Posted on 05/31/2006 4:48:44 PM PDT by blam
Countries under-report bird flu
By Matt McGrath
Science reporter, BBC News, Rome
Under-reporting may be due to inadequate compensation funds
China, Indonesia and Africa are under-reporting incidences of bird flu, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
A lack of adequate compensation schemes for farmers with infected poultry is the major factor, said the OIE avian influenza coordinator.
She is urging developed countries to provide the funding for such schemes.
The call came at the end of a two-day international conference to discuss the spread of avian flu.
Speaking at a news conference, Dr Christianne Bruschke said that under-reporting is happening for a variety of reasons in different parts of the world.
Endemic disease
In Africa there are problems of time, distance and education.
"Farmers will probably not report sick animals. We also think that people in Africa may not recognise the signs of the disease.
"Their veterinary services are very weak and many countries do not have laboratory facilities - we have all the ingredients there that could lead to under-reporting."
There are also major problems with Indonesia, where human deaths from bird flu are a reflection of serious problems with animals.
The disease now appears to be permanently infecting poultry in the country, said Dr Bruschke, and this makes accurate reporting of cases all the more difficult.
"I think it could be the case because in certain regions the virus is getting more or less endemic, so in regions like Java, they might not report every single outbreak anymore."
Funding calls
Dr Bruschke stressed that almost all countries are willing to report and acknowledge how serious a crisis this is.
"China is openly communicating with us and cooperating - but it is a very big country.
"We sometimes see the outbreaks in wild animals - they will not always detect them. There is also not a very good compensation scheme in place so we feel there might be under-reporting. "
The OIE is encouraging developed countries to provide funding for compensation schemes. There have been discussions at recent meetings of donor countries in Geneva and Beijing but no concrete proposals as yet.
More than 300 scientists from 100 countries were meeting in Rome to discuss the impact of wild birds on the spread of avian influenza.
More Bird Flu news, thanks to LucyT:
We have ONE family that died from this; we do not know if the disease was spread person to person, or if they contracted it from a single bird.
This disease has killed very few people; the very old and the very young.
The chances are greater that I will be killed by choking on a roasted field mouse than I will this disease. I fail to see what the big hoop-la is about this.
If you had been following this story all along, you would know what the dreadful possibilities are with this; "possibilities", not "certainties".
But, it's up to you to educate yourself, not us. If you feel there's no threat, please move on and don't worry about it. And please don't bother showing up just to mock everybody else, while you're at it.
There was a thread on FR recently from a newspaper report that in some God-forsaken African country, people were digging up infected chickens that had been buried and were taking them home to eat. It's impossible to deal with a situation when people are so ignorant. And planes take off every day from places like that and land in this country. We are more vulnerable now to contagion than ever.
Doesn't anyone think about stocking/setting-side food when times are good? Going hungry would only happen to me once, period!
There are possiblities that HIV will mutate and allow transfer by an insect bite. There are possiblities that California will have an earthquake and drop into the sea. But, I don't see everyone raising a near panic over something like this. Ebola on a Virgin Atlantic plane 2 weeks ago is something worth worring about. Getting Mad Cow from McDonalds or Arby's is perhaps worth worrying about; but this is not even on the radar.
We've been hearing about the Bird Flu for over a year. Yes, if we don't remain aware of it; we could have a problem. But, Good Grief, talk to your family doctor and he'll tell ya that this has been blown WAY out of proportion.
The people of New Orleans convinced themselves a monster hurricane was going to hit. Never. Even when it seemed headed their way, they were in denial, parked their cars in the street, and partied naked. Then when it "missed" them, they rejoiced. For a while.
The ones who prepared were the smart ones and survived, not the ones who assumed all would turn out well because it was unlikely and "never" happened before.
I wish you luck. As I say, I hope your optimism is rewarded and my caution remains untested. But I'm not going to stake my future on your hopes.
In many of these countries, the people live with the chickens.
ping
P.S. I'm not sure the part about the very young and very old victims is correct, although I don't have a table of ages in front of me. With around 125 deaths, any pattern in age susceptibility should be evident.
Thanks for the ping Smokin' Joe.
No one is raising a panic.
If anything, we are trying to avoid one. Panic comes from a lack of knowledge, lack of preparation, and the lack of a plan of action, should that be needed.
Some of us have been tracking the progress of this disease for years now.
As for HIV being transferred by an insect bite, it may already have been, if you think about it.
It has been transferred by a poorly cleaned dentist's drill. The only reason that was confirmed is that it happened to a precoital girl.
Had it happened to someone who had had sexual contact the vector might have gone unrecognized.
So AIDS/HIV may have already been transferred by one of the varieties of mosquito (or other insects) which can transfer other serologically borne diseases, but the transmission method gone unrecognized and unconfirmed because other, more conventional methods of transfer may apply or are assumed to.
Parts of Africa are swarmed by mosquitoes, but sexual contact will continue to get the blame for AIDS unless there is a case which could have been transmitted no other way, and that case is recognized as such. As it would take an incomplete feeding by the female mosquito on an infected person first, then a bite by the same mosquito on a non-infected individual to finish feeding and transfer the disease, those persons would have to be in close proximity. The odds of that pale when compared to other reasons for being in close proximity, and thus may be rendered moot, but until and unless that vector is recognized as having been the source of infection, it will never get 'credit'.
Similarly, part of sorting this all out is being able to recognize the changes in H5N1 when they occur, and that is what makes the one Indonesian family cluster especially significant.
There apparently was no bird involved in the transfer from family member to family member, thus other means of transmitting the virus exist.
That is a significant development, or at least the significant recognition of one which may otherwise have been obscured by the possibility of more conventional means of catching the disease.
Hodar, so far the main means of catching the disease has involved physical contact with infected poultry, wild birds, or their droppings.
We have watched over the years as migratory birds have carried this disease from Indochina and Indonesia north and west across Russia, into Europe and south into Africa.
Infected birds have died or been destroyed by the millions, and in many of those countries, a dozen chickens represents wealth.
Wealth.
It is hard for us, in this land of plenty to imagine that a pig and a couple of dozen chickens make someone wealthy, but imagine if the Government or some doctors from elsewhere came along and told you that you had to take your life savings in cash and burn it.
Needless to say, there is some resistance on the part of those whose life savings are being 'culled', and cheating will happen. That makes this hard to eliminate.
At some point, the disease will have spread via migratory birds across the globe.
The US and Canada are monitoring bird populations along the Northern flyways, watching for the spread to this continent. This is a monumental task, considering that despite the size of Alaska on the average map, it could be split down the middle and make Texas the third largest state. That is a lot of territory to cover, and it is mostly very sparsely populated.
In the meantime, we here are monitoring developments in both the disease and treatment methods in an effort to assess the risk.
At present, in the US, the risk is low.
No bird populations here are known to be affected, and under the current accepted transmission paradigm for most cases, that makes the risk very low. Were that variable to change, the results of the risk equation shift significantly.
Similarly, the recognition of H2H transmission changes the equation, even though that transmission apparently did not occur from contact as casual as passing by someone who sneezed in the airport. Keep in mind that we do not know what threshold of exposure is involved, just that those people lived in close proximity to family members who were infected and apparently caught the disease from them.
It is believed to take repeated physical contact, much as a caregiver would experience under primitive conditions, and may involve direct transfer of bodily fluids, either on utensils, by skin contact, or it might be far less.
We simply do not know.
Still, it remains unlikely that poor villagers from Indonesia are going to show up at the airport nearest you.
If the virus mutates to become more readily transmitted from human to human, then the risk equation will shift some more, but that will have to be verifiable.
By then, we will likely have a problem of global proportions, if it cannot be contained.
Feel welcome to read along and participate as we attempt to dispassionately risk assess this developing pathogen, but I would not dismiss it out of hand. Chances are we have spent more time keeping up with the latest than your family doctor has had time to devote to this. Even without a pandemic, doctors manage to stay pretty busy.
If you are up to it, there is a free medical text download available here Influenza Report 2006 which does a pretty nice job of explaining the flu in terms which are not too techincal. Good bakground reading, imo.
At least the medical staff appears to be wearing N95 or comparable masks, gloves, and are using makeshift goggles (non medical). How did they find ski goggles in Indonesia?
good post
They probably make them there.
Beef! It is what is for dinner.
Oops, forgot about mad cow.
The patient, who is the "seventh" family member, appears neither "very young" nor "very old".
Last summer I did talk to my doctor about H5N1. She is not an alarmist or one to write scrips at the drop of a hat. She was concerned but not overly so. She wrote me a script for Tamiflu. My husband talked to his doctor, who has been in practice for 30 years, and is a very even keel type. He also wrote a script for Tamiflu; said it would be smart and prudent to have it on hand "just in case".
Good catch! I'd say mid 20s to early 30s.
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