Vaccine producers’ resources meet pandemic demand

The surge in vaccines against influenza has surprised Governments across the world, with the stark admission that demand was unforeseen. Avian flu, which has emerged as a real threat to humans, has not only have added to the danger but has put vaccine manufacturers under increased pressure to meet the demand.

Concerns over growing cases of avian flu and the possibility of a flu pandemic have led to more people than usual seeking vaccination against seasonal flu, even though this would not protect against a pandemic strain.

News of how the UK government was caught short in the wake of an impending pandemic is surprising, considering the media hype fuelling public concerns about the bird flu pandemic threat.

The UK's Department of Health (DoH) currently meets vaccine manufacturers each year to discuss requirements based on previous demand and other factors, which need to be taken into account.

The understanding was based on 11 million people being at risk, but was recently revised to 13.2 million.

The Department of Health said the 14 million vaccine doses ordered by GPs from manufacturers and held in a contingency pot by government had all been used. The department has ordered 200,000 more doses, but those will not be available until 2006.

Influenza vaccines need to be changed, generally each year, to cope with mutations and this need to change vaccine formulations results in delays when flu breaks out.

Human flu is caused by two influenza strains, A and B. The killer bird flu virus H5N1 is a derivative of the A strain. The pandemic vaccine is being developed to tackle the A strain while the universal vaccine should act against A and B.

Vaccine manufacturers have certainly learnt the lessons of last year, when fingers were pointed at producers such as Roche and GlaxoSmithKline. This year has seen considerable time and effort invested into stepping up production to meet demand. Roche makes Tamiflu and GSK an inhalable drug called Relenza.

Samantha Christey, manager, GSK Biologicals World Wide, told In-PharmaTechnologist.com: "Recently GSK has invested $2 billion to expand the company's flu vaccine manufacturing capacity and to increase the production of its antiviral Relenza (zanamivir for inhalation). Both could help meet public health needs in the case of pandemic."

"The company expects to increase its North American manufacturing capacity with the proposed acquisition of ID Biomedical, a Canadian vaccine manufacturer," she added.

Special preparations to cope with the expected demand include an investment of € 94.3 million to double production capacity for its Influsplit/Fluarix flu vaccine at its Sachsisiches SerumWerk (SSSW) plant in Dresden, Germany.

Christey added: "GSK will build a second plant at the site and increase its annual production capacity from 35 million influenza vaccine doses per year currently, to 60 million doses annually before the end of this decade."

Meanwhile Roche's response to the flu outbreak has resulted in production reaching full capacity. Almost all governments have ordered it, and thus demand may not be satisfied.

Roche had commented that it might allow other companies or governments to make it under licence.

"More than 200 requests from third parties have been received to date and Roche production experts have already been in initial talks with 8 companies, amongst them large generic manufacturers and major pharmaceutical companies, as well as with a number of governments, including Taiwan and Vietnam," the company said.

"The goal is to be in a position to select potential partners for more detailed discussions by the end of November."

The company has also said it hopes to be able to step up its own annual production of Tamiflu to 300 million treatments, 10 capsules per treatment, by 2007. It has 12 outside suppliers that can perform parts of the process.

Other vaccine manufacturers such as Chiron are pursuing alternative ways, namely to make vaccines that might help prevent people from getting bird flu.

In October this year, they announced that it has initiated a Phase I/II study of an investigational cell culture-derived influenza vaccine in the United States.

Production of influenza vaccine using cell-culture technology may offer significant advantages over traditional manufacturing methods by eliminating the dependence on chicken eggs for production.

The removal of egg supply lead times would enable flexible and faster start-up of vaccine production in the event of an annual vaccine supply shortfall or an avian influenza pandemic.

However one major disadvantage is of course, cost. Changing to cell-based vaccine manufacturing could cost the company billions of dollars.

The other major vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi-Pasteur has entered a series of contracts designed to speed the production process for new cell culture influenza vaccines.

Only this month, Sanofi Pasteur, had entered into an agreement with the French Ministry of Health to produce pre-pandemic vaccine in 2005 against the H5N1 avian strain.

The deal would mean a stockpile of 1,400,000 doses of vaccine would be created. The agreement also commits the company to being ready to provide enough vaccine for 28 million people in the event of a pandemic being declared, once the actual virus strain responsible has been identified.

Sanofi Pasteur is the only vaccine manufacturer to participate in FLUPAN, an EU-funded collaboration that is intended to improve the level of pandemic preparedness in the EU.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sanofi Pasteur is to produce a vaccine to combat another strain with pandemic potential (H7N1) that will be used in a FLUPAN clinical study.

source: drugresearcher

Vaccine producers’ resources meet pandemic demand

The surge in vaccines against influenza has surprised Governments across the world, with the stark admission that demand was unforeseen. Avian flu, which has emerged as a real threat to humans, has not only have added to the danger but has put vaccine manufacturers under increased pressure to meet the demand.

Concerns over growing cases of avian flu and the possibility of a flu pandemic have led to more people than usual seeking vaccination against seasonal flu, even though this would not protect against a pandemic strain.

News of how the UK government was caught short in the wake of an impending pandemic is surprising, considering the media hype fuelling public concerns about the bird flu pandemic threat.

The UK's Department of Health (DoH) currently meets vaccine manufacturers each year to discuss requirements based on previous demand and other factors, which need to be taken into account.

The understanding was based on 11 million people being at risk, but was recently revised to 13.2 million.

The Department of Health said the 14 million vaccine doses ordered by GPs from manufacturers and held in a contingency pot by government had all been used. The department has ordered 200,000 more doses, but those will not be available until 2006.

Influenza vaccines need to be changed, generally each year, to cope with mutations and this need to change vaccine formulations results in delays when flu breaks out.

Human flu is caused by two influenza strains, A and B. The killer bird flu virus H5N1 is a derivative of the A strain. The pandemic vaccine is being developed to tackle the A strain while the universal vaccine should act against A and B.

Vaccine manufacturers have certainly learnt the lessons of last year, when fingers were pointed at producers such as Roche and GlaxoSmithKline. This year has seen considerable time and effort invested into stepping up production to meet demand. Roche makes Tamiflu and GSK an inhalable drug called Relenza.

Samantha Christey, manager, GSK Biologicals World Wide, told In-PharmaTechnologist.com: "Recently GSK has invested $2 billion to expand the company's flu vaccine manufacturing capacity and to increase the production of its antiviral Relenza (zanamivir for inhalation). Both could help meet public health needs in the case of pandemic."

"The company expects to increase its North American manufacturing capacity with the proposed acquisition of ID Biomedical, a Canadian vaccine manufacturer," she added.

Special preparations to cope with the expected demand include an investment of € 94.3 million to double production capacity for its Influsplit/Fluarix flu vaccine at its Sachsisiches SerumWerk (SSSW) plant in Dresden, Germany.

Christey added: "GSK will build a second plant at the site and increase its annual production capacity from 35 million influenza vaccine doses per year currently, to 60 million doses annually before the end of this decade."

Meanwhile Roche's response to the flu outbreak has resulted in production reaching full capacity. Almost all governments have ordered it, and thus demand may not be satisfied.

Roche had commented that it might allow other companies or governments to make it under licence.

"More than 200 requests from third parties have been received to date and Roche production experts have already been in initial talks with 8 companies, amongst them large generic manufacturers and major pharmaceutical companies, as well as with a number of governments, including Taiwan and Vietnam," the company said.

"The goal is to be in a position to select potential partners for more detailed discussions by the end of November."

The company has also said it hopes to be able to step up its own annual production of Tamiflu to 300 million treatments, 10 capsules per treatment, by 2007. It has 12 outside suppliers that can perform parts of the process.

Other vaccine manufacturers such as Chiron are pursuing alternative ways, namely to make vaccines that might help prevent people from getting bird flu.

In October this year, they announced that it has initiated a Phase I/II study of an investigational cell culture-derived influenza vaccine in the United States.

Production of influenza vaccine using cell-culture technology may offer significant advantages over traditional manufacturing methods by eliminating the dependence on chicken eggs for production.

The removal of egg supply lead times would enable flexible and faster start-up of vaccine production in the event of an annual vaccine supply shortfall or an avian influenza pandemic.

However one major disadvantage is of course, cost. Changing to cell-based vaccine manufacturing could cost the company billions of dollars.

The other major vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi-Pasteur has entered a series of contracts designed to speed the production process for new cell culture influenza vaccines.

Only this month, Sanofi Pasteur, had entered into an agreement with the French Ministry of Health to produce pre-pandemic vaccine in 2005 against the H5N1 avian strain.

The deal would mean a stockpile of 1,400,000 doses of vaccine would be created. The agreement also commits the company to being ready to provide enough vaccine for 28 million people in the event of a pandemic being declared, once the actual virus strain responsible has been identified.

Sanofi Pasteur is the only vaccine manufacturer to participate in FLUPAN, an EU-funded collaboration that is intended to improve the level of pandemic preparedness in the EU.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sanofi Pasteur is to produce a vaccine to combat another strain with pandemic potential (H7N1) that will be used in a FLUPAN clinical study.

source: http://www.drugresearcher.com

Total Number of Human Cases of Bird Flu Reaches 131: WHO

Since December 2003, the total number of confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu has reached 131, 68 of them fatal, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.

Vietnam, with 92 confirmed human cases and 42 deaths, remains to be the country most severely hit, according to the WHO website.

Vietnam is followed by Thailand, which has 21 cases and 13 deaths.

Indonesia has confirmed 11 cases and seven of them were fatal.

Cambodia has confirmed four cases, all fatal.

And in China, three human cases of bird flu has been confirmed.

(Source: Xinhua)

China reports another human death from bird flu

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday that a 35-year-old woman farmer had died of bird flu, its second confirmed fatality from the virus.

The Xinhua news agency, quoting the Health Ministry, said the woman had developed fever and pneumonia-like symptoms on November 11 after contact with sick and dead poultry in the eastern Anhui province. She died on November 22.

Xinhua said tests by China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had proved positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

A poultry worker from Anhui died of bird flu on November 10.

The health ministry has reported the new confirmed case to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It has also informed the authorities in Hong Kong, Macau and other countries.

H5N1 has killed 67 people in Asia since 2003, and both the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have warned of the huge economic costs of a human pandemic should the virus mutate into a form that can spread easily among people.

For now, the virus is hard for humans to catch.

"There is no proof of human-to-human transmission of bird flu in the world so far," Chen Xianyi, head of the contingency office in the Ministry of Health, told Xinhua in an interview.

Another confirmed case in China, a nine-year-old boy, survived infection while his dead sister is a suspected case.

Anhui province on Tuesday ordered all domestic poultry to be raised in pens or cages in a bid to curb the spread of bird flu.

Some 50 million Chinese households raise poultry, mainly in backyards, yet the average number of birds raised is just 19, he said, citing a Chinese government survey.

Canada orders cull of 60,000 birds

OTTAWA, Nov. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Sunday ordered the precautionary killing of about 60,000 birds at a commercial farm in the province of British Columbia where a H5 strain of bird flu was found.

Tests have confirmed the duck from a commercial farm in Chilliwack in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, has a non-lethal strain of avian flu, CFIA's veterinarian Cornelius Kiley told reporters at the town on Sunday.

Initial tests last week found a H5-type strain in the duck during routine tests. The CFIA immediately quarantined the farm which houses about 60,000 ducks and geese.

The federal agency is expanding the quarantine from one farm to50, and four farms within a five-kilometer radius of the affected farm are under special surveillance, Kiley said.

He said there was no indication the virus has spread beyond thefarm, which was also subject to an avian flu poultry cull last year, adding all indications are that the virus is not a "particularly nasty strain."

More testing will be done at the National Center for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg to confirm which strain was found.

On Saturday, the CFIA said two wild ducks in Manitoba have tested positive for H5N1 viruses, but not the dangerous strain that has spread from birds to people in Southeast Asia.

Officials called the viruses "low pathogenic," meaning they arenot viewed as a public health threat.

The viruses were isolated as part of a cross-country surveillance program to find what avian flu viruses are being carried by wild ducks in Canada. A H5N3 subtype was also isolated in two birds from the province of Quebec. Enditem

source: www.chinaview.cn

China reports its first cases of bird flu in humans; 1 dead

Beijing - China reported its first human cases of bird flu on the mainland Wednesday, including at least one fatality, as health workers armed with vaccine and disinfectant raced to inoculate billions of chickens and other poultry in a massive campaign to contain the virus.

The World Health Organization confirmed that the virulent strain experts fear could cause a worldwide flu pandemic has now infected humans in the world's most populous nation.

China's Health Ministry reported confirmed cases of infection with the deadly H5N1 strain in a poultry worker, who died, and a 9-year-old boy, who fell ill in central Hunan province but recovered, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said the boy's 12-year-old sister, who died, was recorded as a suspected case.

Experts worry the virus could spread and mutate in China because of its huge poultry flocks and their contact with humans. It also has migration routes for geese and other wild birds that might carry the disease.

"This is a psychologically telling moment for a country that has never had bird-flu cases in the past in humans," said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing. "This will drive home to citizens across the country that this can happen in our own backyards."

Officials had warned a human infection in China was inevitable after the country suffered 11 outbreaks in poultry over the past

month, which prompted authorities to destroy millions of birds.

Elsewhere in Asia, the H5N1 strain has infected at least 126 people and killed at least 64 of them since 2003, two-thirds of them in Vietnam.

Nevertheless, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in Geneva said the Chinese cases do not increase the risk of a flu pandemic because there has been no observed genetic change in the virus and no apparent spread between people.

She said it would not be surprising if more human bird-flu cases are confirmed in China.

"There are a lot of chickens infected and there's a lot of contact between humans and chickens in China," she said.

The Chinese government announced plans Tuesday to vaccinate all the country's 14 billion domestic fowl.

It wasn't clear how long that would take.

According to health officials, vaccinating chickens can require repeated injections and booster shots. State television showed workers at poultry farms jabbing chickens with injector guns.

By Joe McDonald
source: The Associated Press

Vietnamese scientists decode gene of bird flu virus

Vietnamese scientists have decoded the gene of H5N1 virus, paving the way for defining the variations and transmission mechanism of the bird flu virus, local newspaper Youth reported Wednesday.
Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute and the Regional Veterinary Centre in the southern city claimed Tuesday they have entirely decoded the gene of the virus.

Ngo Bao Long, of the Veterinary Centre, said they found not only the virus strain H5, but also two other strains of H3 and H4 in two samples from poultry.

Theoretically, when a fowl is infected with H5, H3 and H4 at the same time, the viruses can swap their genes to create a new virus strain, which can be more dangerous, he said.

Vietnam, in early 2006, is likely to churn out 20-50 million dozes of H5N1 vaccines to be used for poultry next year, said the biotechnology institute's director Le Tran Binh, adding his institute has completed procedures to produce the vaccines.

Meanwhile, the country's National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology is completing final procedures to produce H5N1 vaccines to be used for people. The Hanoi-based institute that has been involved in research into the vaccines since 2004, has proposed the health ministry use them on trial basis in early 2006.

Since December 2004, Vietnam has detected 65 human cases of bird flu infections, including 22 fatalities, according to the health ministry.

--Xinhua

source: (IANS)

Kuwait reports first bird flu; spreads in Asia

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - A flamingo found on a Kuwaiti beach had the strain of bird flu that has devastated poultry stocks and killed more than 60 people in Asia - the first known case of the deadly bird flu in the Arab world.

Also Friday, Thailand reported an 18-month-old boy was suffering from bird flu, and China reported two new outbreaks in poultry.

Mohammed al-Mihana of Kuwait's Public Authority for Agriculture and Fisheries said tests showed the flamingo had the deadly H5N1 flu strain, while a second bird - an imported falcon - had the milder H5N2 variant.

Al-Mihana said the imported bird, which had been quarantined at the airport, was a falcon, not a peacock as reported Thursday. Both the flamingo and falcon were destroyed.

Officials in this small oil-rich Persian Gulf state said there was no indication bird flu had spread to humans and they saw no need to slaughter domestic bird stocks. Poultry and eggs from local farms were free of the disease, they said.

Al-Mihana said teams would continue to fumigate farms and bird markets and are checking places where birds stop on their migration from Asia to Africa.

There have been worries about outbreaks of bird flu in the Middle East because the region sits on important migratory routes. Migratory birds earlier spread the virus to Russia, Turkey and Romania.

The H5N1 strain has generated fears of a pandemic should it mutate into a form transmissible among humans. So far, humans have caught the virus only from infected birds.

The ailing Thai toddler was recovering in a hospital. His family's house in a Bangkok suburb was also home to three fighting cocks and a chicken, Dr. Thawat Suntarajarn said. All the birds died soon after the toddler was hospitalized, Thawat said.

Twenty-one people in Thailand have caught bird flu, and 13 have died.

China on Friday reported additional outbreaks - the seventh and eighth in the country. No human cases have been reported in China.

One of the new Chinese outbreaks was in Liaoning province northeast of Beijing. It occurred Sunday and killed 300 chickens, the Chinese Agriculture Ministry said in a report on the Web site of the Paris-based International Organization for Animal Health. Some 2.5 million birds were reported destroyed.

The other bird flu outbreak occurred Nov. 2 in Jingshan County in Hubei province, killing 2,500 poultry and prompting officials to destroy more than 31,000 birds, China's official Xinhua News Agency said.

Vietnam - which has suffered two-thirds of Asia's human deaths from the virus - ordered its military and police to help fight the disease.

Also, North Korea issued a bird flu alert Thursday, exhorting people to unite against a potential outbreak, making chicken farms off-limits to outsiders and requiring feed transport vehicles to be disinfected.

H5N1 first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 but was curbed when authorities destroyed all poultry in the territory. It re-emerged in December 2003 and has recently spread from Asia to Europe.

By DIANA ELIAS
Associated Press Writer

Italy finds mild form of feared virus in duck

ROME - Italy has found a form of the H5N1 virus in a wild duck, but the Health Ministry said on Thursday it was not dangerous and bore no relation to the strain of Asian avian influenza that has killed more than 60 people.

The H5N1 virus was identified on Wednesday in a testing centre in northern Italy, the health ministry said. It added the virus was genetically similar to strains frequently found among wild waterfowl in Europe, and not highly pathogenic.

"There is no alarm. There is no new concern," ministry official Elisabetta Alberti Casellati said.

"The case of H5N1 identified yesterday ... has nothing to do with the cases of Avian influenza registered in Asian countries, because it deals with a low pathogenic strain."

The virus was found in only one bird in the more than a thousand tested so far, the ministry said.

The testing centre said in a statement that the wild duck carrying the strain of H5N1 was identified in Modena province in northern Italy. It said the virus was "unaggressive" and "not dangerous to humans".

The bird was tested after a hunter had killed it.

Italy has reported no cases of the deadly Asian avian flu virus, which is endemic in poultry across Asia. It has been found in birds in eastern Europe and there are fears migrating flocks could spread it around the globe.

More than 60 people have died from bird flu and scientists fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans and cause a global flu pandemic that could kill millions.

An official at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation told Reuters it was possible for Italy to have registered a form of the H5N1 virus that had no relation to the Asian strain.

"That is possible. When we look at H5N1, not all of them are the same," said Juan Lubroth, a senior officer at the FAO's animal health service.

"What you would need to look at is some sequencing analyses to look at the genes the virus is carrying."

- REUTERS

Bird flu confirmed in Kuwait, first Mideast case

LONDON (AFX) -- A case of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza has been confirmed in Kuwait, the first such case in the Middle East, the BBC reported on its Web site. Tests on a migratory wild flamingo found last week on a Kuwaiti beach showed it had the H5N1 strain, while a falcon found in a shipment at Kuwait Airport had the milder H5N2 strain. Both birds have reportedly been destroyed to contain the virus, according to the report

This story was supplied by MarketWatch. For further information see www.marketwatch.com

For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com

Another patient found with avian influenza symptoms in Thailand

BANGKOK, Nov. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- A 30-year-old man in Thailand's eastern province of Rayong is suspected of having contracted bird flu and is under close surveillance in hospital there, according to provincial health authorities.

He was diagnosed with flu-like symptoms on Nov. 7.

Although he has no direct contact with live chickens or with chicken carcases, he ate a soft boiled egg, became ill, and when he went to hospital his blood sample was sent to a laboratory for testing.

Meanwhile, laboratory test results of a nine-year-old girl in Ranod district of the southern Songkhla Province show no indication of the H5N1 avian flu virus, according to the Thai NewsAgency.

There was fear earlier that the child was infected with the H5N1 virus because she had been in direct contact with a chicken which died of an unknown cause.

As Ranod district is the biggest producer of duck eggs in the country's southern region, public health officials have conducted random checks at 90 duck farms to ensure there is no outbreak of bird flu in the area. Enditem

WRAPUP 2-Bird flu spreads further in Asia

BEIJING, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Three Asian nations reported new outbreaks of bird flu in poultry on Thursday, a day after health experts unveiled a $1 billion global plan to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

China, Vietnam and Thailand said they had more outbreaks as the region heads into the northern winter, when the H5N1 avian flu virus seems to thrive.

Vietnam, where the virus has killed 42 people, will send soldiers and police to help contain avian flu. Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat urged provincial authorities to do more.

"We must launch a campaign to build each hamlet, each commune into a stronghold for fighting the epidemic," Phat was quoted as saying in Nong Nghiep Vietnam, a newspaper run by his ministry.

"In an emergency, the army will be deployed to isolate the infected area," he said.

Adding to the unease, the sudden death of a flock of ducks also suggested a more virulent strain was at work, another Vietnamese official said.

A highly pathogenic form of the H5N1 virus is endemic in poultry across Asia, where it is known to have infected 124 people and killed 64. Indonesia reported another death on Wednesday, but the cause is still subject to final test results.

The virus has been found in birds in eastern Europe and there are fears migrating flocks could take it to the Middle East and Africa.

Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, just like human influenza. If it does, millions could die because they would have no immunity.

RAPID RESPONSE PROMISED

Chinese state media reported two new outbreaks in poultry in the northeast, bringing the total number of outbreaks to six since the start of last month. Thailand said tests confirmed the presence of H5N1 in two provinces next to the capital Bangkok, a city of 10 million people.

Health and veterinary officials from around the globe announced a strategy on Wednesday aimed at rooting out bird flu among poultry and stopping it from spawning a pandemic.

"What is important to me is there has been consensus and clarity, (and) much better coordination. We'll be much quicker to control avian influenza as a result," David Nabarro, the U.N.'s chief bird flu coordinator, told reporters after the meeting at the World Health Organisation in Geneva.

The strategy aims to bolster early warning systems, strengthen veterinary services, make it easier for rich and poor nations alike to get antiviral drugs and step up research into pandemic vaccines.

HUNGARIAN REHEARSAL

Hungary gassed around 200 chickens on Thursday in a rehearsal of its the ability to deal with an outbreak of bird flu, which has been spread to neighbours Romania and Croatia by migrating flocks.

An outbreak would trigger the gassing of infected flocks and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation if it is not contained, according to the plan.

"It is the economic damage that would be huge here," Hungary's Chief Veterinarian Miklos Suth told Reuters.

Italy has found a form of the H5N1 virus in a wild duck, but the Health Ministry said on Thursday it was not dangerous and bore no relation to the strain of Asian avian influenza.

The H5N1 virus was identified on Wednesday in a testing centre in northern Italy, the health ministry said. It added the virus was genetically similar to strains frequently found among wild waterfowl in Europe, and not highly pathogenic.

"There is no alarm. There is no new concern," ministry official Elisabetta Alberti Casellati said.

(For more stories, pictures and video on bird flu see http://today.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage2.aspx?src=cms)

(Additional reporting by Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi, Vissuta Pothong in Bangkok, David Evans and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Andreas Gergely in Tetelen, Hungary, Phil Stewart in Rome)

By Ben Blanchard

Bird flu could cut oil demand by 7 mln bpd-US group

LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - If bird flu mutates into a major pandemic, global oil demand could plummet by as much as 7 million barrels per day as people refrain from travelling, a U.S. energy consultancy firm said on Thursday.

PIRA Energy Group predicted that a bird flu pandemic that infected 20 percent of the world's population and killed 5 million people could wipe out a year's worth of global oil demand, or 7 million barrels per day for a quarter.

World oil use is currently about 85 million barrels per day, according to data issued by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Under such a scenario, PIRA said all modes of travel would be drastically reduced worldwide due to fears of contracting the disease.

"This is something worth worrying about," the firm said in a report. "Even a low probability event of such consequence cannot be ignored and must be factored into one's projected risks to oil prices."

Goldman Sachs earlier this week forecast a bird flu pandemic could reduce energy demand by a million barrels per day.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has so far led to the slaughter of millions of birds in Asia and has killed more than 60 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.

Bird flu exercise plan

BIO-SECURITY and animal health experts are preparing for a bird flu pandemic to sweep the south-west later this month albeit as a massive mock exercise.

Exercise Eleusis is a Federal Government initiative aimed at testing the country's preparedness for a possible outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.

The disease has killed 60 people in Asia since 2003.

The exercise will start on November 29, day five of a theoretical outbreak at Murray Bridge in South Australia.

It will conclude on December 1. The Standard understands the exercise will simulate bird flu sweeping right through the south-west to the Mornington Peninsula before heading north towards Sydney.


While Exercise Eleusis is classified as ``desktop'' and has no field component, the mock-up will involve theoretical actions such as road closures and other containment measures.

Hundreds of players in Victoria alone, including Department of Primary Industries, Warrnambool bio-security and emergencies manager Michael Boyd, will respond.

``Several other people from other animal health fields across the south-west will be involved, people with primary roles in emergency management,'' he said.

``My primary role will be looking at how the overall response works in terms of the coordination between DPI and other agencies.''

Mr Boyd will be based at an emergency control centre in Melbourne with representatives from other government departments and the animal and health industries.

Federal Government spokesman Howard Conkey said the critical objective was to test how the agricultural industry integrated its response with the health industry. ``Both have clear ideas as to how to respond if the disease occurred in Australia,'' he said.

``The test is to see how well we integrate those responses ... Major players will have to investigate how it got to Australia, how to contain it and deal with ... food safety and all manner of things.

``The other objective is public communications because if something like this occurred the demand from the media, public and stakeholders like the poultry industry ... would be astronomical.
``This has been two years in the making.''

source: the standard

Avian flu situation worries Chinese leaders

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese authorities said that the country's avian influenza outbreaks aren't fully controlled and that use of substandard poultry vaccines could lead to disaster, while Indonesia has added another likely human case to its avian flu tally, according to news reports today.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the country is facing "a very serious situation" because avian flu has not been totally controlled, according to a Xinhua report. He made the comments while touring an area hit by avian flu in Liaoning province in the northeast. In the past, Chinese authorities typically have hastened to assure the public that outbreaks were under control.

More than 10 million poultry have been culled in the Liaoning outbreak, first reported last week, the story said. The outbreak, China's fourth this fall, has affected 18 towns in Heishan County.

In addition, Agriculture Minister Du Qingling angrily accused local producers of poultry vaccines of distributing substandard and fake vaccines, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report today.

Du said that because farms in the outbreak area are highly concentrated, the use of faulty vaccines could greatly increase the virus's spread. "The use of fake and shoddy vaccines will result in a disaster," Du was quoted as telling the China News Service.

Indonesian authorities are currently investigating allegations of substandard vaccine use in that country as well.

Indonesian girl tests positive
Indonesian officials reported today that initial tests point to H5N1 infection in the case of a 16-year-old girl who died this week, according to a Reuters report. Further tests are pending in Hong Kong.

The girl lived in an East Jakarta suburb near a bird market and had both chickens and pet birds at home, Reuters reported. However, initial investigation has shown no contact with infected birds or poultry, Hariadi Wibisono, a senior health ministry official, told Reuters. Investigations are ongoing.

WHO confirms Vietnamese death from H5N1

The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed that a 35-year-old Hanoi man who died Oct 29 was Vietnam's 42nd victim of avian flu.

Vietnamese officials announced the case yesterday, noting it was the first confirmed case in Vietnam since late July. Authorities also said the case occurred earlier than the first case of the winter flu season in Vietnam last year, which came in mid-December.

The case brings Vietnam's total reported cases to 92, for a 45.7% case-fatality rate among known H5N1 cases in humans. This is the lowest case-fatality rate among the four countries that have had human infections; Indonesia's rate is 55.6%, Thailand's is 65%, and Cambodia's is 100%. The total combined case-fatality rate from the 125 known cases and 64 deaths is 51.2%.

Another H5 outbreak in Japan
In Japan, a report yesterday said an H5 virus had been detected at a poultry farm north of Tokyo, prompting a decision to cull 170,000 more chickens.

Local officials said the virus had been found in two chicken pens at the farm in Ibaraki prefecture, according to an Associated Press (AP) report. The agriculture ministry had said a day earlier that the chickens only had antibodies to the virus.

The chickens probably had an H5N2 virus, according to officials quoted in the story. Japan has had several outbreaks of a low-pathogenic H5N2 virus in Ibaraki prefecture in the past few months. Last week H5 antibodies were found at several poultry farms in the region, prompting a decision to cull 180,000 chickens.

See also:

WHO report on H5N1 death in Vietnam
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2005_11_09/en/index.html

Global Action Plan on Pandemic Moves Forward

Delegates from more than 100 nations agree on urgency

Health officials from more than 100 nations agreed November 9 on the key elements of a global action plan to control avian influenza in animals, and in doing so, to limit the threat of a flu pandemic in humans.

A three-day meeting in Geneva ended with recognition of the urgency of providing assistance to the nations where a highly dangerous form of bird flu has been most widespread – primarily countries in Southeast Asia. The session called by the major international health organizations also expressed resolve to identify and respond to an outbreak of disease among humans as soon as it occurs.

This decision comes as the number of human infections rises for the viral strain H5N1. The World Health Organization (WHO) November 9 reported another human death from a form of avian influenza that has caused the deaths of more than 150 million birds through either disease or culling.

A total of 125 human cases have been recorded, 64 of them fatal. All the human cases of the disease have been reported in four nations so far, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia. Vietnam, with 92 cases, has the largest number of human cases.

These human cases have given rise to the fear that H5N1 will mutate to become contagious among humans who will have no immunity to this viral strain. Those are the conditions that could lead to pandemic influenza with the potential for millions of deaths, and illness so widespread that economic and social disruption result.

The key steps endorsed by the national representatives meeting in Geneva include:

• Control of the disease in birds with better veterinary services and emergency preparedness plans devised through greater assistance to affected nations;

• Disease surveillance to detect the emergence of disease, supplemented by improved laboratory capacity;

• Rapid containment achieved through better investigation of both animal and human outbreaks; and

• Development of pandemic preparedness plans and improvement in the capacity of health systems.

The International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, initiated by the United States in September, is working toward the same goals. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness Stewart Simonson outlined the U.S. concerns about disease surveillance in a presentation at the Geneva meeting. (See related article.)

For more information on U.S. and international efforts to combat avian influenza, see Bird Flu/Avian Influenza.

The text of the joint press release of the WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Organisation for Animal Health and the World Bank follows:

(begin text)

Joint News Release WHO/FAO/OIE/WORLD BANK
9 November 2005



Global influenza meeting sets key action steps, agrees on urgent need for financing

Geneva -- A global meeting has identified key components of a global action plan to control avian influenza in animals and simultaneously limit the threat of a human influenza pandemic.

More than 600 delegates from over 100 countries agreed that there is an urgent need for financial and other resources for countries which have already been affected by avian influenza, as well as for those which are most at risk, and to identify and respond to a human pandemic the moment it emerges.

In his conclusions to this historic meeting, Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said: "The world recognizes that this is a major public health challenge. WHO is ready to focus its resources to reduce the risk of a human pandemic. We have plans on paper, but we must now test them. Once a pandemic virus appears, it will be too late."

Experts and officials set out key steps that must be taken in response to the threat of the H5N1 influenza virus which is currently circulating in animals in Asia and has been identified in parts of Europe:

Control at Source in Birds

Improving veterinary services, emergency preparedness plans and control campaigns including culling, vaccination and compensation.

Assisting countries to control avian influenza in animal populations.

Surveillance

Strengthening early detection and rapid response systems for animal and human influenza.

Building and strengthening laboratory capacity.

Rapid Containment

Support and training for the investigation of animal and human cases and clusters, and planning and testing rapid containment activities.

Pandemic Preparedness

Building and testing national pandemic preparedness plans, conducting a global pandemic response exercise, strengthening the capacity of health systems, training clinicians and health managers.

Integrated Country Plans

Developing integrated national plans across all sectors to provide the basis for coordinated technical and financial support.

Communications

To support all of the above, factual and transparent communications, in particular risk communication, is vital.

Dr David Nabarro, Senior UN System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, said: "We must use all our assets and skills to the best effect, avoid duplication, share expertise, learn from our experiences and tune-up our ways of working. We must focus on support for existing country mechanisms and provide integrated global joint plans, programmes and monitoring."

The meeting discussed key financing needs for countries in the short-, medium- and long-term. According to an analysis presented by the World Bank, the needs of affected countries will potentially reach US$ 1 billion over the next three years. This does not include financing for human or animal vaccine development, for antiviral medicines or for compensating farmers for loss of income due to animals which have been culled.

Dr Louise Fresco, Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said "Many countries where the disease is endemic have already taken action but they are overwhelmed by the situation and require urgent assistance. Fighting the disease in animals is key to our success in limiting the threat of a human pandemic. We know that the virus is being spread by wild birds but we need more research to fully understand their role."

The meeting supported an urgent resource request for US$ 35 million to fund high-priority actions by WHO, FAO, and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) over the next six months. Additionally, surveillance, control and preparedness work in countries requires urgent funding.

Dr Bernard Vallat, the Director-General of the OIE, said, "The priority now must be to address the urgent needs over the next six months. OIE and FAO have identified the key priorities as evaluating and strengthening veterinary services, laboratory and surveillance capacity in affected countries and those most at risk. We must also provide support to the avian influenza network for diagnostic expertise and exchange of isolates with the WHO. I urge you all to remember that we are talking about an international public good."

It is vital to limit the risk of human exposure to the H5N1 virus and the consequent risk of an emergence of a new pandemic virus. WHO's urgent needs are focused on support for countries to improve vital surveillance systems, strengthen early warning systems and build communications capacity. "Time is of the essence," said Dr Margaret Chan, Representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza. "We must act now if we are to have the maximum possible opportunity to contain a pandemic."

"The minute there are more regions or countries with animal outbreaks or human-to-human transmission, the funding needs will increase hugely," said James Adams, Vice-President of the World Bank for Operations and Head of the Bank's Avian Flu Taskforce. "Based on our work here in Geneva over the past three days, we now have a strong business plan to take to the donors financial conference in Beijing in mid-January."

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

$1 Billion Bird Flu Plan

Geneva - Moving with unprecedented speed, a global conference on Wednesday unveiled an aggressive blueprint to tackle bird flu and strengthen preparations to cope with a pandemic among humans if the virus mutated into a contagious form.

"The world recognises that this is a major public health challenge," said World Health Organisation (WHO) director general Lee Jong-wook at the end of a meeting of 400 government officials, UN agencies, donors and experts in human and animal health.

"Once a pandemic virus appears, it will be too late," he warned.

The three-day conference agreed a programme to build warning systems to spot early outbreaks of avian influenza among birds and humans, to stockpile drugs and encourage vaccine research, backed by tighter cooperation at every level.

Up to a $1bn will be needed over the next three years to help poor countries shore up their defences, including $35m wanted immediately for action over the next six months.

Two-pronged plan

The two-pronged plan puts the emphasis on containing and then rolling back the virus on farms, with greater veterinary surveillance to detect outbreaks, preventative vaccination of poultry, culling of infected flocks and compensation for farmers.

For preparation in the event of a pandemic, the focus is on strengthening health monitoring systems, stockpiling of antiviral drugs to dampen the spread of an outbreak and exercises to train medical personnel and the public.

Experts acknowledged, though, that the $1bn figure was little more than a stab at quantifying costs.

It does not include the cost of stockpiling antivirals or compensating farmers for culled flocks, both liable to surge if the scare amplifies.

"These figures would go through the roof in the case of a pandemic," said World Bank spokesperson Phillip Hay.

The food and agricultural organisation, the world organisation for animal health and WHO suggested $80m in early help.

Contributions

After consultation, it was decided $35m would go for aid over six months, and the rest in medium-term assistance.

As for contributions, the Asian Development Bank said it could make another $300m available for poorer countries in Asia, in addition to $170m it has already earmarked.

France pledged $12m, mainly to help Africa.

The World Bank last week said it would make $500m available to help poor countries cope with the crisis.

But how, when and where such funding will be used is as yet unclear.

The speedy, ambitious action plan marks a break in the history of how mankind has tackled new diseases.

In the case of Aids and Sars, novel pathogens gained a vital foothold through delays in spotting them, bureaucratic delays or cover-ups and lack of funding.

David Nabarro, the UN's co-ordinator on flu, said: "There's consensus, clarity, there's much better communication.... there's cash, it'll come in China, there's much better co-ordination and all the countries that are involved in this activity are going to give it much more impetus."

"I think we'll be much quicker to control avian influenza as a result and if a pandemic starts there's a pretty good chance it will be smaller as a result of the work we've done in the last three days than it would have been otherwise."

64 dead

Sixty-four people have died since H5N1 erupted among Asian poultry flocks in 2003, according to a WHO toll and national figures.

About 150 million fowl have been slaughtered, and the economic bill is put at more than $10bn.

At present, H5N1's lethal stretch to humans is limited.

It is picked up by people who are in close proximity to infected birds, breathing in virus-laden nasal secretions or pulverised faeces.

In its present form, it is not very transmissible from human to human.

The big worry is that it could gain genes by mixing with conventional flu strains that would make it highly contagious as well as mortal.

In a worst-case scenario, tens of millions of people could die, as nobody would have immunity to the new agent.

Economic costs could be $800bn, according to a World Bank estimate.

source: news24

Flu Chips For PDAs

A novel "Flu Chip" developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder that can determine the genetic signatures of specific influenza strains from patient samples within hours may help world health officials combat coming epidemics and pandemics.

Tests last month on the new technology by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta showed the CU-Boulder Flu Chip can determine the genetic make-up of types and subtypes of the flu virus in about 11 hours, said CU-Boulder Professor Kathy Rowlen of the chemistry and biochemistry department. Current methods for characterizing flu subtypes infecting patients take about four days.

The Flu Chip is expected to be in wide use in laboratories within a year, said Rowlen, who has led the two-year CU-Boulder research effort.

Rowlen, who is working on the Flu Chip development with CU-Boulder chemistry Professor Robert Kuchta and a team of postdoctoral researchers and students, said they are conferring with CU's Technology Transfer Office and plan to make the Flu Chip genetic sequences freely available to interested researchers.

There currently are less than 200 facilities worldwide that provide detailed strain analysis of influenza, said Rowlen. Strain identification is critical for tracking emerging strains and in determining which flu strains are most likely to infect people the following year in order to develop annual, preventative vaccines, she said.

"This new technology should help provide better global influenza surveillance by making it easier for more laboratories to swiftly identify severe flu strains, which in turn may aid health officials to stem potential flu epidemics and even pandemics," Rowlen said.

The chip, which can be configured to test for all known flu virus strains as well as new variant strains, was evaluated for three primary subtypes of flu in the October CDC test -- the avian flu strain H5N1, and two of the most common human flu types worldwide in recent winters, H1N1 and H3N2. The chip was more than 90 percent accurate and will be tested again "side by side" with standard flu-virus culturing methods for accuracy and speed at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters next month.

"This was the first time a version of the Flu Chip was tested outside of our lab, and it exceeded our expectations," she said. The technology was developed with a $2 million, five-year grant to CU from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The Flu Chip fits on a microscope slide and contains an array of microscopic spots, Rowlen said. Genetic bits of information that are complimentary to known, individual influenza strains are "spotted" robotically in an array, where each row of three spots contains a specific sequence of "capture" DNA. Each spot is approximately one-hundredth of an inch in diameter. The microarray is then immersed in a wash of influenza gene fragments obtained from the fluid of an infected individual.

RNA fragments from the infected fluid bind to specific DNA segments on the microarray like a key in a lock, indicating both a match and that the virus signature is present, she said. The captured RNA is then labeled with another complimentary sequence that also contains a fluorescent dye, and such "hits" light up like a pinball machine when the chip is inserted into a laser scanner.

The Flu Chip also should be able to recognize mutations that might occur in avian flu H5N1, which has been spreading rapidly from bird to bird in Asia, Russia and parts of Europe, said Kuchta. While the avian virus does not now spread effectively from person to person, world health officials are fearful the strain will mutate and become transmittable between humans, possibly triggering a worldwide pandemic.

"If an unusual flu subtype surfaces that has characteristics of both avian and human flu types, we could detect it rapidly using this technology," Kuchta said.

Standard laboratory culturing techniques by the CDC and WHO currently take four days to five days to determine flu strains afflicting patients, said Kuchta. While commercial tests like rapid antigen testing can detect influenza in less than an hour, none provide genetic information about various flu subtypes, he said.

Rowlen said that within a few years, the technology could be downsized to fit into a hand-held portable device the size of a cell phone or PDA and taken into remote areas around the world to test for lethal strains of flu.

"We can make it small and simple enough to take into rural areas in places like the Congo, Cambodia or Indonesia that may lack lab facilities," she said. "One of our goals has been to address the needs of developing nations by providing an inexpensive, field-portable test kit for respiratory illnesses to the World Health Organization for global screening of respiratory illness."

Kuchta said the team hopes to cut down on the 11-hour virus identification process. "We are now looking at ways to amplify the fluorescent signal after we capture the RNA on the microarray, which could shorten the identification time to just a couple of hours," he said.

The flu chip also could be used to swiftly test for the avian flu virus at large, remote bird farms in Asia, Europe and Russia, said Kuchta. The chip also could be easily reconfigured to use for the global surveillance of any RNA virus, including SARS, measles, HIV and hepatitis C, the researchers said.

Other members of the Flu Chip team include CU-Boulder postdoctoral researchers Erica Dawson, Daniela Dankbar, Martin Mehlman and Chad Moore, graduate students James Smagala and Michael Townsend and undergraduate Amy Reppert. The group has been working on the project with CDC Influenza Branch Chief Dr. Nancy Cox and CDC researcher Catherine Smith.

http://www.colorado.edu

It's safe to eat chicken: agriculture

DEPARTMENT of Agriculture (DA) regional executive director Jindra Linda L. Demeterio said Tuesday that it is still safe to eat chicken despite the bird flu scare.

Demeterio dismissed news that a case of bird flu was confirmed in Escalante, Negros Occidental.

"The Philippines is still bird flu-free," she said.

"The Department of Agriculture, RFU 6 wishes to allay fears and concerns brought about by baseless text messages being circulated, claiming that a case of avian or bird flu has been confirmed in Escalante, Negros Occidental. There is no truth at all to these reports by text messages. It is still safe to eat chicken," she added.

Demeterio said the text messages could have been a misunderstanding of the mission carried by the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) team, which recently collected blood samples from domestic fowl in Barangays Washington and Cervantes in Escalante.

"The mission was part of the surveillance component of the nationwide Avian Influenza Protection Program (Aipp), and will be carried out every six months henceforth in identified areas nationwide."

Demeterio stressed that what is important is for everyone to be vigilant and cooperative in dealing the migratory birds, which could have been contaminated with bird flu and have the tendency to infect humans.

Migratory birds came from Siberia and traveled until China and Australia. But during winter, these birds migrate to other countries like Hong Kong and Cambodia and even in the Philippines where they can seek wet and swampy habitat.

Wet and swampy lands indeed attract these birds. Such lands abound in the Philippines.

Other identified migratory sites in Western Visayas released by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) include Mandurriao in Iloilo City; Hinaktakan, Leganes; Brgys. Tiwi, Lanas, Tinurian in Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo; Sampunong Bolo Wildlife Sanctuary, Sara,Concepcion, Ajuy, San Dionisio, Estancia, Balasan in Iloilo; municipalities of Jordan, Sibunag, San Lorenzo, Nueva Valencia in Guimaras province; Roxas City, Barangay Cudian, Ivisan, Sapian, Sigma in Capiz province; municipalities of Hamtic,Culasi, San Jose, Sibalom, San Remegio in Antique; Bago City, Valladolid, Barangay Tibsuk, San Enrique, Himamaylan, Ilog, Kabankalan, Sipalay, Hinobaan, Sagay Marine Reserve in Sagay City in Negros Occidental; and Batan, Altavas and Old Buswang , Kalibo in Aklan. "These are critical areas in Western Visayas," Demeterio said.

"There are lots of wetlands six meters deep below water in Roxas," Dr. Oscar Limoso, regional veterinary quarantine service chief said.

"People in these areas are urged not to approach migratory birds, which commonly converge in swamps and ponds. Unusual illness or death of these birds and local stocks should be reported right away to the DA. The DA-RFU 6 Hotlines are (033)337 5614 and (033) 337-0939. For DOH Bird Flu Hotlines: call 155 for Smart cell phone users. For text messages, type BF then send to 2960."

The problem confronting the DA in dealing with these foreign birds though is that, most people do not identify these birds from the natives.

Migratory birds, which are feared to carry avian flu, are herons/egrets, geese/ducks, gallinules/coots, shore birds-waders, gulls, terns and skimmers. These variety of birds are not foreign to Filipinos by name and by appearance, because the Philippines itself have these kinds of birds but are of different variety.

Demeterio said the DA would come up with pamphlets which show the differences between the foreign and native birds.

Dr. Nim Lim, chief of the Diagnostic Lab, Regional Animal Disease Office said "aratay" among chickens and other poultry animals cannot be associated with bird flu or avian influenza so as to inform the few who consider it both identical though "aratay" is also a type of flu.

Dr. Genoso explained that waterfowls are far more susceptible with avian flu because they carry 24 types of viruses. Bird flu can be contracted only through respiratory contact with infected birds. It was advised then that waterfowls, ducks and poultry animals should be strayed off migratory birds to avoid contraction of the said flu.

"We can't make these migratory birds possibly infected with bird flu to stay off of our lands but we can avoid being infected with its virus if we make our animals and ourselves stay away from them," Demeterio said.

source: sunstar By Lory Ann B. Bilbao

Bird Flu Must Be Eliminated Before Possible Mutation

Geneva, Nov 8 (Prensa Latina) Animal health experts called to take measures against avian flu before the virus is able to mutate and easily transmit among humans.

World Organization for Animal Health Director Bernard Vallat called for a "fight without quarter against the disease."

Scientists believe a flu outbreak in the world could kill millions of people, and that it is probable such a virus would come from avian influenza.

They cannot tell for sure if the deadly H5N1, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia and has been found in poultry in Europe, will be the strain.

In a meeting of international scientists and specialists at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Vallat asserted that without good administration there could not be an immediate, rapid reaction.

The specialist called for governments, veterinarians and farmers to use the experience of mad cow disease and aftosa.

source: hr/ccs/ecq/mgf

Avian Influenza Found In Japan

The Japanese Government has been forced to cull 170 thousand chickens after a H5 strain of the bird flu virus was detected at a farm north of Tokyo last week.

The Agricultural Ministry said Tuesday that chickens at Moriya Farm tested positive for antibodies for the virus, though no viruses had been found.

The cases were reported publicly until Tuesday because authorities wanted to prevent mass panic across the country.

Officials believe the chickens had the H5N2 strain of the virus, which is less virulent than the H5N1 strain that has killed at least 64 people across South East Asia.


Asian Development Bank (ADB) may increase bird flu funding

The ADB is mulling a major extension of it’s funding to fight avian influenza, including a 300 million boost in aid to compensate farmers.

170 million dollars for short term action has already been pledged to fund better surveillance of poultry flocks and other preventative measures.

ADB Vice President Geert van Linden says they may also ask donor countries to help fund specific schemes to shore up defences bird flu and strengthen preparations for a feared human pandemic that could erupt from the H5N1 avian virus.

Projects could include anti viral drugs stockpiling and vaccines as well as compensation for farmers.

Experts say that if governments offer little or no compensation, affected farmers are tempted to cover up outbreaks of bird flu or sell on infected birds, thus causing the disease to spread.

But the funding could also provide an incentive for farmers to purposely infect their flocks deliberately in order to get paid off.

The ADB last week estimated that if the virus mutated to infect humans, the cost for Asian economies could range from 99 billion to 283 billion dollars.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), another disease originating in Asia, killed fewer than 800 people in 2003, yet its economic tab has been estimated at more than 30 billion dollars worldwide.

source: sbs

Another human death from bird flu in Vietnam

HANOI: Calling bird flu a ``global threat,'' the EU's health commissioner called for a coordinated international response as Vietnam confirmed its 42nd human death from bird flu, its first in more than three months.

``No country can deal with it on its own. This is a global threat and needs a global response,'' said Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou during a press conference in Hanoi, his first stop on a four-country Southeast Asian tour to discuss efforts to contain the deadly strain of bird flu that has recently spread from Asia to Europe.

The European Union has pledged to give US$35.7 million to help Asia fight bird flu, and he said funds will be allocated following this week's first major international conference on bird flu and human pandemics in Geneva.

Putting in place preventive measures ``will be a costly exercise but must be viewed as an investment,'' said Kyprianou, who will also travel to Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Though he praised efforts made by the government, he acknowledged that Vietnam needs to upgrade its infrastructure hospitals and equipment to effectively detect and contain the disease.

The need for urgency was highlighted by Vietnam's announcement of the death of a 35-year-old man by bird flu. The man, who died at a Hanoi hospital on Oct 29, tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Nguyen Van Binh, deputy director of the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health.

Binh said the man was admitted to the hospital on Oct 26, four days after his family bought a prepared chicken from a market near his house in the Dong Da District of Hanoi.

Other family members did not show any symptoms of bird flu, he added. At least 63 people in Asia have been killed by the H5N1 bird flu virus since 2003.

Most of the deaths have been linked to direct contact with infected birds. Vietnam's most recent confirmed death was in July.

Vietnam will launch large-scale drills in the country's three main regions to test bird flu pandemic preparedness sometime in the second half of November, said Health Ministry spokesman Pham Tuan Hung.

Hung said the drills, which include treating patients, disinfecting the environment and operating mobile units, will be held in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and a major city in central Vietnam.

In northern Bac Giang province, some 60 kms northeast of Hanoi, more than 58,000 poultry have been culled over the past five days in three villages where outbreaks were reported more than two weeks ago, said Than Van Thuy, deputy director of the provincial animal health department.

Groups of poultry deaths were also reported in five other villages in the province, he said. ``We have been ordered to cull all the poultry in the flocks where birds died en masse,'' he said.

Tuesday's Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that Vietnam has ordered 25 million tablets of the antiviral drug Tamiflu from Swiss-based Roche Holding AG, enough to treat 2.5 million people.

The newspaper quoted Cao Minh Quang, director of the pharmaceutical administration department under the Ministry of Health, as saying talks with the company on a possible license for Vietnam to produce a generic version of the drug were still inconclusive.

Last month, Quang said Vietnam would go ahead and produce a generic version of Tamiflu with or without Roche's permission. Tamiflu is one of the few drugs that is believed to be effective against bird flu.

sorce: timesindia

Teamwork Urged On Bird Flu

Avian influenza is making the world a global village - or, more precisely, a global barnyard - in a way that demands international cooperation to a degree not seen previously on a health issue, experts said Monday as 600 people from 100 countries began a conference on how to prevent bird flu from becoming a human pandemic.

Wealthy countries will have to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for virus surveillance and testing, vaccine production and antiviral stockpiling, many delegates said. Developing countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, where the H5N1 bird flu virus has circulated since 1997, must create compensation programs so that farmers won't conceal outbreaks in their flocks.

In addition, several experts called for changes in the traditional ways poultry is raised and marketed in the developing world in order to put more distance between birds and their keepers. Scientists will also need to learn a lot more about the ecology of flu viruses in migrating wild birds, which apparently recently carried H5N1 from East Asia to Europe.

"We need to deal with this together. ... If one country is inadequately prepared, it is a threat to every other country," said Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organization for Animal Health, an international agency known by the French acronym OIE.

OIE is sponsoring the meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank. It is being held at WHO's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The potential effects of an influenza pandemic are enormous. WHO estimates that a pandemic comparable to the mild Hong Kong flu of 1968 could kill as many as 7.4 million people. If it were as lethal as the 1918 Spanish flu virus, which killed 50 million, the toll would be much, much higher.

In 2003, a short-lived and well-controlled outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused a 2 percent drop in Southeast Asia's gross domestic product (GDP) in a single quarter. A pandemic that lasted a year, as most do, would produce economic losses of $800 billion, said Milan Brahmbhatt, an economist with the World Bank.

The latest outbreak of the H5N1 strain, which began in December 2003, has cost Southeast Asia more than $10 billion and depressed its GDP by 1.5 percent. Vietnam and Thailand have each lost about 15 to 20 percent of their poultry stocks from death and intentional culling of infected flocks.

"The benefits of preventing or mitigating an outbreak are likely to be very high," Brahmbhatt told the delegates gathered in the round, wood-paneled assembly room at WHO's headquarters.

Virtually everyone agreed that, despite the 124 human cases and 63 deaths from the H5N1 strain since December 2003, the virus remains overwhelmingly an animal pathogen. However, the more animals that contract it, the more chances it has of developing mutations that might allow it to infect people more easily than it does now.

Large numbers of dead or dying birds also mean that more people will be exposed to the H5N1 virus, which could theoretically "reassort" with a human flu virus in an infected person, forming a hybrid with new characteristics.

"The control is at the level of the animal. The window of opportunity for doing that is still open. The virus has not yet reassorted or mutated," said Samuel Jutzi, an FAO official.

Intellpuke: "While the conferees were meeting, Vietnam reported another human death from the H5N1 virus. This is a good report by Washington Post staff writer David Brown. You can read it in context here.

source: freeinternetpress.com

Flu vaccine can be made faster - but not fast enough

GENEVA - Scientific advances will allow more rapid production of a vaccine to combat a pandemic strain of influenza if it develops from the current bird flu virus circulating in Asia, but production will still be too slow to protect everybody, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The global pharmaceutical industry can now produce 900 million vaccines within eight months of analyzing a new virus strain, said Klaus Stohr, who coordinates the WHO's global influenza program. But he said that would hardly serve the needs of the 6.4 billion people in the world.

"Three months after the emergence of a (human influenza) virus it will have spread to all countries around the world," he told scientists and other experts attending the global coordination meeting on bird flu and human flu.

In 1997, when the H5N1 bird flu strain first appeared in Hong Kong, it took the pharmaceutical industry two years to transfer the virus into a safe human vaccine prototype, a step that now takes as little as three weeks, Stohr said. That step is only the first stage to producing a vaccine.

Based on earlier mild pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s, WHO estimates that a mild pandemic would kill between 2 million and 7.4 million people and hospitalize an additional 28 million. It is assumed that a new flu virus will infect up to 35 percent of the population.

During the meeting, the United States proposed that plans to extinguish a pandemic before it can spread, be discussed in detail and committed to paper, and rehearsed.

WHO has said that if the emergence of a pandemic strain is detected early, experts may be able to squash it by rushing antiviral drugs to the region to stop the virus spreading. The United States said WHO should immediately convene a small expert group to thrash out details of the rapid response.

"The proposal is that we put together a small group in time to pull something together prior to the WHO's executive board meeting in January," said Bud Rock of the U.S. State Department.

By January, the WHO will have access to about 3 million antiviral treatment courses, and a number of countries are building up national stockpiles of the drugs, hoping they will combat a pandemic until a vaccine can be made and distributed.

Under the U.S. plan, the experts would decide a range of issues, including how the antivirals could be used most effectively once a pandemic hits, who would rush in and what would trigger their distribution.

Experts agree another human flu pandemic is a certainty. Scientists say it is also certain that the virus will come from bird flu.

What is unknown is whether the H5N1 bird strain that has ravaged poultry stocks in parts of Asia and appeared in Eastern Europe will be the culprit. However, it is the leading candidate and authorities are trying to stamp out the poultry outbreaks as rapidly as possible to reduce the opportunities for the virus to mutate into a form that can spread easily to and between people.

Although bird flu has recurred over the years, scientists have been watching the H5N1 strain since its impact on humans started to be noticed. In early 2004, officials announced that three people _ an adult and two children _ had died from the disease in Vietnam.

Since then more than 120 people, most of whom were in close contact with poultry, have come down with the disease in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia, WHO says. More than half of the people infected have died.

Since then more than 150 million chickens and other poultry have died or been culled, but that has not halted the spread of the disease to birds in central Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe.

source: AP

Animal Rights Activists Stage Bird Flu Publicity Stunt

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals say they will lie naked in flower-decorated coffins outside the Department of Agriculture in Washington on Wednesday to "remind consumers that an addiction to poultry could lead to a bird-flu pandemic."

Protesters will raise a banner reading, "Bird Flu Kills: Go Vegetarian," and they plan to hand out "emergency vegetarian starter kits."

PETA quoted the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as saying that bird flu can be caught by eating undercooked meat or eggs.

But the CDC also notes that poultry products can be safely eaten, "provided these items are properly cooked and properly handled during food preparation." According to the CDC, the bird flu virus is sensitive to heat, which means that "normal temperatures used for cooking" will kill the virus.

"Avian influenza is not transmitted through cooked food," the CDC website specifically says. And it says there is no evidence so far that anyone has become infected after eating "properly cooked poultry or poultry products, even when these foods were contaminated with the H5N1 virus."

PETA sees a moral dimension to the anticipated pandemic.

"It's payback time, with avian flu now showing up as a direct consequence of a very sick and cruel industry," said PETA Vegan Campaign Director Bruce Friedrich.

"With diseases running rampant in crowded, filthy factory farms, not to mention the known link between meat-eating and heart disease, the safest thing to do with chicken flesh is to avoid it like the plague."

PETA is among the activist groups that oppose "factory farming," where birds and other livestock live in conditions that activists describe as cruel and inhumane.

source: (CNSNews.com) -

Africa calls for 38 million euros to help combat bird flu

Africa appealed on Tuesday for 38.21 million euros (45.84 million dollars) to help it swiftly shore up its veterinary defences against H5N1 bird flu.

The money would be spent over three years to help strengthen monitoring and reporting outbreaks of poultry sickness, stockpile H5N1 vaccine for poultry flocks and build networks to share information, Modibo Traore, director of the Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources, said at the avian influenza conference here.

The H5N1 virus, now endemic in parts of Asia, has spread to Russia and the southeastern corner of Europe and Turkey, transmitted there by infected migrating birds.

No cases have been detected in Africa so far, but "the continent is particularly exposed," said Traore, whose office is the African Union's health monitor for trade in farm animals.

Africa is the destination for migrating waterfowl from Europe, Russia and Asia, he noted.

In addition, most of its 1.1 billion chickens are raised out of doors, rather than in enclosed buildings, which increases the risk of infection by visiting birds, he said.

Africa is also chronically short of veterinarians, epidemiologists, laboratories for checking samples and vaccines to protect against the virus, he said.

Twenty-three African countries have no surveillance system at all, he noted.

Add in the risk factor derived from live animal markets "and you have all the conditions for a catastrophic scenario," Traore said.

Traore pointed in particular to the plight of poor countries that are emerging from war or in a state of chronic unrest, naming the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia.

"No country should be left on the sidelines" for combatting bird flu, he said.

source: Africasia

Vietnam confirms 42nd flu death, as WHO urges countries to be ready for pandemic

HANOI, Vietnam

The country worst hit by bird flu, Vietnam, confirmed its 42nd human death Tuesday from the virus, as the World Health Organization warned governments to be ready for when _ not if _ a deadly pandemic arrives that could kill millions and cost the global economy US$800 billion (?677 billion) in a single year.

In Geneva, experts at the first major international coordination meeting on bird flu and pandemic human flu urged countries to draw up plans for an inevitable human pandemic.

Experts agree a global flu outbreak capable of killing millions of people is a certainty. What is also certain, scientists say, is that the virus will come from bird flu, though not necessarily the current strain, H5N1.

WHO has been urging countries to draw up pandemic flu plans for almost a decade, but it was not until the bird flu outbreak in Asia became a clear threat that many sprang into action. In recent months, bird flu has made its way to parts of Europe.

Six months ago, fewer than 40 countries had a pandemic flu plan, said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of epidemic and pandemic alert and response at WHO. Now, 120 countries, or 60 percent of the WHO member states, have a plan.

The plans include improving early detection of disease, increasing the ability of hospitals to cope with sudden heavy traffic, and the stockpiling of drugs and vaccines.

The fear of bird flu mutating into a form easily transmitted between people is greatest in Asia, where at least 63 people have died of the H5N1 bird flu virus since 2003. Most of the deaths have been linked to direct contact with infected birds.

Vietnam on Tuesday confirmed its 42nd human death from bird flu, its first in more than three months, a Health Ministry official said.

The 35-year-old man, who died on Oct. 29, was admitted to a Hanoi hospital four days after his family bought a prepared chicken from a market near his house in the Dong Da District of Hanoi, said Nguyen Van Binh, deputy director of the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health. Other family members did not show any symptoms of bird flu, he said.

Vietnam has ordered 25 million tablets of the antiviral drug Tamiflu from Swiss-based Roche Holding AG, Tuesday's Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported. Tamiflu is one of the few drugs that is believed to be effective against bird flu.

The newspaper quoted Cao Minh Quang, director of the pharmaceutical administration department under the Ministry of Health, as saying talks with the company on a possible license for Vietnam to produce a generic version of the drug were still inconclusive.

In China, authorities warned Tuesday that fake bird flu vaccines for poultry were threatening public health and said an unapproved product was being sold in northern Liaoning province, the site of a recent outbreak.

"This fake medicine could result in serious consequences," Jia Youling, chief veterinary officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, said in a television interview. "It could cause very serious harm to both people and poultry."

China suffers from rampant and sometimes dangerous product piracy. Bogus medicines that have none of the declared ingredients on the packaging are common.

China has reported four bird flu outbreaks in the past four weeks, resulting in the culling and vaccination of tens of millions of birds, though no human cases have been confirmed.

On Sunday, Beijing reopened an investigation into whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl and sickened two people last month in cases originally ruled not to be from H5N1.

The official China Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday that a Beijing insurance company plans to offer life insurance covering human bird flu fatalities.

Minsheng Life Insurance has received regulatory approval to offer coverage plans that will pay between 50,000 yuan (US$6,000; ?5,000) and 100,000 yuan (US$12,000; ?10,000) in the event of death due to bird flu, the newspaper said.

It said the product would be commercially available "very soon," but gave no specific date.

source: the china post

Bird-brained plan needs revision

President George W. Bush introduced a plan last Tuesday intended to prevent the spread of avian influenza among humans. The $7.1 billion plan is well- intentioned, but not well-reasoned. It addresses the problem too generally and requires excessive monetary contribution from the states.

Concern about avian influenza or "bird flu" has mounted steadily since the H5N1 strain of the virus found its first human victims in Hong Kong in 1997. Indeed, H5N1 should elicit substantial concern: of the 122 humans who have contracted the virus since its origination, more than half have died. H5N1 mutates rapidly, and although it is not easily passed between humans, new mutations may soon change that. The virus holds potential to spawn an influenza pandemic, which epidemiologists estimate could kill more than 7 million people worldwide.

Most human infections have been confined to Southeast Asia thus far, but strains of the virus have been found in other parts of the world as well, including British Columbia just to our north. Past influenza pandemics -- Spanish flu of 1918, for example -- indicate that an outbreak of H5N1 anywhere could have a devastating worldwide scope. Despite this fact, troublingly, many Americans have remained oblivious to the threat.

Introduction of the Bush plan, then, was already a step in the right direction by calling the problem directly to public attention, and certainly also in its underlying motivation: "something needs to be done before it's too late." But the plan has several fundamental flaws that warrant thorough reconsideration of the plan as a whole.

First, Bush has called for a frenzied manufacturing and stockpiling of two existing flu vaccines -- oseltamavir and zanamavir -- which research suggests might prevent the onset of bird flu as it exists now. The target number of 40 million doses would not be obtained until 2009 though, and the virus could well have mutated into a form impervious to both vaccines by that time, if it hasn't already wrought its destruction.

Epidemiologists have suggested waiting to manufacture a vaccine until the form of the virus, which may finally become contagious among humans, is more precisely evolved, and therefore easier to precisely vaccinate against. This is standard procedure -- scientists always wait until it has become clear which forms of the annual flu virus pose the greatest threat before designing the annual flu vaccine. Bush's departure from this standard at the risk of producing a useless vaccine and wasting billions of dollars is unacceptable.

Second, and related directly to my last point of contention, Bush has designated the Department of Homeland Security as the coordinating organization should a pandemic occur -- not the Department of Health and Human Services. That's right, Bush has given politicians command over doctors and scientists in the event of a public health crisis. Let's see -- doctors specialize in helping people, and politicians specialize in, uh, what? Getting elected? Arguing? Lying? In all seriousness, this factor alone could be the country's undoing if a pandemic strikes -- politicians have not yet even outlined a competent plan for vaccine distribution.

Lastly, Bush has mandated in his plan that states, not the federal government, pay for much of the vaccine production. This is of course an absurd waste if the vaccine is ineffective anyway, but even supposing an effective vaccine is devised, it is still unreasonable to expect states to pay for it. The federal emergency resource pool dwarfs those of the states, and a bird flu pandemic would certainly constitute a federal emergency. The federal government is therefore responsible to pay.

Nobody questions that preventative action needs to be taken against the spread of avian influenza, and soon, but monetary and resource commitments should not be made until it becomes clearer how the virus is going to develop. If Bush will listen to the plea of public health experts and give them command of the situation, disaster may be averted. If not, you'd better stop hanging around poultry farmers and their friends.

source: the daily

Selling of live chickens banned in Beijing

Live chickens for sale in China. (CP file photo)

International health officials attending a summit on avian and human influenza in Switzerland say the best way to prevent a human influenza pandemic is to stop the deadly H5N1 virus in birds. Delegates agree avian influenza is still very much an animal disease, but World Health Organization [WHO] influenza chief Margaret Chan says the control of the H5N1 virus in poultry and other birds should be the first line of defence in any plan to try to prevent the virus from becoming a human pandemic.

More than 150 million birds have died or been destroyed and 63 people have died since the flu resurfaced in Asia in 2004.

On Monday, the Chinese government took the unprecedented step of banning the sale of live chickens in the capital. Many Chinese consumers are avoiding poultry altogether.

Market stall holders in Beijing say it could be a difficult winter. "It will definitely affect us," said chicken seller Ma Yan Xiang, "but we have done well for the rest of the year so it is not too bad."

City officials say it is safe to eat chicken - and they are prepared if there is an outbreak of avian flu.

"If there is a confirmed outbreak, we will slaughter all poultry within a three kilometre radius," said spokesman Liu Ya Qing.

Although millions of birds have already been slaughtered in four provinces in the past month, millions more could be culled if the disease spreads.

Chinese poultry farmers face stiff fines if they do not co-operate.

China has not yet reported any human cases of bird flu, but it has asked the WHO to check tests on three patients, including one girl who died during an outbreak.

"It all may turn out to be negative. We need to do that investigation. But the fact that they are willing to discuss things when there's a clear doubt is extremely important and encouraging," said WHO spokeswoman Dr. Julie Hall.

There's still some confusion over whether any humans in China have caught bird flu, but so far China is being much more open about outbreaks of the disease and what it is doing about it than it was in 2003, when it tried to cover up the SARS epidemic.


source: CBC

Pandemic "Only a Matter of Time": WHO Chief

An influenza pandemic "is only a matter of time," the head of the World Health Organisation, Lee Jong-Wook, warned as he opened a three-day council of war on H5N1 avian flu.

"We don't know when this will happen, but we know it will happen," Lee, the WHO's director-general, said. "(...) If we are unprepared the next pandemic will cause incalculable human misery... no society will be exempt and no economy will be unscathed."

The talks, gathering 400 experts and decision-makers from around the world, will be briefed on the latest data about avian influenza and review measures to bolster animal surveillance and preparations for tackling any human pandemic.

It is the seniormost global meeting of doctors, veterinarians and public-health officials since the avian influenza scare erupted in 2003.

In addition, it is the first to gather the World Bank alongside the WHO, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

The conference takes place against a backdrop of growing concern about the failure to roll back the H5N1 bird flu virus in Asia, its spread to Europe and the vulnerability of Africa, the world's poorest continent.

"We have experienced a relentless spread of avian flu," driven principally by migratory birds, Lee said sombrely.

Lee said that 63 deaths, out of 124 known cases of human infection, had been reported to the WHO, 150 million fowl had been slaughtered and the economic cost of the virus was some 10 billion dollars.

At present, the H5N1 virus is transmissible from bird to humans, but cannot be easily passed from humans to humans.

The worry, as Lee said, is that the virus will mutate, picking up genes that make it highly contagious from humans to humans.

That could initiate a pandemic that in modern era of jet travel and the globalised economy claim millions of lives and inflict economic costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

(Source: AFP)

Negative results for three suspected typeA/H5N1 patients

Blood samples of 24-year-old patient suspected of bird-flu in northern Bac Giang Province and two others in Hanoi prove negative.

On November 3, Bac Giang provincial hospital received a 24-year-old pregnant woman with symptoms of avian influenza after several ducks in her family’s flock died. The woman came from Viet Yen District, where bird flu is known to be present. Doctors suspected she was infected with H5N1 virus and were treating her in isolation, sending blood samples to Hanoi for testing.

However, tested blood samples prove negative and the patient has recovered and she will be discharged today, November 7.

The Central Hygiene and Epidemiology Institute also announced that blood samples of two Hanoian patients also showed negative results. Last week Dr Nguyen Duc Hien of the Tropical Diseases Institute reported two new suspected cases of bird flu virus in Hanoi. One patient died while the second, a 25-year-old Hanoi girl, who was treated after eating chicken five days before hospitalisation on November 1, is now getting better.


source: VietNamNet

Defenses weak in face of new avian flu migration

The popular old saying that translates as “better to prevent than to lament” certainly applies to the threat of avian flu. Authorities need to bring themselves up to speed on the issue and take even more protection steps than environmentalists are demanding.

The current concern is over the so-called H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus. It is highly infectious in a wide variety of birds and even has been transmitted to humans who handled them, killing 60 of 100 people infected in Asia. Direct contact with the live birds, their eggs or their waste is what spreads it. Wildfowl can carry it far and wide. It can make them sick, ruintheir eggs, and kill them.

The United Nations and World Health Organization put out an alert on Sept. 30 that a pandemic, or global epidemic, could result in 5 million to 150 million human deaths. When The New York Times on Oct. 6 exposed the United States' lack of preparedness based on the federal administration's Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan, H5N1 was already in four Asian countries: China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

VIRUS ON THE MOVE

By now it has crossed the seas to infect flocks in Colombia, Croatia,Greece, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. It was Oct. 25 when the European Union responded by banning commercial imports of wild birds and the United States banned imports of all, live birds, parts and products from the countries where the disease was detected.

The United States would seem Mexico's best line of defense against the menace. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense already takes part in a 15-year-old migratory bird program initiated by the non-profit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The D.O.D.'s maps show its installations set up in strategic locations not only for deploying troops but also for monitoring wildfowl and mitigating its movement throughout the hemisphere.

Unfortunately, the military has made no public acknowledgement of any plans to help hold the line against avian flu. What's more, the administration's report, originated by the Health and Human Services Department, includes only civilian planning and no articulation whatsoever with the armed forces, unquestionably one of the strongest U.S. resources.

Mexico should seize this opportunity for diplomacy and insist that the United States dedicate more of its considerable reserves to the cause of protecting against the spread of avian flu. This appears to be one foreign policy initiative that can feasibly be attained to the satisfaction of constituencies both at home and abroad.

The Mexican federal government has a number of other paths to pursue in the effort to hold avian flu at bay, as domestic environmental activists have pointed out in recent weeks.

It can join the countries closing their doors to commercial imports of live birds. Inspection for contraband could be boosted. Aviaries could isolate their flocks. Education could be provided so that people avoid handling potentially contagious birds and so that killing birds is not seen as a solution to the problem.

HANDLE WITH CARE

Control of this disease is especially sensitive in Mexico, where any numberof cottage industries are based on the legitimate sale of wild birds.

Indifference to bird-catchers and related small businesses could be as potentially damaging as apathy toward traffickers of exotic species, in this scenario.

An integrated approach should be taken, involving participation of various agencies as well as representatives of productive sectors involved. If this is accomplished, it could help combat other longstanding afflictions, such as imports of unsavory, contraband poultry. It could also promote utilization of public health services' flu vaccine programs, strengthening peoples' immune systems.

Who knows what other positive by-products a concerted effort to detain just this one peril might have.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to RaiseEnvironmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Americas Program Associate at the International Relations Center. (talli@direcway.com)

source: eluniversal

Searching for answers

By Denise Albiston

World health officials are taking the possible spread of bird flu seriously as it spreads across Asia and Africa, and Utah State University researchers are working hard to be part of the solution to a potential pandemic.

Donald Smee, research professor for the Institute for Antiviral Research at USU, said that although the virus has yet to mutate to the point of easily infecting humans, the potential for mutation is very real.

“Bird flu is rare,” Smee said. “It’s not a big deal now, but we just don’t know what could happen. Flu infects millions of people every year, but it doesn’t kill them.”

Avian influenza is an infectious disease for birds that can be lethal to people. According to the World Health Organization, the disease was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago and occurs in some form in most birds worldwide.

“We have bird flu from the U.S. (that is) indigenous to North America, but not like these Asian flus,” said Smee. “Those are the bad ones.”

Migratory waterfowl — like ducks and geese — are the most common carriers of the virus. Smee said such birds also seem to be the most resistant to the infections. He said most birds are probably able to be infected with the flu, but some species are more resistant than others.

“The concern is that bird flu is part of nature,” Smee said. “It’s here and there is no way of getting rid of it. It’s just a matter of treating it before it goes through a possible mutation and wipes out millions of humans.”

The research institute has spent the past 10 years researching various strains of bird flu, but has yet to fully study those lethal to humans. Smee said the compounds currently being tested in USU labs a are hybridized strain of the U.S. bird influenza that can be lethal to the mice. He said some of the compounds make the mice sick where others don’t, and the hits when the mice don’t get sick are further tested in pre-clinic trials. He said the hits are few and far between, with only about one of every 1,000 being tested further.

“Bird flu is just one of the viruses we do,” Smee said. “We do common viruses also using the same compounds.”

Avian flu might have the same potential risk that SARS created a few years ago, Smee said. The SARS scare required world health officials to use all the resources available to minimize the devastation and to squash a potential pandemic. Although the spread of SARS was limited, bird flu might be more aggressive in spreading. Smee said without knowing how, when or if the flu will even mutate, world heath officials will need to anticipate every outcome in order to protect million of people.

“If somebody contacts this, they’ll most likely die,” Smee said. “It is lethal to humans.”

Smee said the number of people worldwide who have contracted bird flu is not extreme, and most of those had been handling migratory fowl closely. He said somebody plucking a duck’s feathers and then touching their nose could inhale the virus.

Smee said the research institution is currently raising funds to begin testing the lethal avian flu, since costs to remodel a portion of the Veterinary Science building on Utah State’s campus could run around $500,000. He said the remodel would have to include a extensive ventilation system that would protect the virus and not let it spread, and increasing the research capabilities of the institution will help develop measures to prevent an outbreak.

source: hjnews