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Mekong Delta's bird flu cases force urgent action HCM CITY — The latest outbreak of bird flu in Soc Trang province has authorities on the alert in the Mekong River Delta, forcing the region to take drastic measures to prevent the epidemic from spreading to other provinces. The provincial authorities reported a bird flu epidemic on Sunday after samples were taken from the dead ducks in My Huong Commune, My Tu District had tested positive for the lethal virus. Since the recurrence of bird flu virus in early December in the Mekong Delta, the virus has now hit seven provinces,...

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...

Urgent measures against new bird flu outbreak the virus H5N1 has attacked many fowl: killing 600 chickens and 2,100 ducks in Khanh Binh and Khanh Hai communes, Tran Van Thoi district, Ca Mau province from December 11 â€" 20, 2006. The epidemic has spread to Vinh Binh commune, Hoa Binh district, Bac Lieu province. According to Ms. Chau Thi Kim Tuyen, Vice Head of the Ca Mau province Department of Veterinary Inspection, many local residents killed diseased poultry and threw the corpses into Hiep Hoa canal, which made the epidemic spread more rapidly among poultry breeding farms in Khanh Binh...

Bird flu spreads in Vietnam 22/12/2006 12:31  - (SA)   Bird flu hits Vietnam poultry Poultry culled to curb bird flu Hanoi - Authorities in Vietnam said on Friday that bird flu had spread in two provinces in the southern Mekong delta, where massive outbreaks were first reported early this week. Additional cases of the deadly H5N1 virus were detected in Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces, with nearly 8 300 poultry dead or culled, the national animal health department said on its website. The two provinces were the first to report major outbreaks of bird flu in the communist nation within the past...

Va. hunters' game tested for avian flu November 27, 2006 RICHMOND, Va. -- Waterfowl hunters in Virginia are being enlisted in the fight against avian flu. Along eastern Virginia's waterways, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is scouting out hunters at wildlife management areas, popular hunting spots and boat ramps. There, some of them are being asked to allow a swab of their bagged game to test for the highly pathogenic version of H5N1 avian flu, according to Bob Ellis, assistant director of the department's wildlife division. Species being sampled include tundra swan, mute swan, snow goose, Atlantic brant and...

South Korea to kill cats and dogs over bird flu fears South Korea plans to kill cats and dogs to try to prevent the spread of bird flu after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus at a chicken farm last week, officials said today. Animal health experts, however, suggested it was "a bit of an extreme measure" when there was no definitive scientific evidence to suggest that cats or dogs could pass the virus to humans. Quarantine officials have already killed 125,000 chickens within a 1,650-foot radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 155 miles south of Seoul,...

EID Journal Home Volume 12, Number 12 December 2006 Abstract Bats have been identified as a natural reservoir for an increasing number of emerging zoonotic viruses, including henipaviruses and variants of rabies viruses. Recently, we and another group independently identified several horseshoe bat species (genus Rhinolophus) as the reservoir host for a large number of viruses that have a close genetic relationship with the coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Our current research focused on the identification of the reservoir species for the progenitor virus of the SARS coronaviruses responsible for outbreaks during 2002 - 2003 and 2003...

Researchers Discover Key Mechanism By Which Lethal Viruses Ebola And Marburg Cause Disease Researchers in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Caribbean Primate Research Center have discovered a key mechanism by which the Filoviruses, Ebola and Marburg, cause disease. The identification of an amino acid sequence in Filoviruses that results in the rapid depression of immunological response is described in the December 2006 issue of The FASEB Journal. Using this information, researchers can begin to develop new drugs to stop these devastating diseases. Filoviruses,...

Evangelicals militant when it comes to Israel, End of Days By Zev Chafets MISSILES and rockets are falling all over the Galilee. A bomb even hit Nazareth, where it killed two small Muslim children (Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, commander of the Religion of Peace, Hezbollah branch, apologized for the mistake; he had been aiming at Jews). But through it all, peace and tranquillity have reigned over Kibbutz Megiddo. This is bad news if you're one of those people who happen to be looking forward to the end of the world. To the untrained eye, Megiddo is just another Israeli farm community...

Bird flu: Don't put the cat among the chickens, warn Dutch team 5 April 2006 PARIS - A leading team of European virologists has appealed for health authorities to step up vigilance about household pets, saying cats and possibly dogs too are at risk from bird flu. Albert Osterhaus and colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, say that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other agencies have under-estimated the risk from cats in their campaign against avian influenza. They point to several documented cases in Thailand, Indonesia and Germany in which domestic cats, farmyard cats and...

Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts March 27, 2006 The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease. Since February, the virus has cut a wide swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried...

U.S. study defines two clear bird flu strains ATLANTA, March 20 (Reuters) - The H5N1 strain of bird flu in humans has evolved into two separate strains, U.S. researchers reported on Monday, which could complicate developing a vaccine and preventing a pandemic. One strain, or clade, made people sick in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in 2003 and 2004 and a second, a cousin of the first, caused the disease in people in Indonesia in 2004. Two clades may share the same ancestor but are distinct -- as are different clades, or strains, of the AIDS virus, the team from the...

Bird flu 'causes first dog death' Bird flu cases have been discovered along the Caspian Sea coast A stray dog has died of bird flu in the Caspian nation of Azerbaijan, health officials have said - thought to be the first time the virus has killed a dog. Azerbaijan reported its first three human deaths from bird flu on Monday. The World Health Organization has yet to confirm bird flu caused the human deaths, but said the US Navy lab that carried out the tests was reliable. The deaths of the three young Azeri women would take the WHO total...

Cat in Germany "very likely" infected by eating birds Pets at risk as bird flu kills cat By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 01/03/2006) Daily Telegraph,UK Pet cats may have to be kept indoors once bird flu arrives in Britain, scientists have said after the death of a cat in Germany from the disease. The case - the first of a mammal dying from bird flu in Europe - means that cats may be able to pass the H5N1 virus on to humans and that the disease may spread more easily than thought. Even more worrying is the possibility that...

Dead cat found with bird flu in Germany BERLIN, Feb 28 (Reuters) - A dead cat found in Germany was infected with a form of the H5N1 bird flu virus, officials said on Tuesday, the first such case in the country and one which may fuel public fears over the disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and disease experts said the case probably did not increase the risk to humans from a virus which has killed at least 93 people since late 2003. But officials in parts of Germany where bird flu has been discovered advised owners to keep their...

France urges calm as H5N1 bird flu hits turkey farm By Sophie Louet PARIS, Feb 25 (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac urged French people on Saturday not to panic after the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed at a farm in the east of the country where thousands of turkeys had died. It was the first case of the virus in domestic farm birds in the European Union and threatened to deal a severe blow to France's struggling poultry industry, worth 6 billion euros ($7 billion) a year and the biggest in the bloc. Poultry...

Bird flu reaches Greece, Italy, Bulgaria ROME (AFP) - The H5N1 strain of bird flu which is potentially deadly for humans has reached the European Union, having been detected in members Greece and Italy as well as in Bulgaria. Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said the highly pathogenic strain, responsible for the deaths of some 90 people, mainly in Asia, had been found in two dead swans on the island of Sicily and was suspected in at least half-a-dozen birds elsewhere in the south of the country. Brussels for its part said that Italian authorities "confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 on...

Bird flu kills again, spreads to new country By Rufat Abbasov BAKU (Reuters) - Avian flu was blamed for another death in Indonesia on Friday and spread to a new country after Azerbaijan said the lethal H5N1 strain had been found in wild birds on the Caspian Sea. The virus was discovered in birds in the west African country of Nigeria earlier this week, capping what a senior United Nations official called a devastating spread from southern Asia over the past seven months. Indonesia said a woman being treated for bird flu at a specialist Jakarta hospital had died and...

News from Africa 09/02/2006 10:19 KADUNA, Nigeria, Feb 9 (AFP) Bird disease in flu-hit Nigeria "spreading like wildfire" As Nigeria scrambled to deal with Africa's first confirmed case of deadly bird flu, a farmer's representative said Thursday thousands of poultry had died of disease further north. Identified earlier this week as "fowl cholera", the disease was spreading rapidly through farms in Kano State, killing tens of thousands of chickens, Auwalu Haruna, secretary of the Kano State poultry farmers' association, said. Nigeria announced Wednesday that Africa's first confirmed case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu -- which can be fatal to...