterinary virologist at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Dr. Nancy Cox, director of the influenza division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Dr. Theresa Tam, director of the Public Health Agency of Canada's respiratory infections division, is also on the committee, which convened for the first time Monday in Geneva.

The panel's mandate is to advise the director general of the WHO whenever it appears that there has been a change in the risk of a flu pandemic emerging. This group would review the evidence on patterns of infection and possible human-to-human spread and issue a recommendation on whether it believes it is time to change the pandemic staging level.

The final decision on whether to move up - or down - the pandemic alert ladder rests with the director general.

The WHO's pandemic phasing document is a six-step scale from no known pandemic threat (Phase 1) to a full-blown pandemic (Phase 6). The WHO's current assessment is that the world is in Phase 3 - a novel flu virus that has pandemic potential is causing sporadic human cases but only very limited human-to-human spread.

Evidence of some clustering of cases of human infections of H5N1 avian flu virus in Indonesia and elsewhere this year has led to questions from some quarters about whether the WHO ought to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 4, characterized as "evidence of increased human-to-human transmission."

This new committee would be the body that would advise on that issue, if asked. But Monday's meeting was not called for that purpose, WHO officials have said. Instead, this meeting is a chance for the experts to hammer out a procedural framework for future deliberations.

Membership is drawn from the six administrative regions of the World Health Organization: Africa, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific.

Other members of the task force include Dr. Maria Zambon from Britain's public health agency; Dr. Martin Cetron, head of the global migration and quarantine division at the CDC; Masato Tashiro, director of Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases; and Russian virologist Dmitri Lvov. (from The Canadian Press)

2006-09-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Indonesia records 51st bird flu fatality following boy’s death

AKARTA - A 9-year-old Indonesian boy who died shortly after being admitted to a Jakarta hospital has tested positive for bird flu, bringing the country’s human toll from the H5N1 virus to 51, health officials said on Monday.

The boy, from Pondok Pinang suburb in southern Jakarta, died less than an hour after being admitted to Sulianti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital last week, which is designated to treat suspected bird flu cases, said Ningrum, an official at the Indonesian Health Ministry’s bird flu monitoring centre.

‘The boy was admitted ... at about 9:15 p.m. on September 22 and died at around 10 p.m. on the same night,’ Ningrum told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The boy had already spent two days at a police hospital in Jakarta, Ningrum said, adding that tests from two laboratories confirmed he was infected with the avian influenza virus.

The boy had recently been in contact with chickens infected with the virus, said other health ministry officials.

Indonesia has the world’s highest death toll with 51 fatalities from 67 confirmed cases.

Most of the victims had direct or indirect contact with chickens, but scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans, sparking a global pandemic that could kill millions.

The highly pathogenic virus has spread to 29 of Indonesia’s 33 provinces since being discovered here in 2003, killing millions of birds. (from www.khaleejtimes.com)

2006-09-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

World Bank clears $13 million to fight bird flu in West Bank and Gaza

(Sep. 22, 2006) The World Bank has approved a $13 million (€10.1 million) grant to help combat the threat of the deadly bird flu in the West Bank and Gaza, the development institution announced Friday.

The money will be used to help minimize any threats of the bird flu posed to people from the area's domestic poultry industry, it said.

The money "will assist the Palestinian Authority to improve their readiness and protect the citizens from a potentially devastating threat as the migration season is around the corner," said Arif Zulfiqar, head of the World Bank's department's that handles grant applications.

The World Bank said that in April the bird flu virus was confirmed across eight locations in Gaza.

"The proximity of outbreaks in neighboring countries, coupled with a large volume of bird migrations, increases the probability of a spread of the virus among domestic poultry and thus places the West Bank and Gaza at high risk," the development bank said.

The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 144 people worldwide since it started ravaging poultry stocks in Asia three years ago, according to the World Health Organization.

Most of the human deaths from bird flu have been linked to close contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily spread from person to person and spark a worldwide pandemic.

Of the $13 million being provided in Friday's announcement, $3 million (€2.3 million) is coming from the World Bank's Avian and Human Influenza Facility, a multidonor financing mechanism set up earlier this year, while the remaining $10 million (€7.8 million) is coming from the World Bank's own resources. (from www.iht.com)

2006-09-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

WHO takes bird flu as top health danger

(Sep. 22, 2006) Avian influenza remains the No. 1 danger for global public health, said Richard Nesbit, World Health Organization's Acting Regional Director for the Western Pacific, on Friday.

He made the remarks at the conclusion of WHO's Western Pacific Region meeting held in Auckland, New Zealand.

The WHO (World Health Organization) 57th annual meeting calls on its member countries to step up their defenses against emerging diseases, including bird flu, and to devote more resources to counter the growing threat from noncommunicable diseases.

Earlier this week, Nesbit urged member country delegates to do more to prepare for an outbreak of bird flu, saying no nation would be immune.

He said WHO lacked about half of the funds needed to help countries prepare for and fight bird flu.

WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said many countries did not have the money or resources to implement full emergency plans.

The five-day meeting on Sept. 18-22 also endorsed a regional strategy designed to stem the exodus of health care workers from poorer countries in the region to more affluent nations.

Other issues examined included universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and control of tuberculosis, and program updates on measles elimination, hepatitis B control and polio eradication, as well as tobacco control, mental health and environmental health.

The 58th session of the Regional Committee for the Western Pacific will take place in South Korea, in 2007. (from chinaview.cn)

2006-09-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Indonesian boy dies of bird flu

(Sep. 22, 2006) JAKARTA (Reuters) - An 11-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, the health ministry said Friday, taking the country's death toll from the disease to 50.

The boy died on Monday at a hospital in Tulungagung in East Java province, said Runizar Ruesin, the head of the ministry's bird flu information centre.

Tests by two local laboratories confirmed he had bird flu, he said.

"He had contact with dead chickens. Chickens have died in his house," Ruesin told Reuters, adding that the ministry would send officials to the area where the boy lived to investigate.

Indonesia has the highest bird flu death toll of any nation. Not including the latest death, the H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 144 people worldwide, the World Health Organisation says.

The H5N1 virus mainly affects birds but experts fear it could mutate into a strain capable of killing millions of people in a global pandemic.

Indonesia has been criticised for not doing enough to combat the disease, endemic in birds in most of the giant archipelago's provinces.

The United Nations bird flu coordinator, David Nabarro, said last week that Indonesia had made progress in its fight against the virus.

But he expressed disappointment at the slow flow of funds pledged by international donors to Indonesia for the effort.

2006-09-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Institutes to supervise bird flu in Southeast Asia

Health institutes in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and France will, late this year, start a four-year project on keeping surveillance on bird flu outbreaks among humans in Southeast Asia.

Under the project funded by the French Development Agency, Pasteur institutes in Vietnam's Ha Noi capital, central Nha Trang city and southern Ho Chi Minh City, China's Shanghai, France's Paris, and Cambodia, and a laboratory in Laos will reinforce their standard labs and national disease response networks, exchange data and specimens relating to bird flu, and put forth measures to contain outbreaks.

The total investment for the project stands at 6 million euros (over 7.6 million U.S. dollars).

Vietnam's Health Ministry has recently assigned 14 hospitals in major cities to closely supervise and promptly cope with any bird flu outbreaks among people. The hospitals and preventive medicine centers are to ensure the operation of disease surveillance systems around the clock, and the sufficient supply of facilities for treatment of bird flu patients.

To date, Vietnam has detected 93 bird flu patients, the ministry said on Wednesday, noting that it has seen no new human cases of infections since mid-November 2005. (from chinaview.cn)

2006-09-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Boy Was Country's Third Bird Flu Case: WHO

GENEVA (Retuers) - A three-year-old Iraqi boy in Baghdad has been confirmed as having survived a mild case of bird flu last March, the first confirmed human infection in the capital, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

"The Ministry of Health in Iraq has retrospectively confirmed the country's third case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus," the WHO said in a statement.

Initial testing on samples taken from the boy had been inconclusive, possibly due to their deterioration during shipment, but repeated tests using different methods has confirmed the presence of the virus, according to the United Nations health agency.

Iraqi officials said in March that the H5N1 virus had been found in poultry in Baghdad, but to date there had been no human case confirmed in the war-ravaged capital.

An Iraqi teenage girl and her uncle, both of whom died in January in the northern province of Sulaimaniya, were the country's first known human cases.

The WHO said on Tuesday that Iraq's outbreak was "now considered over." The disease affects mainly animals but experts fear the virus could mutate into a pandemic strain capable of killing millions of people.

The latest confirmed case brings the global total to 247 cases in 10 countries since 2003, with 144 deaths, WHO said.

2006-09-20T19:57:00.000-07:00

WHO lacks half the funds to battle bird flu

The World Health Organisation still lacks about half the funds it needs to help countries fight bird flu, the acting director-general said yesterday.

"We have still not been able to fill the gap. There's still a shortfall," Anders Nordstrom, acting head of the Geneva-based UN health agency, said.

"We still are able to respond when there are outbreaks, but to be able to really work with countries to build up good surveillance systems and information systems, we do need more resources."

Shortfall

Nordstrom said WHO needs $90 million (Dh330 million) to $100 million (Dh367 million) over a two-year period, but has only received about half of that amount.

He said countries themselves also need to come up with more funding to help strengthen surveillance and rapid response systems within their borders.

Nordstrom spoke on the sidelines of the annual WHO Western Pacific regional meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, which brings together health officials from across the Asia-Pacific to set the organisation's strategic agenda for coming years.

Bird flu and the fear of a global pandemic has remained a top item on the meeting's agenda for the third straight year. Health experts fear the H5N1 virus will mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.(from gulfnews.com)

2006-09-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Bird flu still threat, says WHO director

(Sep. 18, 2006) Bird flu remains a threat three years after scientists first raised alarms of a possible human pandemic, says the World Health Organisation's acting regional director.

Dr Richard Nesbit, speaking yesterday on the eve of the WHO's 57th regional committee meeting in Auckland, said as long as the avian flu virus remained in the environment, its threat to human life could not be dismissed.

Avian influenza and non-communicable diseases such as cancer will be among issues discussed when health officials from 27 countries meet at Aotea Centre today for the week-long meeting. Other items on the agenda include the emergence of multidrug resistant tuberculosis, prevention and control of HIV/Aids and the exodus of skilled health workers to wealthier countries.

But bird flu remains an ever-present threat to the region since it reappeared in 2003, spreading to Europe, the Middle East and Africa and leading to the culling of millions of domestic poultry.

With new poultry outbreaks in Cambodia and Thailand and the virus still claiming lives in Indonesia, fears are that the disease will reappear across Asia and elsewhere in the cooler months of the northern hemisphere. "In our view, the risk of a pandemic continues unabated," said Dr Nesbit.

He was, however, encouraged by the progress in planning, citing that the last human case in Vietnam was in November last year. "Scattered outbreaks" in poultry and wild migrating birds were still likely, he said.

"As long as avian influenza is endemic in the environment, there is a risk of a human pandemic."

The outbreak has infected 241 people and killed 141 around the world. Indonesia has had 60 cases and 46 deaths. (from nzherald.co.nz)

2006-09-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

Bird flu pandemic could cost $2 trln: World Bank

(Sep. 17 2006) SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A severe bird flu pandemic among humans could cost the global economy up to $2 trillion, the World Bank said on Sunday, sharply raising earlier estimates.

The comments came as a senior World Health Organization official said the threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus was just as real today as it was six months ago, even if the headlines were not as scary.

Jim Adams, vice-president for East Asia and the Pacific and head of the Bank's avian flu taskforce, said a severe pandemic could cost more than three percent of the global economy's gross national product.

"We estimate this could cost certainly over $1 trillion and perhaps as high as $2 trillion in a worst-case scenario. So the threat, the economic threat, remains real and substantial," he told reporters at the annual IMF-World Bank meetings in Singapore.

He said earlier estimates last year of about $800 billion in economic costs were basically written on the back of an envelope. But more recent financial modeling had revealed a sharper threat should the virus mutate and pass easily among people.

He said it was crucial to develop strong anti-bird flu programs around the world to strengthen health and veterinarian services as well as improve public education and transparency.

"We have been working in virtually all of the countries, developing countries, that have been affected by an avian flu outbreak, providing advice and financing in the development of projects to tackle the challenge," he said.

Financing totaling about $150 million had been committed for projects in 11 countries, ranging from Albania to Laos and Turkey to tackle the disease, which has killed at least 144 people since it re-emerged in Asia in 2003.

An additional $15 million in grant aid had also been finalized for cash-strapped Indonesia, Adams said, as part of a wider package to help that country control the virus. Bird flu has killed nearly 50 people in Indonesia, the world's highest national toll, and the virus is endemic in poultry in most provinces of the southeast Asian nation.

RISKS REMAIN

David Nabarro, the WHO's avian flu coordinator, said one only had to look at the resurgence of bird flu in Thailand and Laos in past months to understand the risks posed by H5N1.

"The only difference between now and six months ago is not that the problem doesn't exist, it is perhaps headline writers have got used to it," he told reporters when asked if bird flu had turned into the Y2K of the viral world.

Fears of mass computer breakdowns due to glitches associated with Y2K, the turn of the millennium in 2000, proved unfounded.

Nabarro expressed satisfaction at the way governments around the world had responded to bird flu and that country-specific programs were well under way in most, creating confidence for donors that their money would be well spent.

At a donors' conference in Beijing in January, nearly $1.9 billion was pledged. So far about $1.2 billion had been committed for projects and over $300 million disbursed as loans or grants.

Nabarro agreed there was a shortage of funds but it was crucial to focus on the fact that "we now have got in countries good ways of spending resources so we get results".

2006-09-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

U.S. offers more bird flu funding

(Sep. 16, 2006) JAKARTA: The U.S. pledged Friday to provide an additional US$3.2 million to help fight bird flu in Indonesia, which has recorded 49 deaths, the world's highest number.

Building on a $14.65 million bird flu prevention and control program, USAID will provide the $3.2 million for enhanced surveillance, response and prevention, the U.S. embassy said.

Of that amount, $2.2 million will be supplied in the form of personal protective gear and disinfection kits.

After meeting with Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, USAID Avian Influenza director Dennis Caroll said that the U.S. was pleased with the Indonesian government's redefined bird flu priorities. (from thejakartapost.com)

2006-09-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

S.Korea says 5 more infected with bird flu 2003-04

(Sep. 15, 2005) SEOUL - Five more South Koreans were infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus about three years ago but none of them developed any serious illnesses, officials said on Friday after recently completed testing on old samples.

South Korea, which did not have comprehensive testing at the time, sent samples of 318 poultry industry workers taken during an outbreak in late 2003 and early 2004 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2005 for further examination.

Of those workers, four South Koreans were infected, the CDC has said. The government said in February the four did not develop major illnesses.

The results prompted South Korean health officials to send samples to the CDC from another 2,109 people and of these, five were also infected, the health agency said on Friday.

"The five did not develop major illnesses and have no strain to transmit bird flu," the Korea Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

About 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu between December 2003 and March 2004, but no human cases were reported at that time.

All of the samples sent by South Korea to the United States were from people involved in the culling of about 5 million poultry.

There have been no reported cases of bird flu in South Korea since the 2003-2004 outbreak.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday two cases in Indonesia had been recognised retroactively, including one where human-to-human transmission could not be ruled out.

The latest number of cases globally stands at 246 since 2003 not including the South Korean cases, with 144 deaths. (from Reuters)

2006-09-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

Sudan reports bird flu outbreak

(Sep. 14, 2006) Juba - Authorities in autonomous southern Sudan said on Wednesday that they had confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry, with two other suspected cases of the virus potentially fatal to humans.

They said the outbreak, confirmed by laboratories in the federal capital, Khartoum, and Britain, had not infected any people, but had prompted an alert in neighbouring Uganda amid fears it could spread to humans.

Louis Morris Kyanga of south Sudan's ministry of animal resources and fisheries said the tests confirmed that several chickens from a residential backyard in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba had died from H5N1 on August 03.

Further tests 'are conducted'

He said: "We received the results of the tests, and unfortunately all the samples have proven to be positive", adding that further tests were being conducted on the carcasses of 18 ducks found in two backyards on September 09.

Kyanaga said: "Samples from those have been sent again to Khartoum and the United Kingdom, as we don't have the laboratory facilities here, but they are suspected to be avian flu just by the signs."

H5N1, which had killed nearly 140 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, was reported in northern and central Sudan in April, but had not spread to the south.

Sudan shared a lengthy border with Egypt, which had suffered more from bird flu than any other country outside Asia since the virus began spreading worldwide earlier this year.

Scientists 'fear global flu pandemic'

The only human case thus far reported in sub-Saharan Africa had been in the Red Sea state of Djibouti.

While the virus didn't spread easily among people, the chance of a mutation that would allow it to do so was heightened as more humans catch it from infected birds.

Scientists feared that if this occurred, a global flu pandemic with a massive death toll could result.

Africa was considered particularly at risk due to the close proximity between poultry and humans on small family farms such as the affected homesteads in Juba.

Kyanga said southern Sudan authorities were taking steps to contain the flu, but had not yet resorted to culling.

He said: "A surveillance team has been sent to the affected areas and there is a ban on the movement of birds." (from news24.com)

2006-09-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Indonesia records 49th death from bird flu

AKARTA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - A five-year-old Indonesian boy who died in March had bird flu, a health official said on Wednesday, raising the country's death toll from the virus to 49.

The boy died at Jakarta's Sulianti Saroso Hospital, the country's main bird flu treatment centre. He was from Bekasi on the eastern outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week recognised three more cases of bird flu in Indonesia, one from June and two dating to 2005. The boy has also been included after the WHO issued new definitions for human infections of the H5N1 avian flu virus, said Runizar Ruesin, head of the health ministry's bird flu information centre.

Prior to the recent revision of the WHO's definitions for H5N1 infection, the cases had not met the UN health agency's criteria for serologically confirmed avian influenza infection.

The Health Ministry said no one else in the boy's family was known to have been infected, although it was unclear how he caught the virus. Contact with infected poultry is the usual mode of transmission.

Indonesia has now recorded 64 cases of H5N1 infection. The national death toll is the world's highest.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, but scientists fear the virus, which has killed at least 143 people since late 2003, could mutate and pass easily among humans, possibly killing millions.

Indonesia has been criticised for not doing enough to combat the disease, which is endemic in birds in most of the country's 33 provinces.

The government has so far refused to conduct mass culling of poultry, citing the expense and logistical difficulties in capturing and killing millions of backyard fowl.

2006-09-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Study Shows Immediate Treatment Needed for Bird Flu Cases

(Sep. 12, 2006) Avian flu kills in much the same way the global flu pandemic of 1918 did, by drowning victims in fluid produced in their own lungs, a new study has found. The study also suggests that immediate treatment with antiviral drugs is crucial, because the virus reproduces so quickly that, if not suppressed within the first 48 hours, it tends to push victims into a rapid decline to death.

“The paradigm ‘hit hard and hit early’ probably is very true for H5N1 influenza,” said Dr. Menno D. de Jong, an Oxford University virologist and the study’s lead author. However, he added, because the body’s own immune response does part of the damage, doctors should consider giving anti-inflammatory drugs along with antivirals like Tamiflu.

Although the results of the relatively small study are precisely what flu experts had predicted from laboratory work, Dr. Anne Moscona, a professor of pediatrics and immunology at the Weill Cornell Medical College, called it a “major advance,” because so little clinical information had previously been gleaned from the 241 known cases of the disease.

Many of those cases have been in rural villages in Asia, where victims pick it up from backyard chickens and are buried before the virus that killed them is even identified. Provincial hospitals have done few autopsies and little genetic analysis.

This study, which appears in the October issue of Nature Medicine, was led by an Oxford research team in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and compared 18 people with the A(H5N1) avian flu in 2004 and 2005 to 8 people infected with seasonal human flus.

It found that the avian flu patients, and particularly the 13 who died from it, had unusually high levels of the virus in their bodies. Consequently, they also had high levels of the chemicals, known as cytokines and chemokines, that set off the immune system’s inflammatory response.

Those chemicals, some of which are produced in cells lining the narrowest passages in the lungs, draw in white blood cells to attack invaders. But doing so too vigorously can flood the lungs, causing deadly pneumonia.

The effect, known as the “cytokine storm” is the leading theory as to why so many young, previously healthy people died in the 1918-19 pandemic, known as the Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions of people. Seasonal flus tend to kill the very old and very young, who usually die from bacterial infections that develop days after the milder flu virus has irritated their lung tissue.

The avian flu virus was easier to detect in throat swabs than in nasal swabs, Dr. de Jong said, which is the opposite of how seasonal flu is detected, and useful for doctors doing flu tests. And the virus was found in rectal swabs, which is important for hospitals to know because it means diarrhea, common among flu patients, can also spread the disease.

Flu experts were surprised that such high concentrations of the virus were found in nose and throat swabs. Earlier studies had suggested that the avian flu is not easily transmitted between humans because, unlike seasonal flu, it attaches primarily to receptors found deep in the lungs.

Dr. de Jong said there could be several explanations: the throat swabs could have picked up virus coughed up from the lungs. Different receptors are spread up and down the breathing tract. And it is possible — though unproved — that some people may simply be born with receptors more amenable to the virus. That theory has been offered by epidemiologists who note that, even in villages where all the chickens are sick, human outbreaks tend to cluster in families.

The study also showed that some of the flu strains isolated in Vietnam had particular genetic changes that virologists have been watching for, fearing that these changes would make them more lethal.

But those changes appeared in only some patients, and in those who died as well as those who lived, “so I wouldn’t make too much of it,” Dr. Moscona said.

Henry L. Niman, a Pittsburgh biochemist who has been tracking viral changes and raised earlier alarms about E627K, agreed.

“Lethality in the virus may rely on several changes,” he said. “But it’s got several different paths to the same end. That’s what makes it so efficient.” (from The New York Times)

2006-09-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Southern Vietnam to check passenger temperature to prevent bird flu

(Sep. 12, 2006) Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh City has assigned its International Quarantine Center and the Tan Son Nhat International Airport to check body temperature of international arrivals to the locality amid recent bird flu outbreaks in some countries, local media reported Tuesday.

Remote temperature-measuring machines using infra-red rays and specialized thermometers are installed, ready to operate around the clock, newspaper Agriculture said.

Those who have temperature of over 38 Celsius degrees will be invited to enter isolation rooms for bird flu diagnosis.

Vietnam's Health Ministry has assigned 14 hospitals in major cities to closely supervise and promptly cope with any bird flu outbreaks among people. The hospitals and preventive medicine centers are to ensure the operation of disease surveillance systems around the clock, and the sufficient supply of facilities for treatment of bird flu patients.

The Vietnamese government has recently instructed state agencies and localities nationwide to intensify prevention of and fights against bird flu, including placing a temporary ban on import of live poultry and related products from countries hit by the disease.

Bird flu outbreaks, starting in Vietnam in December 2003, have killed and led to the forced culling of dozens of millions of fowls. The last outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the country was in December 2005, according to the Department of Animal Health under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

To date, Vietnam has detected 93 bird flu patients, the Health Ministry said on Monday, noting that it has seen no new human cases of infections since mid-November 2005. (from Xinhua)

2006-09-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Give city residents bird flu jabs first, say researchers

(Sep. 12, 2006) City residents should be the first to receive treatments or vaccinations against major transmissible disease outbreaks, an infectious disease scientist from the University of NSW says.

The implication for this country is that city residents should receive bird flu vaccinations before their rural counterparts if an outbreak of the deadly disease were to hit Australia, David Wilson, who led the team the team conducting the research, told smh.com.au today.

The scientist, who specialises in HIV intervention strategies in Africa, said this would be the most effective way of containing the risk to the community.

"The capital cities of every state should come first because they act as the major hub of transmission," Dr Wilson said.

"If we can stop it while it's mainly in cities, hopefully that would prevent it reaching out to rural areas."

This would reduce the ethical dilemma that would arise if city residents were given priority over Australians living in the bush.

The research findings, published today in the US scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, were based on a study of the HIV-AIDS crisis in South Africa.

A quarter of that nation's AIDS-related deaths and infections could be averted within four years if the limited supply of anti-retroviral therapies was distributed inequitably, said the researcher, who is now based at the university's Centre for Vascular Research.

He conducted the AIDS research when he was working at the University of California Los Angeles, along with Professor Sally Blower and Dr Jim Kahn of the University of California San Francisco.

"The South African Government is facing a moral dilemma," Dr Wilson said.

"We have shown it is most efficient to distribute the drugs to the cities only, leaving rural areas even more disadvantaged."

The findings showed that 1400 lives would have been saved and 15,000 new infections prevented in just one province in South Africa by 2008 if the city-focused strategy had started in 2004.

Applying this methodology to Australia, concentrating the distribution of bird flu vaccines in cities would be "far more effective at containing the outbreak".

The deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza has devastated chicken and other poultry flocks in parts of Asia, hitting Thailand and Vietnam hardest.

The only human deaths so far have been people who have had close contact with sick birds, but there are fears the virus could mutate so it could spread from person to person. (from www.smh.com.au)

2006-09-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

Vietnam prepares for potential bird flu outbreaks among humans

(Sep. 11, 2006) Vietnam's Health Ministry has assigned 14 hospitals in major cities to closely supervise and promptly cope with any bird flu outbreaks among people, according to local newspaper Labor on Monday.

The hospitals and preventive medicine centers are to ensure the operation of disease surveillance systems around the clock, and the sufficient supply of facilities for treatment of bird flu patients.

The ministry said if the outbreaks spread, general hospitals in provinces had to form an isolation area at their infectious disease departments, and mobilize healthcare workers and equipment from first aid and pediatrics departments. Each hospital should set aside 10-20 beds for receiving bird flu patients.

The Vietnamese government has recently instructed state agencies and localities nationwide to intensify prevention of and fights against bird flu, including placing a temporary ban on import of live poultry and related products from countries hit by the disease. It has urged relevant ministries and People's Committees of localities to speed up bird flu vaccination among fowls nationwide, and maintain operation of anti-bird flu steering committees at all levels in preparation for potential outbreaks of bird flu among both fowls and humans.

Bird flu outbreaks, starting in Vietnam in December 2003, have killed and led to the forced culling of dozens of millions of fowls. The last outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the country was in December 2005, according to the Department of Animal Health under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

To date, Vietnam has detected 93 bird flu patients, the country 's Health Ministry said on Monday, noting that it has seen no new human cases of infections since mid-November 2005. (from Xinhua)

2006-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

WHO Confirms 48th Human Bird Flu Death in Indonesia

(Sep. 11, 2006) The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed another human fatality from bird flu in Indonesia, raising the country's death toll to 48.

The WHO says the latest case involves an eight-year old girl from the outskirts of Jakarta, who died in July last year. In a statement released Saturday, the organization says it re-examined the dead girl's blood samples after revising its rules for confirming bird flu cases.

The girl's 38-year-old father also died of bird flu in July 2005. The man was Indonesia's first confirmed human case of the virus.

The WHO is also confirming that a 45-year-old Indonesian man from central Java contracted bird flu in November last year, before recovering.

Both of the newly-confirmed bird flu cases have already been reported by the Indonesian Health Ministry.

Indonesia has recorded the highest number of bird flu deaths since a regional outbreak began in 2003. (By VOA News)

2006-09-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

EU approves two veterinary bird flu vaccines

(Sep. 11, 2006) The European Commission said Monday it has approved two vaccines to be used against the bird flu virus in the EU member states.

The vaccines, the first to be approved by the EU executive, are Nobilis Influenza H5N2, for use in chickens, and Poulvac FluFend H5N3 RG, for use in both chickens and Pekin ducks, the most common breed of duck used for commercial meat.

Both vaccines also offer protection against the H5N1 strain of the disease, which has decimated poultry stocks in Asia and killed humans, the European Medicines Agency said.

They are administered by injection and have been found to reduce the death rate of chickens exposed to infection.

The commission said there are no outbreaks of bird flu in domestic or wild birds in the EU at the moment, but the risk of the disease will increase in the coming weeks as the autumn migration period begins. (thestaronline.com)

2006-09-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

What is Bird Flu?

Avian flu (also "bird flu", "avian influenza", "bird influenza"), means "flu from viruses adapted to birds".

All known avian flu viruses belong to the species of virus called Influenza A virus. All subtypes (but not all strains of all subtypes) of Influenza A virus are adapted to birds, which is why for many purposes avian flu virus is the Influenza A virus (note that the "A" does not stand for "avian").

Avian flu viruses are noninfectious for most species. When they are infectious they are usually asymptomatic, so the carrier does not have any disease from it. Thus while infected with an avian flu virus, the animal doesn't have a "flu". Typically, when illness (called "flu") from an avian flu virus does occur, it is the result of an avian flu virus strain adapted to one species spreading to another species (usually from one bird species to another bird species). So far as we know the most common result of this is an illness so minor as to be not worth noticing (and thus little studied). But with the domestication of chickens and turkeys, we have created species subtypes (domesticated poultry) that can catch an avian flu virus adapted to waterfowl and have it rapidly mutate into a form that kills in days over 90% of an entire flock and spread to other flocks and kill 90% of them and can only be stopped by killing every domestic bird in the area. Until H5N1, this was basically the whole story of avian flu so far as anyone knew or cared (outside of the poultry industry). Now with H5N1, we have a whole new ballgame with H5N1 inventing new rules as it goes with behaviors never noticed before, and possibly never having occurred before. This is evolution right before our eyes. Even the Spanish flu virus did not behave like this.

As of 2006, "avian flu" is being commonly used to refer to infection from a particular subtype of Influenza A virus, H5N1, which can cause severe illness in humans who are infected. Currently, this strain is transmitted by contact with infected birds, and has been transmitted from one person to another only in a few cases. H5N1 flu is therefore not pandemic now and is not currently capable of causing a pandemic. Only if H5N1 mutates into a form that can be readily transmitted from one person to another could it cause a pandemic. (from wikipedia.org)