Posted on 01/15/2007 11:08:30 AM PST by Gritty
BALTIMORE, Maryland (Reuters) -- A bird flu pandemic remains a threat that the U.S. health care system must take seriously despite less frequent media coverage and the absence so far of human cases in the United States, experts warned.
John Bartlett, an infectious disease expert at John Hopkins University, said the decentralized U.S. health system will make it more difficult to get ready for a possible human pandemic of H5N1 avian virus -- or anything else.
He disagreed with the suggestion that the bird flu threat has been overstated by the media.
(snip)
"And it continues to be just as lethal as it was in the beginning," Bartlett said at a conference aimed at helping U.S. hospital administrators prepare for a pandemic.
(snip)
"It's there to stay in birds, which means it is just waiting for the opportunity to make the mutation," Bartlett said.
(snip)
Thomas Inglesby of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh told the panel "the time line has already begun to slip a little bit" on the U.S. goal for 2011 of having enough vaccine for the entire population within six months of the identification of a pandemic influenza virus.
Hospitals "have to plan that there'll be no vaccine," he said, urging administrators to start "speaking collectively about the need for a much more ambitious and aggressive vaccine strategy."
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
How about they concentrate more on AIDS, cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, lukemia, and a few dozen others?
Ping...........
It is my belief that an invasion of killer robots will also challenge the US health system. I realize robots have not killed anyone yet, but we should still spend billions of dollars in preparation for that possibility.
Only 140 some people have died from this in the last five years or so. More people died in rush hour traffic this morning.
Pandemic my big red a*s.......
Doesn't it have to be an epidemic before it becomes a pandemic. Is it fair to jump directly to pandemic, and not pass GO or collect $200?
Excellent point.
Manuel II Palaeologus by chance?
Whoa! Right there!
That sounds like someone stumping for federalized health care.
Nope, no way.
While some sort of coordination and planning consistency is important in order to mount an effective response to any medical emergency, CENTRALIZATION is not desireable.
If the 'centralized' portion becomes hit by medical, nuclear, CBW, or natural disaster, the whole program goes down the tubes.
Central coordination in the planning phase is one thing, but not centralization of operations.
ping
By Mita Valina Liem
JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian hospital was on Monday overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand.
A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials.
Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world.
At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating 9 people with bird flu symptoms, including a 5-year-old girl in intensive care, its isolation wards were overwhelmed.
"If we get more patients, we will send them to Sulianti Saroso," Muchtar Ichsan, the head of the bird flu ward, told Reuters, referring the country's main bird flu treatment centre in North Jakarta.
The patients included the son and husband of a woman who died of bird flu last week. The 18-year-old son has been confirmed to have the disease, although tests so far on the husband show he does not have the virus.
In a bid to stem the spread of the virus, Indonesia plans to prohibit people from keeping backyard fowl in three high-risk provinces.
Adding to regional worries, a senior Thai agriculture official said on Monday that 1,900 ducks had been culled in the northern province of Phitsanulok after some of the birds had tested positive for H5N1.
The case is Thailand's first in birds since last July. The last human death -- the country's 17th -- occurred in August.
Experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that could spread easily between people, but there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus so far in the latest cases.
The World Health Organisation says bird flu has infected 267 people and killed 161 of them since 2003.
EMERGENCY LEVELS
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the spike in cases in the northern hemisphere winter follows a similar pattern to that seen over the past three years and was to be expected.
But it was encouraging that outbreaks were being quickly reported and dealt with, a senior WHO official said.
"It is not surprising that we are seeing an increase (in cases) ... but we are seeing much more effective responses than we were a few years ago," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's coordinator for the global influenza programme, told journalists.
In Vietnam, where bird flu has killed 42 of the 93 people infected since 2003, the virus appeared to be spreading fast among fowl in the country's southern Mekong Delta, threatening to engulf the major rice-growing region.
The Animal Health Department said in a report seen on Monday that tests showed H5N1 had killed ducks in the province of Soc Trang, just a day after bird flu was found in the neighbouring province of Tra Vinh.
The Agriculture Ministry has ordered an additional poultry vaccination campaign in the Mekong Delta area and requested reinforcement of animal health teams to contain the spread.
Farm ministry officials in Japan said there was no evidence of the disease spreading there following confirmation at the weekend of a bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm in the southwest in which 3,800 chickens died.
Its not a pandemic yet because the current strain of the virus cannot be passed from one human to another. The only mode of transmission is currently from an infected bird to a human and this mode requires directly handling of the infected animal. How many birds have you fondled today?
However, H5N1 will mutate into a strain that transmits from human to human. Then we're in trouble because 50% of those who catch bird flu die. Small numbers now, big numbers some day.
Hopkins has a long and dishonorable history of supporting government intervention in everything.
In all the stories of outbreaks and culling of flocks in the various parts of the world one thing I haven't noticed is mention of restriction on imports and exports of poultry.
Granted I have not read every single article on the subject, and so could have missed such, but considering I tend to pay more attention to the potential impact of this on our domestic poultry industry, I don't think I would have missed such a notation.
I chuckled at your choice of phrase, but I actually know quite a few people that have handled literally thousands of chickens in just the past few days. My best friend's husband manages 17 chicken houses, each one holding about 34,000 birds :)
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