Pond fertilizer may help spread bird flu

LONDON -

Fertilizing fish ponds with poultry feces to promote fish growth -- a common practice in Asia -- may set up reservoirs of bird flu, say British researchers.

BirdLife International -- a Cambridge, England,-based umbrella organization for bird protection groups in 100 countries -- says if chickens infected with bird flu are providing the manure for fish ponds, that could be how the new potentially deadly strain of avian influenza, H5N1, is being spread, reported the Independent Wednesday.

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China Reports Third Human Death From Bird Flu in Seventh Case

CHINA - China said a 41-year-old factory worker in the southeastern province of Fujian has become the nation's third person to die from the avian influenza virus and the seventh human case.
The woman, identified only as Zhou, died on Dec. 21 after she was hospitalized on Dec. 8 with fever and pneumonia symptoms, the Ministry of Health said in a statement on its Web site today.

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Turkey reports bird flu outbreak near Armenia border

Wed Dec 28, 2005 8:43 AM GMT

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has reported an outbreak of avian influenza in chickens, less than a month after declaring its territory free of the virus, and said it had culled 359 birds as a precautionary measure.

In a statement released late on Tuesday, the Agriculture Ministry said it had imposed quarantine in the affected area of Igdir, near Turkey's far eastern border with Armenia, after detecting a strain of the bird flu virus in dead chickens.

The strain has been identified as the H5 type but authorities are conducting further tests to establish whether it is the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed some 70 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of birds.

It said it had sent samples to the World Health Organization and the European Union for more tests.

"All necessary measures have been taken, with close coordination between central and local units," the ministry statement said.

"As the necessary quarantine measures were undertaken before the identification (of bird flu), there is no cause for concern for human health, or for our country's meat and egg trade," the ministry said.

Igdir is a remote, rural area where farming and animal husbandry are main means of livelihood. But poultry are mostly raised by people for their own consumption.

An outbreak of bird flu in October in more densely populated northwest Turkey triggered the culling of more than 10,000 birds. That outbreak was identified as the deadly H5N1 strain.

Most of Europe imposed a ban on imports of Turkish live birds which was subsequently eased.

The Agriculture Ministry announced on December 9 that it had successfully eliminated bird flu in western Turkey.

But experts say Turkey will remain vulnerable to further outbreaks because it lies on the flight path of migratory birds, which are widely thought to help spread the virus.

The ministry said it believed migratory birds may have brought the virus to Igdir from the Caucasus region

Chinese scientits claim new bird flu drug better than Tamiflu

BEIJING
AFP

Dec 27, 2005

Chinese scientists say they have created a drug to treat humans infected with bird flu that is superior to the existing and widely stockpiled drug Tamiflu, state media said Tuesday.

Like Tamiflu, which is made by Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche, the new medicine is a neuraminidase inhibitor that prevents the virus from spreading to other cells, but costs about a third of the price, China Daily said.

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Avian flu resistance to Tamiflu renews stockpile concerns

CBC News
Last Updated Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:19:34 EST

Two people infected with avian flu have died despite being treated with Tamiflu, a drug many consider to be the best defence against a flu pandemic, doctors say.

Physicians in Vietnam say they found evidence the H5N1 avian influenza virus can quickly mutate into a form that resists the effects of the frontline drug.

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Malawi in bird flu scare as thousands of birds die

December 17, 2005

Malawi was on Friday hit with the country's major scare of bird flu after thousands of birds mysteriously died in a hill in the central district of Ntchisi, some 200 km east of the capital, Lilongwe, a senior agriculture official told journalists.

Malawi's Director of Livestock and Animal Health, Wilfred Lipita, said the government had sent tissue samples of birds to a laboratory in South Africa following the mysterious mass death of the birds.

"We are sending the samples from these birds to South Africa for analysis as South Africa is the only country in the Southern Africa that has labs to detect avian flu," he said.

Lipita said several thousands of the Fork-tailed Drongo started dropping dead in Mwera Hills in the district earlier this week.

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Ukraine considers full Crimea quarantine to halt bird flu

17 Dec 2005 13:41:36 GMT

Source: Reuters
KIEV, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Ukrainian officials on Saturday considered imposing a quarantine throughout the Crimea peninsula to contain an outbreak of the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu affecting more than a dozen villages.

Agriculture Ministry spokesman Oleksander Horobets said a specialised laboratory in Britain had confirmed results provided by Russian academics -- that the virus detected in Crimea was H5N1, which is potentially dangerous to humans.

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Bird Flu Mutating

Phnom Penh - Bird flu has yet to achieve human-to-human transmission, but subtle mutations in the virus are bringing the world closer to a pandemic, the UN's coordinator on avian influenza said on Friday.

"There are some subtle changes in the genetic makeup of H5N1 which suggest that it is making some of the mutations that would enable it to have a higher likelihood of being able to become a human-to-human transmitted virus," said David Nabarro.

"Virologists who study these things say do not get complacent. It is quite feasible that H5N1 could mutate. The fact that it has taken some years should not lead you to believe that we are through the worst."

Nabarro was speaking in Phnom Penh during a one-day visit to Cambodia, which has seen at least four human bird flu deaths.

Difficulties stockpiling anti-virals

He warned that there are difficulties stockpiling enough anti-viral medicines to combat the illness.

"We all would like there to be much more stock of anti-viral medicines. We are in a bit of difficulty because the production capacity, particularly of (Tamiflu), is quite restricted," he said, adding that the UN was in regular talks with drug manufacturers to build up stocks.

The bird flu virus has killed more than 70 people through Asia since 2003 and resulted in the culling of millions of birds, dealing a huge blow to regional poultry industries.

World health bodies have warned that once the virus achieves the ability to transmit from human to human, millions of people could die.

Nabarro, who will also visit Vietnam and Indonesia, commended Cambodia for its effort to combat the virus.

"Cambodia has to be prepared for a possible pandemic and my understanding is that is happening," he said.

"I don't say everything is fine because there is still much more to be done. One of the reasons I came to this country was because I believe there are lessons from Cambodia ... that need to be shared elsewhere."

New bird-flu outbreaks reported in Ukraine

UKRAINE - Avian-influenza outbreaks have been reported in six more Ukrainian villages.

Following Tuesday's announcement of the imposition of a state of emergency covering the affected autonomous region of Crimea, Ukrainian officials have sealed off affected areas with a 2-mile exclusion zone and are culling domestic poultry within it.

About 28,000 birds have been seized in house-to-house searches, and officials are enforcing protective measures to include quarantine and the banning of movement of live birds from within the exclusion zone.

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Bird Flu Fears Hit Iraq

IRAQ - Although Iraq has not recorded cases of bird flu, a health scare is already driving up the price of other kinds of meat.

The Iraqi government is attempting to prevent an outbreak of avian flu by banning poultry imports from at least 20 countries, including neighbours such as Kuwait and Turkey which have reported cases over the last few months.

The ministry of agriculture reported that in October, a dead bird in Erbil in northern Iraq proved not to have the deadly H5 strain. Tests run by the World Health Organisation found the carcase was infected with the H9 virus, which cannot be passed to humans.

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Weak Strain Of Bird Flu Found At Sun Valley Farm

CBS
Nov 29, 2005 6:21 pm US/Pacific

SUN VALLEY, CA. - Japanese quails suffering from a low pathogenic strain of bird flu were discovered in a Sun Valley quail farm.

The Bureau of Humane Law Enforcement, a non-governmental, nonprofit organization devoted to defending animals, began investigating conditions at the now-defunct L.A. Quail Farm earlier this year.

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