Poor vaccines seen hampering bird flu efforts
Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 09 December 2005 0526 hrs
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/health/view/182712/1/.html
LONDON : Efforts to control the spread of bird flu in poultry in Southeast Asia are being hampered by the use of ineffective and often fake agricultural vaccines, a British virologist said Thursday.
As a result, ineffective animal vaccines could be increasing the threat of the virus evolving and being able to pass to humans, triggering a potentially catastrophic pandemic, said animal flu specialist Robert Webster.
To combat the problem, Webster, director of the World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, called for more rigorous minimum standards for agricultural vaccines.
"There are good vaccines and bad vaccines. Good vaccines reduce virus load; bad vaccines stop the signs of disease but the virus keeps replicating, spreading and evolving," he told reporters in London.
"The chickens look perfectly healthy but go on pumping out viruses for a long time. We have to ask the question, why are these animal influenza viruses showing so much antigenic drift?
"I would argue that contributing to this is the use of bad vaccines."
(excerpt)
(Dec. 10, 2005)
09 Dec 2005 15:52:03 GMT
OTTAWA - Chinese officials have concealed bird flu outbreaks in several provinces for many months this year, a leading virologist in Hong Kong told Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper in an interview published on Friday.
"I don't know if they are brave enough to admit that they have the virus in every corner of the country," said Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong, who the Globe said had analyzed nearly 100,000 bird flu virus samples from across China.
"Quite honestly, some provinces have the virus and they still haven't announced any outbreak. I can show direct evidence, even though China is still trying very hard to block my research," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
China has so far reported more than 30 outbreaks of bird flu and five cases where the virus spread to humans.
Beijing has promised resources and openness in fighting bird flu after being widely criticized for an initial cover-up of the SARS virus in 2003.
The disease mostly affects birds, but scientists fear it could mutate into a form that can pass easily between people, leading to a human influenza pandemic.
The World Health Organization said this week that the virus might be going undetected or unreported in China, citing the case of a 10-year-old girl who fell ill with bird flu in a village that had not reported any poultry outbreaks.
Guan said he had evidence that bird flu had been circulating in the southwestern province of Yunnan many months before officials there confirmed an outbreak on Nov. 17.
"Why has this virus been burning for 10 years like a fire?" he asked the Globe and Mail.
"Ask the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture. They should not avoid the question. It's obvious that it's out of control in China. It started off in Guangdong province and now the whole of China has the virus."
The WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization both say Beijing does a good job of quickly culling birds and disinfecting and quarantining affected areas.
http://www.peacehall.com/news/gb/english/2005/12/200512100209.shtml