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Posted on 06/09/2002 1:29:09 PM PDT by ex-Texan
Smallpox Epidemic Rapidly Spreading In Pakistan Province
By Muqaddam Khan
SWABI, Pakistan - The smallpox epidemic is rapidly spreading in these parts of the province, but the district health department has failed to take any step to contain this deadly disease, Dawn learnt here on Saturday.
It has been reported from different parts of the Swabi district that a large number of children have suffered from smallpox, but the authorities concerned have failed to take any action to prevent this disease or immunize the people against it.
Smallpox is a fatal disease which causes high fever, leaves permanent marks on the skin and spreads very fast. Timely treatment and precautionary measures are vital for controlling this malady.
A health official said that the dilemma of the people was that they were not aware of the danger aspects of this ailment as the children suffering from it have neither been kept in isolation nor properly treated. And this resulted in the spread of the virus.
In most of the cases, the children of a family or those living close to each other, contract it at one and the same time.
The residents of Naro Banda, a rural area in the district, told this correspondent that a majority of the children in the village had suffered from smallpox a few years back. "My two brothers, Shams and Akhtar, have been afflicted by smallpox and I have appealed to the officials concerned, but they did not bother either to visit the area or take steps for controlling it," said Mukhtaj Ahmad of Naro Banda.
The mother of a sick child said she had informed the lady health workers about the spread of the disease four days ago, but no action was taken.
It was also noticed that most of the parents of the sick children were uneducated. They had either approached the quack living nearby, or the self-made homeopath doctors to treat the children, but no visible improvement could be seen in the health of the children.
If the district health department delayed taking steps for containing the disease, the epidemic may spread to other areas in the vicinity, or the whole of the district, for that matter.
The suffering people have appealed to the NWFP governor, district government bosses and health officials to send in special teams to extend necessary health cover to the children
TimeBomb2000
[hlth] Shift in U.S. Smallpox Vaccination Policy Recommended
Hoping some FReeper doctors and other medical folks will comment on this thread.
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Here's another good info site (YAHOO Email Group):civilian infectious disease surveillance network(CIDS)CIDSNetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Category: Biological and Chemical WeaponsFrom: Patricia Doyle, PhD
Investigator of Emerging Diseases
We are starting a civilian infectious disease surveillance network.
We need to get people monitoring for anomolous diseases as part of bioterrorism preparedness. We cannot wait until the Government or health care professionals recognize an event.
It is encumbant upon all of us to watch out for anomolous diseases, i.e. clusters of illness, especially young healthy people coming down with illness.
Also, we need to monitor animal outbreaks and die offs. Many bioweapons are zoonotic.
We have been advocating that people store antibiotics, i.e. tablet form. Tablets freeze well and will keep potent indefinitely. Added to antibiotics, chloramphenicol (in event of plague meningitis.) Also, in event of Brucellosis, combine antibiotic with Rifampin.
Also people will need extra storeable foods, water purification systems, personal needs, and extra pet supplies. When an event does happen, we may not have basic services and quarantine would most likely be implemented. More then likely we would have to wait for military to deploy and man the electric company, phone, etc. People need to prepare.
People who have their own supplies will not need to break quarantine and be wandering in the streets.
Patricia Doyle, PhD
Investigator of Emerging Diseases Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa____________________________________________________________
Dr. Pat Doyle and other professionals have been working hard in this Yahoo Group, since 9-26, hoping to stay current and share knowledge about BioWarfare agents.
Their Welcome message which I posted was written at the hightened emotionaleriod, less than 3 weeks after 9-11. Going to the site just now, I see there are some kinda tin-foil fringe posts, but informtive posts as well.
Considering these folks worked hot and heavy for 8 months, they may be burnt out.
But they have not abandoned ship, they are ready when needed.
If you join up, and have any questions, just use the search feature to view their progress and conclusions. You can get on their email list, and if things heat up, you will get the best uncensored and current info on these issues.
(Hint: EXpand messages for ease of viewing.)
Sorry, email address only)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CIDSNetwork/message/3559 Dear friends and colleagues,
>
>Dawn www.dawn.com is one of the prestigious newspaper
of Pakistan.
>Its
>eveninger, The Star, Karachi, had reported suspected
cases of
>smallpox in
>April 2001 from Tando Bago, Sindh, Pakistan. I
attempted to confirm
>these
>cases from the district health authorities but they
did not show any
>interest in confirming or rejecting the news report.
No further
>cases were
>however reported from the area.
>
>Now, 'Dawn' has reported Smallpox 'epidemic' in
Pakistan again. This
>time
>at Swabi, in the North West Frontier Province,
Pakistan.
>
>In order to bring it to your notice, I am pasting the
news item
>below:
>___
>
>http://www.dawn.com/2002/06/09/local23.htm
>
>SWABI: Smallpox epidemic spreading in Swabi
>By Muqaddam Khan
>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CIDSNetwork/message/3559
If anybody knows of any other discussion about this, please post the URL. Thanks! Any follow-up is appreciated.
The US government keeps a list of nations and groups that it suspects either have clandestine stocks of smallpox or seem to be trying to buy or steal the virus. The list is classified, but it is said to include Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Serbia, terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden and, possibly, the Aum Shinrikyo sect of Japan.
Ken Alibek, who was once Kanatjan Alibekov, a leading Soviet bioweaponeer and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, defected, in 1992, and revealed how far the Soviet Union had gone with bioweapons. Alibek says that there were twenty tons of liquid smallpox kept on hand at Soviet military bases.
In 1989, a Soviet biologist named Vladimir Pasechnik defected to Britain. British intelligence spent a year debriefing him. By the end, the British agents felt they had confirmed that the U.S.S.R. had biological missiles aimed at the US. This information reached President George Bush and the British PM Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher then apparently confronted the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. She was furious, and so was Bush. Gorbachev responded by allowing a small, secret team of American and British bioweapons inspectors to tour Soviet biowarfare facilities. In January of 1991, the inspectors travelled across the U.S.S.R., getting whirlwind looks at some of the major clandestine bases of the Soviet biowarfare program, which was called Biopreparat. The inspectors were frightened by what they discovered. ("I would describe it as scary, and I feel a responsibility to tell the world medical community about what I saw, because doctors could face these diseases," said one inspector, Frank Malinoski, M.D., Ph.D.) On January 14th, the team arrived at Vector, the main virology complex, in Siberia, and the next day, they were shown into a laboratory called Building 6, where one of the inspectors, David Kelly, took a technician aside and asked him what virus they had been working with. The technician said that they had been working with smallpox. Kelly repeated the question three times. Three times, he asked the technician, "You mean you were working with Variola major?" and he emphasized to the technician that his answer was very important. The technician responded emphatically that it was Variola major [the killer strain]. Kelly says that his interpreter was the best Russian interpreter the British government has. "There was no ambiguity," Kelly says. The inspectors were stunned. Vector was not supposed to have any smallpox at all, much less be working with it -- a supreme violation of rules set down by the W.H.O.
Per Malinoski: "There were tons of smallpox virus made in the Soviet Union. The Russians admitted that to us. One of the Vector leaders when he said to us, 'Listen, we didn't account for every ampule of the virus. We had large quantities of it on hand. There were plenty of opportunities for staff members to walk away with an ampule. Although we think we know where our formerly employed scientists are, we can't account for all of them-we don't know where all of them are.' " Today, smallpox and its protocols could be anywhere in the world.
Sitting with D. A. Henderson [widely credited with the eradication of smallpox ] in his house, I mentioned what seemed to be the great and tragic paradox of his life's work. The eradication caused the human species to lose its immunity to smallpox, and that was what made it possible for the Soviets to turn smallpox into a weapon rivalling the hydrogen bomb.
Henderson responded with silence, and then said thoughtfully, "I feel very sad about this. The eradication never would have succeeded without the Russians. Viktor Zhdanov [who first raised the idea] started it, and they did so much. They were extremely proud of what they had done. I felt the virus was in good hands with the Russians. I never would have suspected. They made twenty tons -- twenty tons -- of smallpox. For us to have come so far with the disease, and now to have to deal with this human creation, when there are so many other problems in the world . . ." He was quiet again. "It's a great letdown," he said.
Immune people are like control rods in a nuclear reactor. The American population has little immunity [the vaccination begins wears off after 10 years], so it's a reactor with no control rods. We could have an uncontrolled smallpox chain reaction." This would be something that terrorism experts refer to as a "soft kill" of the United States of America.
______________________________________________________
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/598296/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/559244/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/553011/posts
On the border with Afganistan and close to China.
This was a unilaterial declaration by the UN and the CDC - until more cases cropped up in Africa. There is no way to prove smallpox has been eradicated until we can examine everyone in every geographical location over their entire lifetimes.
It's a good bet that smallpox still exisits in many areas around the world. Most likely remote locations in Africa and Asia as well as in the slums of cities in those areas.
Towards the end of the USSR, I can't believe that almost every staff member who had a chance didn't take a vial as an insurance policy in case their retirement check was endangered. I have recently stopped taking absolute pronouncements by government experts at face value. (even those posted here on FreeRepublic)
It's impossible to prove a negative, i.e., that there is no smallpox, but in this case we're about as sure as we can be about anything.
We've had far more sightings of Bigfoot in the last 25 years than we've had of smallpox.
TurboPox. Well, instead of a chicken in every pot, I'm waiting for my Govm't issued paper suit and cheap plastic goggles.
They seem more anxious to round us up, than to educate us in self-defense and home care. Why? Will there be no mid-level, short-lasting exposures that we can prepare for? Only super-sized and needing quarintine? Curious.
The only debate is whether to issue vaccines or not, and the only reason to hesitate is that the vaccine has a mortality rate associated with it.
Assuming we get enough vaccine for the American public again, we could easily do it. The problem is that it would kill a couple hundred people. Do we kill that many in order to safeguard the rest?
The current thinking is no. The vaccine is still effective even after initial exposure, so the plan would be to vaccinate in circles around an initial outbreak, or possibly to vaccinate all first-care providers now.
That assumes that someone attempting kill Americans would do it only a few areas, something which is no sure bet.
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