Free Republic

16:36' 24/03/2008 (GMT+7) After four years of research, scientists at the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology have announced they will test type A/H5N1 vaccine on humans this April and the vaccine will be available on the market in 2009. Last stage of H5N1 vaccine There was good news for scientists at the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology: the Ministry of Health agreed to let them test H5N1 vaccine on humans. The over-four year process of researching H5N1 virus carried out by the scientists is at last in the final stage. In early March 2008, a group of scientists...

17:46' 04/04/2008 (GMT+7) Scientists inject the vaccine in monkeys on Reu Island, Quang Ninh province in 2004. Vaccine and Biomedical Product Company 1 on April 3 injected a second dose of H5N1 vaccine in ten volunteers. Vietnam to produce H5N1 vaccine in 2009This test aims to verify the safety of H5N1 vaccine in humans. After the injection, all volunteers were in normal condition. These people will be monitored for seven days more to ensure the safety of the vaccine. On March 6, these people took the first dose of type A/H5N1 vaccine and no abnormal symptoms were recorded before they...

Ducks, people and rice paddies are the primary forces driving outbreaks of avian influenza in Thailand and Vietnam, and the number of chickens is less pivotal, scientists said on Wednesday. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization experts and others looked at three waves of H5N1 bird flu in Thailand and Vietnam in 2004 and 2005. The virus has killed 236 people in 12 countries since 2003. They used computer modeling to study how various factors were involved in the spread of the virus, including the numbers of ducks, geese and chickens, human population size, rice cultivation and local geography. Even though...

Associated Press Chinese officials have confirmed that bird flu was to blame for killing chickens in poultry markets in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Hong Kong's health bureau Sunday. China's Ministry of Agriculture notified the administration that the birds tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, marking the country's fifth outbreak among poultry this year, Hong Kong's Food and Health Bureau said in a statement. The Ministry of Agriculture also said on its Web site that last week's outbreak in Guangzhou killed 114 birds and resulted in the slaughter of 518 others. But it has been contained, the...

MARGRAM (BIRBHUM): Hundreds of goats have died of an unknown disease over the past four days in Birbhum's Rampurhat block II. Some experts warned that if the H5N1 virus — which causes bird flu — has jumped from birds to mammals, it could be the turn of humans next. TOI met jittery villagers in Dakhalbati, one of the affected villages in Birbhum's Margram. Abdul Mohid, a farmer, said his goat was shivering and sneezing and saliva was oozing from its mouth. Mohid had called in a local vet, who could only say the animal was suffering from high fever but...

Officials in the Indian state of West Bengal say that the bird flu epidemic has spread to two more of the state's 19 districts, taking the total to nine. They say that the spread of the H5N1 virus means that even more chicken and duck will have to be killed than was originally estimated. On Monday officials said that around 2m birds would need to be culled - a figure that will now rise. Health experts have warned that the outbreak could get out of control.

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus may sometimes stick to surfaces or get kicked up in fertilizer dust to infect people, according to a World Health Organization report published on Wednesday. The WHO team reviewed all known human cases of avian influenza, which has infected 350 people in 14 countries and killed 217 of them since 2003, and found that 25 percent of cases have no explanation. Most are passed directly from bird to people, they noted in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And very rarely one person can infect another...

Egypt: 4 Women Die of Bird Flu By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: January 3, 2008 Bird flu has killed four Egyptian women in the past week, according to Egyptian health officials and the World Health Organization. The women, ages 25 to 50, were from different provinces, and the cases were not related, officials said. At least one was a chicken seller, and the others were said to have kept poultry at home. The H5N1 strain of avian flu appears endemic in Egyptian poultry; previously the last human case was in June. A total of 43 Egyptians have been infected...

A vaccine that could help to control a flu pandemic has shown encouraging results in its first human trials. The vaccine, made by Acambis, based in Cambridge, should protect against all strains of influenza A, the type responsible for pandemics. Unlike existing vaccines it does not have to be reformulated each year to match the prevalent strains of flu, so it could be stockpiled and used as soon as a pandemic strain emerges. Nor does it need to be grown on fertilised chicken eggs, as the existing vaccines do, but can be produced by cell culture. The results, announced yesterday...

AP Medical Writer HANOI, Vietnam --Limited human-to-human bird flu transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but no new infections have been reported for two weeks and there appears to be no threat of further spread, a top World Health Organization official said. A WHO team has finished its initial investigation in Pakistan after up to nine patients, including several family members, were suspected of being infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus in areas north of Islamabad. They were the country's first reported human cases. The experts were expected back in Geneva to begin piecing together how the virus may...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is urging provincial authorities to obey health guidelines to stop any bird flu outbreaks after fears lapses in poultry culling methods led to eight people being infected with the H5N1 virus. The Health Ministry is sending out messages via radio and pamphlets to villages and farms in North West Frontier Province, where the eight people, including a veterinarian involved in culling, were infected in South Asia's first human cases. The vet's brother died of bird flu. A third brother also died but it is unclear if he was also infected with the virus. "These winter months...

KUWAIT: Officials reported that an Indian expatriate was just completing his travel procedures at Kuwait International Airport to travel to Hyderabad City in India by Indian Airlines. They said he presented two tickets - one for him and second for his eight-year-old child. Customs personnel however noticed that he approached the counter alone leaving his child in the waiting hall. The customs personnel then asked him about the child to which he answered them that he suspected that his child might be suffering from the bird flu virus, which is why he wanted to complete the travel procedures and only...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Six people caught H5N1 bird flu in northern Pakistan last month and at least one person with the disease has died, the government said Saturday. The World Health Organization confirmed all six cases were positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu in preliminary testing, but said a second round of analysis was being conducted to make sure. If confirmed, the infections would be the first in humans in South Asia. The Health Ministry said it had tested several patients and others whom they had come into contact with in late October. The results for six people from...

Authorities in Pakistan have announced that country's first reported cases of H5N1 avian flu in a cluster of family members which may have involved human-to-human transmission. There was some confusion Saturday about how many people had tested positive for the virus, with Pakistan announcing six cases but an official of the World Health Organization suggesting as many as nine people may have tested positive for the virus in that country. The WHO spokesperson said investigations are still underway to try to determine how the various people became infected, but some human-to-human spread is possible. "We can't rule it out,'' WHO...

Father catches bird flu that killed his son By Roger Highfield Last Updated: 3:01am GMT 08/12/2007 Fears that the virus responsible for bird flu has evolved to spread between people have been raised after the father of a man who died from the disease was reported to have developed the infection. Humans can contract the potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu virus from close contact with infected birds but scientists fear that it could mutate into a version that spreads from person to person, raising the risk of wider outbreaks or even a global pandemic. The World Health Organisation said that...

The type of bird flu found in turkeys on a Suffolk farm is the virulent H5N1 strain, according to government vets. The virus was discovered at Redgrave Park Farm near Diss, where all 6,500 birds are being slaughtered. A 3km protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone have been set up and the farm is co-operating with vets.......

It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza." The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats. This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005,...

ERLANGEN, Germany (AFP) - German authorities will destroy 160,000 poultry at a Bavarian farm following the discovery there of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu, local authorities said Saturday. Tests on a number of ducks from the farm at Wachenroth near the southern city of Erlangen, 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Munich, confirmed the strain, local authority spokeswoman Annika Fritzsche told AFP. Investigations will continue to determine how the virus -- which in its highly pathogenic strain can also infect humans, sometimes fatally -- entered the farm, Fritzsche said. It was detected in three young ducks from...

NEW DELHI — India's government on Thursday confirmed an outbreak of H5N1-strain bird flu at a poultry farm in the northeastern state of Manipur, marking the country's first reported outbreak since February last year. Health officials said the highly virulent H5NI strain, which can infect humans, was detected in samples taken from birds that had died suddenly at the farm in Chingmeirong village on the outskirts of Imphal, capital of the insurgency-hit state that borders Myanmar.

Potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu resurfaces in Europe 27 Jun, 2007 l 1751 hrs PRAGUE: A bird flu scare in Central Europe was spreading on Wednesday as Czech authorities said the H5N1 virus potentially lethal to humans had been found in a flock of chickens after discoveries among wild birds in Germany. The presence of H5N1 bird flu was confirmed on a poultry farm near the village of Norin, just four kilometers (2.5 miles) from a farm where some 6,000 turkeys were slaughtered last week after the deadly virus was detected there. The farm in Tisova was the first incidence...