Precognition

[Mother Abigail]

In Frankfurt, Germany, hospital officials who were monitoring the Singapore surgeon said his condition had slightly worsened Sunday. His mother-in-law had a high fever, and his pregnant wife appeared to be OK, they added.

The 32-year-old doctor, who was not identified, was taken off a Singapore Airlines New York-to-Singapore flight during a stopover in Frankfurt, the Associated Press reports.
The surgeon had treated one of the earliest cases in Singapore, and had then flown to a medical meeting in New York City, according to Thompson.

He may have gone to a hospital in New York -- the agency did not know which one -- before flying back. Before boarding the flight, he called a colleague in Singapore to describe his symptoms, and the colleague notified WHO officials, The New York Times reports.

A New York City Health Department statement issued late Saturday said that the surgeon was in stable condition. In an interview with the city health officials, the statement said, the doctor told them that he had flown in on Wednesday, left on Friday, had had minimal contact with people in New York City and had attended the medical conference for only a few hours.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Bump

[Mother Abigail]

No cases had been identified Sunday in the United States, although the CDC had received calls about potential cases that are being investigated, Gerberding said

[Mother Abigail]

Monday, March 17, 2003

Health Ministry takes measures as mystery illness' toll rises to 9 worldwide

Global health authorities have gone on alert for a severe type of pneumonia that has killed at least nine people, infected more than 100 and sparked a warning from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Health officials at all Thai airports have been instructed to look for suspect cases among passengers entering the Kingdom, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said yesterday.
Passengers from China, Hong Kong and Vietnam - where several cases of the mysterious pneumonia have been reported - will be closely monitored, Sudarat said.
She advised Thais to avoid travelling to these three countries as the spread of the disease appeared to be worsening there.

The health minister also said that examination was under way of a flu patient who died last week at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital, a death suspected to have been caused by the fatal Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - an atypical pneumonia whose cause is not yet known.

The results will be available later this week, she added.
Dr Virasak Jongsuwiwatwong, of Prince of Songkhla University's faculty of medicine, appealed to the public not to panic about the mysterious disease. He said he expected efficient control measures would be taken soon after it was identified.

[Mother Abigail]

LAJES, Azores Islands  — President Bush and allied leaders agreed on one final attempt to win world backing Monday for the swift disarmament of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world," the president said at a Sunday summit with allies.

[Mother Abigail]

The initial case on Feb. 26 was a man admitted to the hospital with it in Hanoi. By this weekend there had been 46 more cases reported in Vietnam. Two died and five are on ventilators. The original case, however, was transferred to Hong Kong, where he infected at least seven health care workers before he died Thursday. The day before, 20 health care workers in Hong Kong developed similar symptoms. By this weekend, more than 100 cases have been reported in Hong Kong alone.

Three people flew from Hong Kong to Singapore carrying the bug, and spread it to 16 more. A Singapore health worker flew to New York and on to Frankfurt, feeling unwell on the flight. German health officials placed this person in quarantine. Another person, who had been in close contact with the original case in Vietnam, flew from Hanoi to Bangkok and is hospitalized in Thailand, where no other cases were reported through Sunday. It is possible that Germany and Thailand both acted fast enough to prevent a further spread.

[Mother Abigail]

If you cannot see Mother

Click on Mother.jpg

[TaxRelief]

Mother, Where did he stay and where was his conference?

[Mother Abigail]

Great question,

However no one is giving up that information at this time. In a few days we will know way more about this man than we care to..

Stay tuned

[happygrl]

Balaam's ass.

[Mother Abigail]

AND YOU

How lowly is the carp?
Lesser than the ass?
Signs on signs on signs
Tis a rubbled path we take.

I neither curse nor bless these days
That unfold line by line
For I am old and tempered
Accustomed to the stake...

[Mother Abigail]

5:31PM

Asian outbreak may be new strain of flu or exotic virus

By EMMA ROSS

AP Medical Writer

A deadly, mysterious respiratory illness spread largely among health care workers in Asia could be a new strain of flu or even an exotic virus passed from animals to people, a health official said Sunday.
Probably the most feared by health experts, however, would be a new and deadly strain of flu.

The illness, which carries flu-like symptoms, has killed nine people - seven in Asia and two in North America. Its rapid spread in southeast Asia in recent weeks caused a rare worldwide health alert to be issued on Saturday.
Health officials say it may be several more days before they are able to identify the disease. However, they said several of its features suggest it is caused by a virus, which can often be difficult to pinpoint quickly using standard lab tests.

"Certainly influenza is on the minds of many people," said Dr. David Heymann, communicable diseases chief for the World Health Organization.

Lab tests have ruled out some varieties of flu as well as some viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever. However, many other possibilities remain, Heymann said.

Those include "a new strain of influenza" or such exotic diseases as the closely related Hendra and Nipah viruses - both newly recognized, causing flu-like symptoms and capable of being spread from animals to people.
"If it really is the flu, it could be we have a new organism that could cause a pandemic," said Dr. R. Bradley Sack, director of Johns Hopkins' international travel clinic. "People immediately start thinking of 1917," the year a worldwide flu epidemic killed at least 20 million people.

Experts discounted the possibility that terrorism is the source and believe it almost certainly is a contagious infection that spreads most easily from victims to their doctors, nurses and families through coughing, sneezing and other contact with nasal fluids.
"Nothing about that pattern suggests bioterrorism," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Officials said they are encouraged that some recent victims seem to be recovering, although they are unsure whether that is because of the many antibiotic and antiviral drugs they have been given or simply the natural course of the disease.

Heymann said three or four patients had stabilized enough to be moved out of intensive care Sunday in Hanoi, Vietnam, although all still had breathing problems.
The illness is being called "severe acute respiratory syndrome," or SARS. The incubation period appears to be three to seven days. It often begins with a high fever and other flu-like symptoms, such as headache and sore throat. Victims typically develop coughs, pneumonia, shortness of breath and other breathing difficulties. Death results from respiratory failure.
The World Health Organization has been aware of the outbreak for about three weeks but issued its global alert this weekend because of concern that the illness would spread to North America and Europe.

The WHO estimates that perhaps 500 people in all have been sickened if an earlier outbreak that peaked last month in Guangdong province in China turns out to be part of the same disease, as they suspect it is.

Ninety percent of the most recent cases have been in health care workers.

The CDC prepared cards that were being given to travelers arriving from Hanoi, Hong Kong or Guangdong province in China, warning they may have been exposed. It recommended they see a doctor if they get a fever accompanied by a cough or difficulty breathing over the next week.

Investigators suspect a virus is involved, because victims do not seem to respond well to standard antibiotics, which kill only bacteria, and because their white blood counts drop. That typically happens with viral infections but not bacterial ones.

Few drugs exist for treating viral diseases and often they must run their course until brought under control by the body's natural immune defenses.

Tests so far have ruled out the H5N1 bird flu, which has popped up occasionally in China and which many fear could be catastrophic if it spread widely among humans.
No cases have been confirmed in the United States, but Gerberding said the CDC is checking out a few calls. The North American fatalities were a woman and her grown son who died in Toronto after visiting Hong Kong.

A 32-year-old physician from Singapore suspected of having the disease was taken off an airliner during a stopover in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday after being in New York City for a medical conference. He was held in quarantine, along with his mother, who had a fever, and his wife, who remained healthy.

However, on Sunday, the man's physician, Dr. Hanns-Reinhardt Brodt, said he was uncertain the case was SARS; he was treating him for ordinary pneumonia.

Also on Sunday, the WHO released a report from the China Ministry of Health on the Guangdong outbreak, which said "the epidemic situation has been controlled and the patients are being cured one by one."

In that outbreak, the Chinese said, most victims were young adults, and the disease apparently was spread similarly to SARS. The outbreak peaked between Feb. 3 and 14 in Guangzhou City and has since decreased markedly.

The Chinese said 7 percent of patients required breathing tubes, but most eventually got better, especially if they were not also infected with bacteria. The disease seemed to weaken as it passed from person to person.

[Mother Abigail]

  Search for source of Ebola begins

 17:20 14 March 03 NewScientist.com news service Scientists are flying out to equatorial Africa to sample birds in an attempt to identify the mysterious reservoir of the Ebola virus, which has caused repeated fatal outbreaks in the region.

The most recent, in the Republic of Congo, was first detected on 4 January. On Friday, health ministry official Joseph Mboussa, said the death toll had risen to 106, out of a total of 120 cases.
The haemorrhagic fever can kill up to 90 per cent of its victims. In Congo, people are thought to have contracted the virus through contact with infected gorilla meat.

But scientists do not know the identity of the long-term reservoir of the disease, from which the gorillas caught the disease. "And as long as we haven't established the source of reservoir of the Ebola virus, it's an illusion to think of an appropriate cure," warned William Karesh, of the US Wildlife Conservation Society recently.

Structural similarities
Birds were implicated as a possible host to the deadly virus by David Sanders and Scott Jeffers at Purdue University, Indiana, and Anthony Sanchez, at the US Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, who showed in December that there are strong structural similarities between Ebola and some bird retroviruses.

"The biochemistry of entry of Ebola [into a cell] is really similar to bird retroviruses. It is clear that they have a common ancestor." Sanders told New Scientist."We suggest the possibility that the current natural reservoir is a bird host - it's consistent with Ebola's epidemiology."

The central African rift valley separates the ranges of bird species into distinct western and eastern groupings. Ebola outbreaks occur in central and western Africa but not in the east - consistent with being confined to the bird populations on one side of the rift valley.

Sanders says gorillas or other primates cannot be the long-term reservoir of Ebola because they die too quickly, meaning the virus would die out too.

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas

  Now Townsend Peterson, an ornithologist at the University of Kansas, Nate Rice at Purdue, and colleagues are flying out to Equatorial Guinea, with all arriving by the end of March.
In addition to ecological research projects, they will be collecting samples of liver and spleen tissue from about 100 bird species. The researchers will be protected by gloves and masks.

Peterson says his previous work tracking the ecology of outbreaks of filoviruses - the group to which Ebola belongs - had suggested that mammals were a more likely reservoir. Bats are one possibility. But Sander's study means that "birds certainly merit examination", he says.
The samples will be sent to Sanchez, a molecular virologist at the CDC, who will test for the viral proteins that identify Ebola. "There is this link with avian retroviruses," he told New Scientist: "It's a long shot - but we'll see what happens."

 Shaoni Bhattacharya

[Mother Abigail]

ATLANTA (AP) -- Travelers entering the United States after visiting any of the Asian areas affected by a deadly, new flu-like illness are being given cards alerting them to watch for symptoms.

"During your recent travel, you may have been exposed to cases of severe acute respiratory disease syndrome. You should monitor your health for at least 7 days. If you become ill with fever accompanied by cough or difficulty in breathing, you should consult a physician," the card advises.
It instructs the traveler to save the card to give to a doctor in case symptoms appear.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the U.S. government began distributing the health alert cards Sunday at U.S. ports of entry. The cards are given only to those who have been to Hong Kong and Guangdong province in China, and Hanoi, Vietnam.

[kcar]

"Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah".

ANyone else notice that the letters in these words can be easily rearranged to spell:

Chirac, hater of Bush, Shazam!

[Domestic Church]

The Dr. Isadore on House Calls, the Sunday morning Foxnews show said the conference was at his hospital in NYC.

[Mother Abigail]

Thank you for the information

[Mother Abigail]

My sister and I took our 76 year old mom to the hospital abaout 2:00 this morning. She was having a hard time breathing - lots of wheezing. The Dr. says she has pneumonia. The hospital ward is so full they didn't get her into a room until 9:00 this morning! Lots of pneumonia cases - particularly among the elderly. I don't suggest that she has the type of pneumonia in this article, but it must be the season for this type of illness for it to be hitting so many at one time.

10 posted on 03/16/2003 6:52 PM PST by sneakers

[Mother Abigail]

Mysterious pneumonic disease kills two in Canada

By HELEN BRANSWELL

Canadian Press

Toronto — As infectious disease experts around the globe scramble to find the cause of a mysterious and deadly pneumonia, the number of confirmed and suspected cases in Canada rose to 10, public health officials said Sunday.
One of two suspected cases is a doctor who treated infected members of a family that was the source of the bulk of the Canadian cases.

"My understanding is that she is the family physician who looked after a number of the family members," said Dr. Andrew Simor, head of microbiology at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.
In Asia, where the mystery illness has hit hardest, the majority of cases have been health care workers who treated patients with the condition.

There have been eight confirmed cases of the atypical pneumonia that has been dubbed — for lack of a more precise term — severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, Health Canada reported.
Six of those cases occurred in Ontario and two in British Columbia. Two of the Ontario patients have died, bringing to nine the worldwide death toll so far.

In addition, public health officers in Toronto revealed that two more people are in isolation rooms in city hospitals and are being treated as suspected cases of the strange ailment which has set off global alarm bells.
All the suspected and confirmed cases are people who have either travelled recently to Southeast Asia, where the virus apparently originated, or who have been in close contact with people who got sick after travelling to that region.

Patients are being treated with heavy doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics and antiviral drugs, which appear to be working.
"Today we had, thankfully, good news that everybody is improving. They're all in stable condition," said Dr. Bonnie Henry, an associate medical officer of health for Toronto. "They're basically improving and getting better."

That fact, plus growing evidence that the illness is transmitted only via close contact with an infected person, is leading public health officials to urge the public not to become unduly alarmed.

It's believed the illness is transmitted by droplets that are sneezed or coughed by an infected person. Gravity helps fight the spread of such diseases; airborne diseases such as chickenpox are significantly more infectious, experts say.

"I would say there's no reason to panic," said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, another associate medical officer of health for Toronto.
"What we are doing is focusing on people who may have been close contacts with known cases, or travelled to the regions that have been affected and come down with very specific symptoms."
Those symptoms include a high fever — over 38 C — as well as a dry cough, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.
Swift.

Laboratories around the globe — including the national microbiology lab in Winnipeg — were working throughout the weekend trying to isolate the bug behind SARS.

But experts are still stumped whether the culprit is a virus or a bacterium, whether it's a variation of something seen before or an entirely new ailment in humans.

Infectious disease experts who have been predicting for some time that the world is overdue for an influenza pandemic are especially concerned.

Several times a century influenza will mutate into a highly virulent form that sweeps the world, killing millions in its wake. A prime example is the Spanish flu of 1918. The last pandemic was in 1968-69.

"The reality is, this is exactly the way pandemic influenza would present. Just like this," Dr. Simor said. He noted, however, that scientists would expect that if this bug were influenza, existing tests should have shown that by now.

"Having said that, it is possible that this is a totally brand new and very different strain of influenza virus that will be harder to detect and recognize.
"I think it's unlikely. But it's not impossible."

To date, labs have been unable to grow the bug responsible for SARS in culture. That frustrating and puzzling fact is hampering efforts to identify it. But it gives experts like Dr. Mary Vearncombe some cause for hope.

If terrorism were behind the outbreak — if agents like anthrax or plague, for instance, were the source of the atypical pneumonias — labs would have been able to determine that by now, said Dr. Vearncombe, head of infection prevention and control at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, where two of the patients are being treated.
"We would have grown it," she said.

[CholeraJoe]

Stay away, old woman - I'm headed for Vegas! Yeeehaaaaaw!

I'll bring the napalm and the nuke.