Posted on 02/17/2005 11:54:17 PM PST by nickcarraway
US scientist says ducks play a key role in evolution of deadly disease
The highly pathogenic bird-flu virus most likely exists in ducks in a benign form and might evolve to become a pandemic, a visiting American virus expert warned yesterday.
Robert G Webster, a virus expert from St Jude Children’s Research Hospital Department of Infectious Diseases in Memphis, warned regional officials to keep ducks away from other potential sources of the killer flu virus.
His warning came a day after the prime minister rejected a Cabinet proposal put by Deputy PM Chaturon Chaisang for the government to buy up 15 million free-range ducks, and to implement regulations forbidding free-range ducks.
Webster told the Asean meeting on emerging diseases in Bangkok yesterday that domestic ducks were playing an important role in the continued evolution of the H5N1 virus, including prolonged shedding and generation of drift variants.
He pointed to a recent study that showed evidence of the H5N1 virus becoming very stable even in the faecal samples of ducks. The virus was found to remain stable in duck faeces for up to six days and could actually live for 17 days.
“This is the danger … the benign [bird-flu] virus hiding out in the duck means we will have problems,” Webster said.
The best course of action at the moment is to separate ducks from other natural hosts of bird flu to lessen the chances that H5N1 in ducks can find ways to transmit from humans to humans, he said.
With ducks as the prime risk, he said, concerns were raised about the resurgence of H5N1 lethal strain of avian influenza in poultry in Vietnam and Thailand in January and increasing human deaths in Vietnam.
Prof Prasert Tongcharoen, Thailand’s best-known virologist, said rejection of the Cabinet proposals to combat bird flu came as bad news for scientists and medical officials dealing with the outbreak.
Meanwhile, three bird-flu vaccines for humans are available for trials scheduled for next month. One will be held at Webster’s hospital, one at the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and another at a London laboratory.
Dr Scott Dowell, director for the CDC’s International Emerging Infections Program-me, urged Asean members to band together to tackle the pandemic threat.
The challenges for Asean to better handle the anticipated pandemic include being able to rapidly deploy a trained team to the scene where a suspect case is reported, have stockpiles of antiviral medications in place, implement risk communication, and trigger a pre-planned and coordinated response.
The Bangkok meeting is expected to facilitate the setting up of the Asean Emerging Diseases Research and Deve-lopment initiative to scientifically watch for signs of flu pandemics and other new diseases.
Well! No Duck Sauce tonight at the Chinese restaurant!
"Af-flu!"
Gooseundheit.
No problem for me...The animals that I can't tolerate are insects, rodents, and waterfoul. Eww!
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