Posted on 09/17/2006 3:31:08 PM PDT by blam
We must remain vigilant on bird flu, say experts
Connie Levett Herald Correspondent in Singapore
September 18, 2006
THE avian flu pandemic is still a real threat to world health and trade and should not be dismissed as a millennium-bug-type phenomenon that will never materialise, according to a United Nations health official.
The H5N1 virus has been laboratory-confirmed in 55 countries and has caused 220 million bird deaths and 143 human deaths, according to the World Bank.
Developed countries have committed $US1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) this year to help fight the spread of the virus.
"There will be another influenza pandemic one day but we don't know when," said David Nabarro, the UN's co-ordinator for avian and human influenza, in Singapore yesterday.
"We cannot predict when it might happen or how, so we would encourage the communities, governments and private entities to get prepared for a pandemic that might start at any time."
For a pandemic to occur, the H5N1 virus will have to mutate to allow easy human-to-human transmission.
New economic modelling by the World Bank suggests a severe pandemic could wipe 3 per cent off the global economy, at a value of $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion.
Despite the recent emergence of the virus in Africa, officials say Asia is still the greatest area of concern, especially China and Indonesia.
China's position has always been that it would not seek assistance or resources from outside. Recently, Chinese authorities refused to share virus samples from a recent outbreak.
"With sharing samples, there are complexities because it is not just used for scientific purposes but also for commercial advantage," Dr Nabarro said.
"I think partnerships are being built based on recognition that it requires world co-operation."
Dr Nabarro said Vietnam, regarded as a hot spot six months ago, had worked hard to bring the outbreaks under control.
Parts of China and Indonesia were still experiencing outbreaks, however: "Indonesia has reported the virus in 260 of its 444 districts," he said.
South-east China is another area that is being closely monitored by health agencies.
"China is a huge country with 60 per cent of the world's poultry population," Dr Nabarro said.
In recent months China and Indonesia have increased efforts to improve surveillance of animal health.
Dr Nabarro said that only by going through a pandemic could humans build up an immunity to the virus.
By the Associated Press
September 17, 2006
FAIRFAX, Va. -- A bird flu pandemic would kill nearly 700 people in Fairfax County, forcing hospitals, nursing homes and other makeshift medical centers to set up temporary morgues and stockpile body bags to handle the deaths, according to a new report.
"Life as you see it today will not be the same," Fairfax health director Gloria Addo-Ayensu said in response to a 112-page primer on how the Washington area's largest local government would respond to such an outbreak.
Addo-Ayensu and other emergency management officials say Fairfax is the region's first local government to issue a comprehensive report on pandemic flu preparations.
The report comes amid fears that avian influenza, which is spreading worldwide in poultry and has infected more than 230 people, could mutate into a virulent strain that could spread widely from person to person, killing millions worldwide.
Although the Bush administration has released a federal plan and committed tens of millions of dollars to anticipate a crisis, the details of how to respond are left to state and local governments.
The Fairfax report presents a grim scene. A severe outbreak of bird flu would infect nearly a third of the county's population, sending thousands to local hospitals. As much as 40 percent of the county's work force would be out of commission.
To prepare for such a scenario, the county is giving government officials, infectious disease specialists, emergency planners and first responders explicit instructions on what to do if people get sick.
"We have to look at the scenarios that are the worst-case, and look at how we would deal with them," said C. Douglas Bass, Fairfax County's emergency management director.
The county would track individual infections through reporting by local doctors and hospitals. Sites would be set up to distribute a potential vaccine or medicine, and sick people could be forced into quarantine.
Many county employees would work from home, and hundreds could be diverted from their jobs in libraries, parks and other "nonessential" agencies to help with the emergency response.
Other people would be ordered to stay home, steering clear of trains, buses, malls and other places where they would come into close contact with others.
The county's goal is to minimize the transmission of a highly contagious virus while keeping the county government of 11,000 employees running, albeit with diminished services.
The response could be particularly challenging in a county of more than 1 million people, thousands of whom do not speak English. As many as 51,000 of those infected would be low-income residents without regular access to medical care, the response plan says.
"Trying to do mass vaccinations, for example, would be a huge challenge," county spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald said. "We are so big that we can't just say, 'Everybody show up at one place."'
Right now I'm concerned about killer spinich and I don't like the way my lettuce is looking at me either.
Did you see the article this morning about poison mushrooms? Is it one jihad at the time?
I suspect fowl play.
BS! It aint here, when it gets here, if it gets here..we'll handle it..
LOL. I still peel my apples before eating.
It's becoming an annual event. Like Christmas and Thanksgiving.
No, we must not.
"Bird flu" is not an epidemic. It is an opportunistic infection that, to date, has killed about 200 or so people world-wide. Mostly people who live in third-world sh*tholes where anything resembling decent health care, or even a bottle of Nyquil, is hard to find.
The "threat" of bird flu is not that it is a killer pandemic; it is that people from these third-world sh*tholes where it is prevalent will, when sufficiently panicked, swarm out of thier own disease-ridden slums and seek shelter in the West, swamping OUR health care systems.
The multi-culti view of this is that the WEST must do "something" about bird flu before this nightmare scenario occurs. This is the driving force behind all of the "bird flu will kill us all" rhetoric; since African and Asian countries either cannot or will not confront this little irritation, that we (the West) must, or somehow we (the West)will "be responsible" for the deaths of innocents by our inactivity.
Bird flu will not be the death of western civilization because we are fairly healthy folks, with plenty to eat, access to a wide range of anti-biotics and such, and with a health care network second to none. As a disease, it doesn't even rank as high as the Black Death.
What WILL be the death of western civilization is allowing ourselves to be stampeded into "solving" a problem which is largely an invention; a soilution which will require billions of dollars being poured into Africa and Asia (and subsequently funnelled into Swiss bank acocunts by their corrupt leadership), to the detriment of diseases and afflictions which are serious Westeern health issues, like heart disease, diabetes, AIDS and such.
Charity begins at home.
I peel everything from banannas to grapes. Y'all can't be too carefull dontcha know.
I might be worried about bird flu - if I were a bird.
This is just CDC trying to get a bigger budget next year.
"People will try to break quarantines, and will horde and loot, usually before there is a serious threat."
" Many of the people who will get sick and die will either be unlucky or will stupidly refuse to adapt to the new circumstances and take appropriate precautions. No different than the people who decided to "ride out" hurricane Katrina."
BLOAT.
17:54:50 EDT Sep 17, 2006
Canadian Press: HELEN BRANSWELL
(CP) - Recent reports from South Korea and Indonesia of after-the-fact discovery of a handful of mild human cases of H5N1 avian flu have again raised questions about whether the disease's extraordinarily high death rate is being inflated because mild cases are being missed.
Experts say the evidence to date points away from that notion. But they add that it is important to continue to search for mild cases. Understanding the true number of human infections and the range of symptoms experienced could help scientists better assess the pandemic risk posed by the virus.
As well, tracking mild cases over time could provide an early warning if important changes to H5N1 occur, they suggest. Climbing rates of mild cases might signal the virus was adapting to become a human flu strain, moving closer to triggering a flu pandemic.
"We need to keep monitoring it," Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, said Sunday.
"Because frankly, one of the indications that there may be a changing epidemiology (disease pattern) with this is in fact if we start seeing larger and larger percentages of individuals who are asymptomatic or only mildly ill that we can clearly confirm as having H5N1 infection."
The World Health Organization announced last week blood tests done on an Indonesian man showed he became infected, likely in May when he helped nurse his sister, a confirmed H5N1 case. The man reported having a cough and abdominal discomfort but his symptoms weren't diagnosed as H5N1-related at the time.
And South Korean officials revealed that testing of blood samples from more than 2,000 workers who culled diseased poultry in late 2003 and early 2004 showed five had developed antibodies to the virus - a sign they had been infected. An earlier round of testing in South Korea turned up four cullers with antibodies.
None of these people had serious illness at the time; none has yet been added to the WHO's official case list.
To the best of the scientific community's knowledge, the H5N1 virus is not adept at infecting people. But when it does, it appears to cause severe disease. Nearly 60 per cent of the 246 confirmed cases have died; many of the survivors battled for their lives.
But there has always been a suspicion in some quarters that a significant number of mild cases are being missed - a theory these new reports may fuel.
Many - though not all - diseases cause a spectrum of illness ranging from undetectable to life-threatening infection. With polio, for instance, it is estimated there are 200 inapparent infections for every person the virus paralyzes. On the other hand, rabies is almost 100 per cent fatal.
If the confirmed H5N1 cases were the proverbial tip of the iceberg, the death rate attributed to the virus would tumble. That in turn might ease worries about the threat posed by H5N1 - though a flu virus that killed even 10 or 20 per cent of its victims would still be a source of serious concern.
Dr. Angus Nicoll, an influenza expert with the European Centre for Disease Control, said these new asymptomatic cases don't change the fact that the bulk of evidence to date suggests such cases are rare.
A number of small studies have been done to test the blood of people who've been in contact with confirmed cases. They have turned up few or no cases that missed earlier detection.
The most recent study - published in the October issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases - looked at blood samples from 351 Cambodians who had been in contact with a man who died from the disease. None developed antibodies to the virus.
"It's still a plausible hypothesis but it's becoming a less likely one," Nicoll said of the notion that there may be a significant number of asymptomatic and mild cases of the disease.
"My bottom line would be: I'm sure we're going to find the occasional mild case. I'm sure we're going to find, eventually, an asymptomatic (case)," he said from Sweden.
"Even if you find just a few asymptomatic and mild cases, that's not going to change the our risk assessment."
Thanks, blam. Pinging Lurker.
Iraqi boy was country's third bird flu case -WHO
GENEVA, Sept 19 (Retuers) - A three-year-old Iraqi boy in Baghdad has been confirmed as having survived a mild case of bird flu last March, the first confirmed human infection in the capital, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.
"The Ministry of Health in Iraq has retrospectively confirmed the country's third case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus," the WHO said in a statement.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19916672.htm
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The two cases previously confirmed in Iraq occurred in January 2006. Both cases were fatal.
Two out of three dead ain't good.
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