Free Republic

Bird flu: Indonesia's trial run By Lucy Williamson April 29, 2008 BBC News, Bali In the backstreets of a Bali village, all hell has broken loose. The Balinese rural calm has been invaded by men with megaphones and masks, there are sirens wailing down the main street, and at the centre of it all, Putu Arini sits quietly on the porch of her house, waiting for the police. Parts of Bali have looked like the set of a germ-warfare film A few hours ago, her husband was taken to the local health clinic, with bird flu-like symptoms, and now investigators...

Ducks, people and rice paddies are the primary forces driving outbreaks of avian influenza in Thailand and Vietnam, and the number of chickens is less pivotal, scientists said on Wednesday. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization experts and others looked at three waves of H5N1 bird flu in Thailand and Vietnam in 2004 and 2005. The virus has killed 236 people in 12 countries since 2003. They used computer modeling to study how various factors were involved in the spread of the virus, including the numbers of ducks, geese and chickens, human population size, rice cultivation and local geography. Even though...

Officials in the Indian state of West Bengal say that the bird flu epidemic has spread to two more of the state's 19 districts, taking the total to nine. They say that the spread of the H5N1 virus means that even more chicken and duck will have to be killed than was originally estimated. On Monday officials said that around 2m birds would need to be culled - a figure that will now rise. Health experts have warned that the outbreak could get out of control.

Egypt: 4 Women Die of Bird Flu By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: January 3, 2008 Bird flu has killed four Egyptian women in the past week, according to Egyptian health officials and the World Health Organization. The women, ages 25 to 50, were from different provinces, and the cases were not related, officials said. At least one was a chicken seller, and the others were said to have kept poultry at home. The H5N1 strain of avian flu appears endemic in Egyptian poultry; previously the last human case was in June. A total of 43 Egyptians have been infected...

A vaccine that could help to control a flu pandemic has shown encouraging results in its first human trials. The vaccine, made by Acambis, based in Cambridge, should protect against all strains of influenza A, the type responsible for pandemics. Unlike existing vaccines it does not have to be reformulated each year to match the prevalent strains of flu, so it could be stockpiled and used as soon as a pandemic strain emerges. Nor does it need to be grown on fertilised chicken eggs, as the existing vaccines do, but can be produced by cell culture. The results, announced yesterday...

KUWAIT: Officials reported that an Indian expatriate was just completing his travel procedures at Kuwait International Airport to travel to Hyderabad City in India by Indian Airlines. They said he presented two tickets - one for him and second for his eight-year-old child. Customs personnel however noticed that he approached the counter alone leaving his child in the waiting hall. The customs personnel then asked him about the child to which he answered them that he suspected that his child might be suffering from the bird flu virus, which is why he wanted to complete the travel procedures and only...

Father catches bird flu that killed his son By Roger Highfield Last Updated: 3:01am GMT 08/12/2007 Fears that the virus responsible for bird flu has evolved to spread between people have been raised after the father of a man who died from the disease was reported to have developed the infection. Humans can contract the potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu virus from close contact with infected birds but scientists fear that it could mutate into a version that spreads from person to person, raising the risk of wider outbreaks or even a global pandemic. The World Health Organisation said that...

Bird flu outbreak detected in Norfolk By Felix Lowe and agencies Last Updated: 7:57pm GMT 12/11/2007 Around 7,500 birds are being slaughtered after a fresh case of avian flu was confirmed on a South Norfolk poultry holding. It is not yet known if the disease is the deadly H5NI strain that was detected nearby in February The H5 subtype of the disease was detected in turkeys on a farm at Redgrave, Norfolk, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said today after a conference with veterinary officials. It is not yet known if the tests had detected the...

It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza." The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats. This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005,...

(HANOI) - Vietnam has detected a bird flu outbreak in the northern province of Cao Bang bordering China, the country's second infection among poultry so far this month, the Agriculture Ministry said on Wednesday. Eighty-nine chickens and ducks died at a farm last Saturday and tests in Hanoi have confirmed they were infected by the H5N1 virus, the ministry's Animal Health Department said in a report. The infected farm is in Thach An district, about 70 km south of the border with China's province of Guangxi. The previous poultry outbreak was detected on Aug. 2 in the northwestern province of...

Scientist doubts efforts to detect avian flu in U.S. By Kevin Miller Monday, July 30, 2007 - Bangor Daily News ORONO, Maine - A potential avian flu pandemic may have slipped from the headlines, but the threat is still very real. And one leading expert worries that U.S. efforts to detect the deadly avian flu strain may be subpar. Peter Marra, a research scientist with the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo in Washington, told fellow ornithologists gathered at the University of Maine on Saturday that health and wildlife officials may be focusing too heavily on migratory birds when looking...

NEW DELHI — India's government on Thursday confirmed an outbreak of H5N1-strain bird flu at a poultry farm in the northeastern state of Manipur, marking the country's first reported outbreak since February last year. Health officials said the highly virulent H5NI strain, which can infect humans, was detected in samples taken from birds that had died suddenly at the farm in Chingmeirong village on the outskirts of Imphal, capital of the insurgency-hit state that borders Myanmar.

WASHINGTON (AFNEWS) -- The Defense Department is teaming with other federal agencies to prepare the nation to deal with a potential pandemic outbreak of influenza, a senior official said May 8 here. "Right now, we're as ready as we can be at this point," said Richard Chavez, director of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear preparedness and response at the department. The Defense Department is rolling out its Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan to the public today, part of the president's initiative to prepare the nation for a potential mass outbreak of deadly influenza virus or other threats. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon...

A doomsday scenario of a flu pandemic that might never happen is driving a sweeping review of what states should do to minimize the potential impact. Closing schools has been determined to be one of the best defenses to slow the spread of a flu outbreak, but the implications of long-term school closings are staggering. A flu outbreak of huge proportions would force school doors shut for weeks, if not months. School administrators, health officials, law enforcement officers and business executives gathered recently to discuss how to handle closing schools for such an extended time. They also received a lesson...

April 20, Reuters — Tamiflu key to treat bird flu, avoid steroids. Bird flu patients who get early treatment with the antiviral drug Tamiflu have the best chances of surviving while using steroids can do more harm than good, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, April 20. The WHO was reporting on the preliminary conclusions of international experts who met last month in Turkey to compare notes on treatments, including the attempt by doctors in some countries to use steroids as well. "Corticosteroid therapy has failed so far to show effectiveness," the WHO warned. "Prolonged or high dose...

CAIRO - A third Egyptian child has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the number of human cases in Egypt to 32, state news agency MENA said on Saturday. An official with the health ministry said the 4-year-old girl came from Qalyoubia province, north of Cairo, MENA said. Earlier, the health ministry said a 4-year-old boy from Qena province, around 670 kilometers (416 miles) south of Cairo, and a 7-year-old boy from Sohag province, around 470 kilometers south of Cairo, had been infected with bird flu. The 4-year-old girl was admitted to hospital on Friday, MENA...

Bird flu found on British farm By Bonnie Malkin and agencies Last Updated: 5:35pm GMT 03/02/2007 Government vets are investigating an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm after thousands of turkeys died. Police have cordoned off the farm Experts were called to a Bernard Matthews site at Holton near Halesworth, Suffolk, late on Thursday following the outbreak of an "unexplained" illness. Around 2,600 turkeys are thought to have died from the virus. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said preliminary tests had confirmed a bird flu outbreak. Later, the EU Commission confirmed the potentially deadly...

(CP) - Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has shown its H5N1 vaccine may protect against genetically different versions of the avian flu strain, offering hope that stockpiled vaccine might be useful against a mutated H5N1 virus, should the strain go on to trigger a pandemic. While the results presented Monday were preliminary, the GSK data are the first made public that boast both a low-dose regime and cross-protection against a distant cousin of the virus contained in the vaccine. A vaccine that could protect against varied strains of the virus in low doses would be a significant coup for the company and...

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait has confirmed 20 cases of the deadly bird flu in falcons, chickens and turkeys, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said Sunday. Ahmed al-Shatti said there were no human cases and an emergency plan has been launched. He said the cases were found at the Kuwait Zoo, farms and a clinic for falcons. The zoo and bird markets will be closed temporarily, and exports and imports of birds are being halted, he said. Kuwait has established a control room that operates around the clock to monitor and coordinate efforts to combat the disease, said al-Shatti, who is...

This is part of a continuing series on possible changes in geopolitical power, concerning the decline of the West and the rise of other powers. In (Vanity) As the World Turns, or The Wild, Wild, East , I raised the idea of the West’s decline and considered three heirs-apparent: the Muslim World, China, and India. In (Vanity) As the World Turns, Part II, or Back to the Future, I looked at the Muslim world and some of the flaws within its culture which might keep it from rising to a true World Power. In this piece, I reconsider China more...

HOLTON, England -- Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry yesterday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer. About 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled. "We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board Chairman Charles Bourns said. "We've every confidence in DEFRA, but until we know how this disease arrived,...

In daylong drill, U.S. agency prepares for avian flu By Donald G. Mcneil Jr. Published: February 1, 2007Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the disease centers in Atlanta. (Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times) ATLANTA: This is not a real article. This is an exercise. Patient Zero in the 2007 avian flu pandemic died at 9:25 this morning. It caused little fuss in the war room of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it was announced. In part, the death was expected — there had been hints of what was coming in this first avian flu...

OKAYAMA (Kyodo) The agriculture ministry announced Saturday that bird flu is suspected in the deaths of 22 chickens at a poultry farm in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture. Workers bury bags of slaughtered chickens from the Sato Broiler farm at a mountain near the farm in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, on Saturday. KYODO PHOTO The word came just hours after the ministry confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain was detected in the second outbreak of bird flu this month in Miyazaki Prefecture. The farm in Takahashi raises around 12,000 chickens. Two died Friday and 20 died Saturday, according to the ministry. It is...

Questions raised over safety of revived microbe.Kerri Smith   Natural Museum of Health and Medicine The 1918 influenza virus, which killed some 50 million people worldwide, has proved fatal to macaques infected in a laboratory. The study follows Nature's controversial publication1 of the virus's sequence in 2005, alongside a paper in Science that described the recreation of the virus from a corpse and its potency in mice2. Some scientists question the wisdom of reconstructing such a deadly virus. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Those who carried out the macaque study say yes, as a better understanding of how it...

HONG KONG -- Although fears of an avian-flu pandemic among humans have subsided, experts warn that the risk hasn't vanished. Less than a year ago, flocks of poultry, swans and wild birds were contracting the disease in Europe and Africa. The spread into the U.S. bird population seemed just a matter of time, and some people rushed to stockpile antiviral drugs. It has been relatively quiet since then, and some of the fears now seem overblown. Still, evidence continues to trickle in that the virus hasn't gone away. Birds continue to die from the disease in countries such as Vietnam...

MIYAZAKI -- The farm ministry ordered nationwide checks of poultry farms Friday after about 750 chickens died earlier this week at a farm in the town of Kiyotake, Miyazaki Prefecture. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and the Miyazaki Prefectural Government said late Thursday night that a highly pathogenic bird flu is suspected as the cause of the deaths. This is the first domestic bird-flu outbreak since June 2005, when the H5N2 strain spread to 40 farms in Ibaraki Prefecture, forcing 5.7 million chickens to be culled, the agriculture ministry said. The ministry said the presence of the bird-flu virus...

(CP) - The new head of the World Health Organization took office Thursday, urging the world to remain vigilant against the threat of H5N1 avian influenza and warning that complacency endangers efforts to prepare for the next influenza pandemic. Dr. Margaret Chan also said WHO will review its polio eradication strategy with scientists, financial donors and affected countries in coming months to try to determine how to finally complete the 18-year-old campaign to drive the polio virus out of humankind worldwide. "We need to have a balanced view," Chan said of the threat that H5N1 might trigger a flu pandemic....

As flu season arrives in North America, the media and their anointed health experts are squawking once again about how we could be blindsided by an avian flu pandemic that some have estimated could kill a billion persons worldwide. New books like The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic join last year's The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. A year ago I wrote in the Weekly Standard that it was time to stop running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Yet even as conservative commentator Mark Helprin has called for spending a massive 2.5 percent...

Flu fearmongers must be quite depressed these days. Seasonal flu is late. Bird flu -- despite all the headlines -- hasn't gained much traction among humans. And we haven't had pandemic flu in 36 years. (snip) A new study in the Dec. 23-30 British medical journal the Lancet estimates a global pandemic flu could kill 62 million worldwide, mostly in poor nations. (snip) ...while there's no sure-fire cure or preventative measure for the flu, modern medical care and public health practices have dramatically improved since 1918. So any flu epidemic is likely to be far less severe... (snip) There were......

Publication permit No. 14/GP-BC, granted by Press Department, Vietnam Ministry of Culture and Information. Hot News:  Last Updated: Tuesday, January 2, 2007 12:13:39 Vietnam (GMT+07) Bird flu raging in Vietnam's Mekong delta More poultry deaths and infected sites have been reported in Vietnam's Hau Giang, Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces in the last two days. Nguyen Hien Trung, head of Hau Giang's animal health department, said a new site had been identified in Vi Thuy district yesterday after a dead bird had tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus strain. A total of three communes in two districts had...

Avian flu strikes back in Vietnam Saturday 30th of December 2006 02:3 On December 23, the family comprising of 36-year old woman and her three children of age range from three to thirteen, ate one ill chicken of the four and fell ill. They were admitted with the symptoms of bird flu in Nam Can Hospital of Ca Mau province this past week. According to the doctor Ho Van Van at the hospital, they had fever, coughing, decreased white blood cells and damaged lungs. He also added that the hospital is testing the swab samples from the patients for the...

The Chicken Littles Were Wrong The bird flu threat flew the coop. by Michael Fumento 12/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 15 It's that time of year again--avian flu panic season. As the weather turns colder in the northern hemisphere and the flu starts making its annual rounds, the media and their anointed health experts are chirping and squawking once again about how we could be blindsided by a pandemic that some have estimated could kill a billion persons worldwide. New books like The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic join last year's The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian...

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Officials scrambled on Wednesday to determine what has caused the deaths of thousands of mallard ducks in south-central Idaho near the Utah border. Although wildlife experts are downplaying any links to bird flu, they have sent samples to government labs to test for the deadly H5N1 flu strain, among other pathogens. Officials with the federal Bureau of Homeland Security have been also called in to help with the probe. Reuters Pictures Editors Choice: Best pictures from the last 24 hours. View Slideshow "We think the possibility of avian flu is very remote but we're not ruling...

An experiment to reconstruct the deadly 1918 flu virus has given a new insight into how the infection took hold. Scientists discovered a severe immune system reaction was triggered when mice were infected with the recreated virus. The US team believe the extreme immune response could have provoked the body to begin killing its own cells, making the flu even deadlier. The study, published in Nature, may aid the hunt for new treatments. The 1918 pandemic took about 50 million lives. The devastating infection, which is thought to have originated in birds, left young adults worst hit. Scientists in the...

See for example this thread first. We were to be shipped some bird flu (Chinese samples--NOW what do we do?) It shows we have "pluck" in the face of bad luck Let's hope that we don't catch it too!

U.S. finds low-risk H5N1 bird flu strain in ducks Fri Sep 1, 2006 5:43pm ET By Charles Abbott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mallard ducks in Maryland have tested positive for bird flu, apparently a common, less pathogenic strain that poses no risk to humans, the U.S. Agriculture and Interior departments said on Friday. The H5N1 avian influenza virus was found in fecal samples from "resident wild" mallards in Queen Anne's County in Maryland, on the U.S. central Atlantic coast. "Testing has ruled out the possibility of this being the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that has spread through birds in Asia, Europe...

Hospital vet calls on public not to panic or abandon pets after Suphan Buri case A dog in Suphan Buri contracted bird flu after eating infected ducks, new findings show. Prof Dr Yong Pooworawan, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Medicine, released the findings at a seminar at the university yesterday. According to Yong, a researcher at Kasetsart University's Kamp-haengsaen campus found that a dog had contracted bird flu. The findings will be published in a foreign journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, soon, Yong said. He declined to elaborate on the findings. Since 2004, Thai researchers have studied the genetic...

For years, the world's vaccine companies have labored in the shadows of the pharmaceutical industry, vilified by parent groups who claim childhood vaccines can cause neurological disorders like autism. Now, almost overnight, these same companies have been thrust to the forefront of a massive campaign to produce a vaccine against pandemic flu. Not since Jonas Salk's work to find a cure for polio in the 1950s have vaccine scientists been so squarely in the vanguard of medicine. The challenges are vast. The unanswered questions surrounding the influenza virus are profoundly difficult, the process for producing vaccines is slow and unwieldy,...

<p>VINALHAVEN, Maine - Idyllic here, with long lazy days by the sea. Sophia, 6, and Lila, 4, splash in the plastic pool in front of the house. Their parents are going for a row. I am the presiding grandmother in this faraway place of peace and beauty, so protected from the gathering storm of world events.</p>

WASHINGTON -- Scientists have discovered the possible presence of bird flu in wild mute swans in Michigan -- but it does not appear to be the worrisome, highly pathogenic strain, the White House announced Monday. "They believe it is a strain of low pathogenicity, similar to strains that have been seen before in North America," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. Testing still is being done to confirm the presence of the virus and its type, officials said. Scientists had feared that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu would reach North America sometime this year. Just last week, the...

<p>Dow Jones- U.S. government officials are waiting to see whether the discovery of bird flu in a pair of Michigan swans will disrupt exports by the U.S. poultry industry.</p> <p>While genetic screening by U.S. government scientists has determined that the virus found in the wild birds isn't the deadly Asian form of the H5N1 virus, countries such as Russia and Japan have clamped down before on imports of U.S. chickens when other forms of bird flu were detected in the U.S. These countries want to protect their domestic flocks from the highly-contagious respiratory disease.</p>

July 05, Nature — Multiple introductions of H5N1 in Nigeria. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that this deadly virus first arrived in Africa from different sources. As the avian influenza virus H5N1 swept from Asia across Russia to Europe, Nigeria was the first country in Africa to report the emergence of this highly pathogenic virus. Researchers analyzed H5N1 sequences in poultry from two different farms in Lagos state and found that three H5N1 lineages were independently introduced through routes that coincide with the flight paths of migratory birds, although independent trade imports cannot be excluded.

Avian influenza, or influenza A (H5N1), has 3 of the 4 properties necessary to cause a serious pandemic: It can infect people, nearly all people are immunologically naive, and it is highly lethal. The Achilles heel of the virus is the lack of sustained human–human transmission. Fortunately, among the 124 cases reported through 30 May 2006, nearly all were acquired by direct contact with poultry. Unfortunately, the capability for efficient human–human transmission requires only a single mutation by a virus that is notoriously genetically unstable, hence the need for a new vaccine each year for seasonal influenza. Influenza A (H5N1)...

We're hearing more about avian flu these days, and there's some reason to think it's a threat. A controversial Chinese study suggests that human beings were being infected several years ago, without that being recognized. That might be comforting: The longer it's been around without spreading human-to-human, the less likely a mutation permitting such transmission might seem. Unfortunately, it's no longer just a matter of speculation. The World Health Organization has now confirmed its first case of human-to-human transmission. That's still a long way from a strain that's as virulent as ordinary flu, but it's another step closer to something...

New research suggests that the source of bird flu may be factory farm chicken feces that are then used as commercial fish food and fertilizer in fields thus exposing humans and other birds to the H5N1 Avian Influenza virus (AI or bird flu).[1] This is thought to explain some of the outbreaks in China as well as the recent cluster of human deaths in Sumatra. Some feel that this may explain the reservoirs of avian flu in the wild - factory farms are infecting wild fish and birds. Government officials have been warning about the threat of migratory wild birds...

The USDA is still blocking US companies from testing their own beef to prove it is BSE free. This is hurting US beef exports to Japan. The USDA claims we need the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) which they developed to help with beef exports to Japan. With one hand the USDA forces heavy handed, expensive regulations on all livestock owners in the form of NAIS. With the other hand the USDA blocks a simple, foolproof test, that they developed, which would open up foreign markets to US beef. What gives? Is this all just an excuse for the government...

The big current excuse for Premises ID and the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is that wild birds were going to migrate over the poles, bring Avian Influenza (H5N1) to Alaska and then down the west coast of the United States. The scenerio presented by experts was that then it would come eastward to all the other state and infect our backyard flocks who would then kill off millions of people in the United States. There are a few problems with this. Chickens are terminal hosts to bird flu. It isn't normally transmissible to humans. Sure, if you...

Before it was terrorism. Then it was mad cow disease. Now the government is using fears of Avian Influenza (H5N1 or bird flu) to scare people into accepting reductions in their freedoms and more government control over our lives. The latest trampling of our constitutional rights is in the form of Premise ID and the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Maryland has bill HB709 to register all domestic birds including pet birds. Vermont is pushing Premise ID for bird flu prevention. ABC plans to do a TV movie about Avian Flu. Everyone wants in on the fear mongering....

ROME, June 23 — An Indonesian who died after catching the A(H5N1) bird flu virus from his 10-year-old son represents the first confirmed case of human-to-human transmission of the disease, a World Health Organization investigation of an unusual family cluster has concluded, the agency said Friday. The W.H.O. investigators also discovered that the virus had mutated slightly when the son had the disease, although not in any way that would allow the virus to pass more readily among people. "Yes, it is slightly altered, but in a way that viruses commonly mutate," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the agency...

Jun 23, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – The recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases in Indonesia marks the first time laboratory tests confirmed human-to-human transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today. According to news reports, WHO officials said the virus mutated slightly when it infected a 10-year-old boy, and he passed the altered virus on to his father. Detection of the altered strain in both the boy and his father was evidence of direct transmission. The mutation did not make the virus more transmissible, and the boy's father, who died of the illness, did not pass it...