Friday, March 31, 2006

Bird flu could reach Alaska in weeks

'Avian-flu index' is up 105% since last August


By Ciara Linnane, MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:43 PM ET Mar 29, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. government officials monitoring the spread of avian influenza are expecting the first case to reach Alaska in about three weeks and to hit the West Coast by autumn, Prudential Equity Group said Wednesday.

The H5 pathogen has been confirmed in 51 or more countries, according to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, causing the culling of millions of birds across Asia, Europe and, more recently, the Middle East.

The first cases in the U.S. won't necessarily make humans ill -- only the bird version of the disease is expected here, at least initially, said Kim Monk, a Prudential senior health-care-policy analyst.

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23rd human bird flu death confirmed in Indonesia

Posted: 31-Mar-2006 22:42 hrs

Indonesia's 23rd bird flu fatality has been confirmed by tests carried out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), while local tests showed another patient is infected.
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"We have just received the results and they are positive," the health ministry's I Nyoman Kandun told AFP, referring to tests of samples from the 23rd victim, a one-year-girl from the capital Jakarta.
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The girl died just over a week ago at Indonesia's main hospital for bird flu patients, Sulianti Saroso, after coming into contact with sick chickens near her house.
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"We also received information today that an adult patient in West Sumatra has tested positive," Kandun said Friday, adding that the patient was a 23-year-old man.

Bird Flu Fatalities Climb, Mark Deadliest Quarter Yet (Update3)

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu deaths in Egypt may bring the year's toll to 31 people and mark the quarter as the deadliest yet as the virus spreads through Europe and Africa.

The World Health Organization is scheduled to report within days the results of tests on two women who died this month, the UN agency said on its Web site. Three other people in Egypt also tested positive for the H5N1 avian flu strain, the WHO said.

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Saturday, March 25, 2006

China Confirms Woman's Bird Flu Death


By JOE McDONALD
The Associated Press
Saturday, March 25, 2006; 4:20 AM

BEIJING -- A woman who died in Shanghai tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, China announced Saturday. Indonesia awaited confirmation of tests showing that a dead 1-year-old girl in Jakarta had the virus.

In Hong Kong, the government said a dead peregrine falcon found in a housing complex tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

The woman who died in Shanghai was the Chinese mainland's 11th human death from bird flu and the first in Shanghai, the country's biggest city, according to the World Health Organization.

The migrant worker, identified only by the common surname Li, died Tuesday after being hospitalized with fever and cold symptoms.

Blood tests by China's national Center for Disease Control confirmed Li had bird flu, the Health Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Xinhua News Agency. It said the tests were conducted in line with WHO standards and results were reported to the agency.

Authorities haven't said how the woman might have contracted the virus. No bird flu outbreaks in poultry have been reported in Shanghai since 2004.

People who had close contact with Li were placed under observation but none has shown disease symptoms, Xinhua said.

Worldwide, the virus has killed more than 100 people in eight countries, mostly in Asia, according to WHO.

Tests on the Indonesian girl, who died Thursday, showed she had the H5N1 strain, said Hariadi Wibisono, a Health Ministry director. He said she fell ill after coming into contact with dead poultry.

A swab and blood sample have been sent to a WHO-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation, Wibisono said.

The girl would be Indonesia's 23rd human death from bird flu, he said.

The falcon in Hong Kong was found Tuesday near the border with mainland China, and laboratory tests confirmed it had the H5N1 strain, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

Hong Kong hasn't reported a human case of bird flu since 2003.

More than 6,000 dead birds have been tested for bird flu in Hong Kong since late October, according to the government. Of those, two chickens and 14 wild birds were confirmed to have the H5N1 virus.

China has reported 16 human cases and dozens of outbreaks in chickens, ducks and other poultry in areas throughout the country. The government has destroyed millions of farm birds to contain outbreaks.

Most of China's human infections have been traced to contact with sick or dead birds. Experts say the virus might be spread by millions of migratory birds that cross China.

Bird flu: WHO calls meet with Asian drug cos

Saturday, 25 March , 2006, 10:27

Mumbai: As South-East Asian countries report cases of bird-flu jumping species and infecting humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for a meeting on the "pandemic preparedness" in this region.

The meeting scheduled to be held in Delhi later this month will bring together health representatives from India, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh, along with drug companies from these countries to discuss their preparedness in the event of a pandemic, a WHO official told Business Line.

Stock piling Oseltamivir, the drug recommended for the treatment of bird-flu, is just one component of the preparedness plan.

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Indonesian baby confirmed dead due to bird flu

www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-25 15:55:22

JAKARTA, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia recorded another bird flu death here on Saturday, after local test confirmed a one-year old baby girl who died on Thursday in Jakarta was positive of having avian influenza virus, director at the health ministry said.

"The baby is positive, according to our local test," Director Hariadi Wibisono told Xinhua.

It was not clear whether the baby or her parent had contacted with fowls.

The death still awaited test results from the World Health Organization, which had so far confirmed 22 death out of 30 Indonesians contracted by avian influenza virus.

Bird flu has now killed more than 90 people in East Asia and the Middle East since late 2003 and scientists feared the virus could mutate and spread easily from human to human, which could trigger a pandemic.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Researchers Shed More Light on Bird Flu


By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 23, 2006; Page A13

Two research teams have independently discovered explanations for the chief features of the H5N1 bird flu virus -- its difficulty infecting humans, and the deadly effects when it does.

Unlike influenza viruses that are passed easily between people, H5N1 has a hard time attaching to cells in the nose, throat and upper airways. But it readily attaches to cells deep in the lungs.

This suggests that people need close and heavy exposure to the H5N1 virus for it to get into the lungs. But once it takes hold, it causes extensive damage to the machinery of respiration -- the cells and air spaces where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide.

That scenario mimics the clinical experience of many of the 184 human cases of bird flu that have been officially recorded since late 2003. More than half have been fatal.

"This is information that we need to know -- fundamental and exciting," said Robert G. Webster, a leading flu virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. He was not a member of either of the research groups, one of which published its results in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature, and the other online in Science.

Influenza infection occurs through a series of steps, with a key early one involving hemagglutinin, a protein that coats the virus's outer envelope. That protein attaches to sugar molecules that lie on the surface of many cells.

Virologists have known for years that human flu viruses attach through a sugar "linkage" designated alpha 2,6. The vast family of avian flu viruses favors a linkage with a different shape, designated alpha 2,3.

A research team led by Kyoko Shinya at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Tokyo looked at what cells in the human respiratory tract contain which linkage. They found that alpha 2,6 -- the receptor for human flu -- predominated in the nose and down the airways to the microscopic passageways that lead to the air sacs, or alveoli. At that point, cells with the alpha 2,3 linkage -- the receptor for bird viruses -- become common. Human viruses attached to the upper airways, while avian viruses attached to cells deep in the lungs.

The Japanese researchers, who published their findings in Nature, also tested an H5N1 virus taken from a person who died of bird flu in Hong Kong in 2003. That microbe's hemagglutinin recognized both the human and bird linkages, and it attached to cells from nose to lung. Most H5N1 samples isolated from people do not generally follow that pattern. The ability to bind to alpha 2,6 human receptors is one of several features that would have to become dominant for the H5N1 virus to become easily transmitted from human to human.

In the other paper, Thijs Kuiken and colleagues at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands exposed H5N1 to blocks of tissue taken from all along the respiratory tree. They found the bird virus attached predominantly to cells at the entrance to the air sacs and in them, as well as to immune-system cells called alveolar macrophages that patrol the area.

This same pattern was seen in cats and ferrets. (Ferrets have traditionally been considered the species whose flu infections most closely mimic those of humans.) In mice, however, the pattern was reversed. H5N1 attached best to cells in the windpipe, not the lung -- suggesting mice are not the best animal model for research on this strain.

In many of the fatal H5N1 infections, people's lungs were filled with fluid, the result of an out-of-control inflammatory reaction. Kuiken speculated that bird flu's affinity for macrophages -- which can release inflammatory chemicals -- may be part of the reason.

Bird flu discovered in Gaza Strip

Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 16:09 GMT

Initial tests on dead chickens suggest the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread to the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Palestinian officials have said.

The tests were conducted after some 200 chickens died in the southern town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

Israel has been culling hundreds of thousands of birds after an H5N1 outbreak was confirmed on farms next to the Gaza Strip last week.

Egypt on Tuesday reported its fourth suspected case of bird flu in humans.

Earlier this month, Egyptian state TV said a woman had died from the H5N1 virus.

The world's human death toll has reached 103 since late 2003, the World Health
Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The latest five deaths were confirmed by the WHO in Azerbaijan.

The virus cannot pass easily from one person to another but there are fears it could mutate, triggering a pandemic.

US scientists have confirmed the H5N1 virus has evolved into two genetically distinct strains, potentially increasing the risk to humans.

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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Blame 'Big Chicken

By Wendy Orent
Sunday, March 19, 2006

Chicken never has been cheaper. A whole one can be bought for little more than the price of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. But the industrial farming methods that make ever-cheaper chicken possible also may have created the lethal strain of bird flu virus, H5N1, that threatens to set off a global pandemic.

According to University of Ottawa flu virologist Earl Brown, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. The highly pathogenic H5N1 is descended from a strain that first appeared in Scotland in 1959.


People have been living with backyard flocks of poultry since the dawn of civilization. But it wasn't until poultry production became modernized and birds were raised in much larger numbers and concentrations that a virulent bird flu evolved. Somehow, the virus that arose in Scotland found its way to China, where, as H5N1, it has been raging for more than a decade.

Industrial poultry-raising moved from the West to Asia in the last few decades and has begun to supplant backyard flocks there.

Poultry may represent a family's greatest wealth. The birds often are not eaten until they die of old age or illness. The cost of the virus to people who have raised birds for months or years is incalculable and the compensation risible: In Thailand, farmers have been offered one-third of their birds' value since the outbreak of bird flu.

Some researchers still blame migratory birds for the relentless spread of the bird flu virus. But Martin Williams, a conservationist and bird expert in Hong Kong, contends that wild birds are more often victims than carriers.

Researchers concede that the global poultry trade, much of which is illicit, plays a far larger role in spreading the virus.

The Nigerian government traced its outbreak to the illegal importation of day-old chicks. Illegal trading in fighting cocks brought the virus from Thailand to Malaysia in fall 2005. And it is probable that H5N1 first spread from Qinghai to Russia and Kazakhstan last summer through the sale of contaminated poultry.

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Second strain of bird flu found, say scientists

By Jim Loney in Atlanta, Georgia
March 22, 2006


THE H5N1 bird flu in humans has evolved into two separate strains, a development that will complicate the search for a vaccine and the prevention of a pandemic, US researchers say.

The genetic diversification of the pool of H5N1 avian influenza viruses with the potential to cause a human influenza pandemic heightens the need for careful surveillance, researchers said on Monday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta.

"Back in 2003 we only had one genetically distinct population of H5N1 with the potential to cause a human pandemic. Now we have two," said Rebecca Garten of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped conduct the study.

One of the strains, or clades, made people sick in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in 2003 and 2004 and the second, a cousin of the first, caused the disease in people in Indonesia in 2005. Two clades may share an ancestor but are genetically distinct - as are different strains of the AIDS virus, the team from Atlanta found.

"This does complicate vaccine development. But we are moving very swiftly to develop vaccines against this new group of viruses," said Nancy Cox, chief of the centres' influenza branch.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread across Europe, Africa and Asia, and infected about 180 people, mainly in South-East Asia, killing nearly 100, since it re-emerged in 2003.

People can become infected if they come into close contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily between humans, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.

All influenza viruses mutate easily and H5N1 appears to be no exception. But Dr Cox said the evolution of a second clade did not move the virus closer to human-to-human transmission.

The US Health and Human Services Department has already recognised the two strains and approved the development of a second H5N1 vaccine based on the second clade.

US Government officials said on Monday that it was "increasingly likely" that bird flu could be detected in the US this year, but added it might not mean the start of a human pandemic.


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Monday, March 20, 2006

Blame 'Big Chiken' for Bird flu

By Wendy Orent
March 19, 2006

Chicken never has been cheaper. A whole one can be bought for little more than the price of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. But the industrial farming methods that make ever-cheaper chicken possible also may have created the lethal strain of bird flu virus, H5N1, that threatens to set off a global pandemic.

According to University of Ottawa flu virologist Earl Brown, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. The highly pathogenic H5N1 is descended from a strain that first appeared in Scotland in 1959.


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Second Human Bird Flu Case Found in Egypt

By OMAR SINAN
Associated Press Writer
Mar 20 12:57 AM US/Eastern

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt reported its second human case of avian flu Sunday, and Israel continued its slaughter of hundreds of thousands of birds while waiting to learn if the disease had spread to poultry there.

A 30-year-old Egyptian who worked on a chicken farm in the province of Qalyoubiya was the second person infected by the virus in Egypt, the Health Ministry said Sunday.


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Avian flu confirmed in two more locations in south

By Amiram Cohen, Assaf Uni and Michal Greenberg
Haaretz
13:16 20/03/2006

The Agriculture Ministry confirmed Monday afternoon that avian flu has been detected in two more locations in Israel, bringing the number of sites at which the disease has been found to six.

Suspicions that the virus had reached Kibbutz Nir Oz and Moshav Amei Oz, both in southern Israel, were raised when dead turkeys were found at both locations, and the presence of the virus was confirmed Monday.


LINK

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Scientists Say Bird Flu Will Likely Mutate and Jump from Birds to Humans



March 17, 2006
By Cathryn Curtis

As the threat of bird flu spreads around the world, the big question on the minds of scientists around the world is if — and when — the virus might mutate to allow it to be transmitted from birds to humans. This is what some scientists in the U.S. are predicting:

Bird flu has now been confirmed in more than 40 countries around the world, and health officials are scrambling to prevent the virus from spreading.

Nearly 200 people have been diagnosed with bird flu and more than half have died from it so far. They caught the virus from exposure to chickens and ducks and birds. The bird flu virus can't spread among humans...yet.

Dr. Robert Webster collects and studies samples of the virus in his Memphis, Tennessee lab. He says chances are good that the virus will mutate and jump from birds to humans. "[There are] about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human."

If that happened, a deadly pandemic could quickly spread around the world.

Dr. Webster says we need to be prepared. "We can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. I think we have to face that possibility. I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, says there is a frightening historic precedent from 1918. "The risk of the current bird flu is that this virus might be actually going down the same path as the 1918 virus."

Dr. Taubenberger led a team of researchers who decoded that virus. They determined it mutated from a bird flu, but they're not sure where or when that happened. He says today's bird flu virus, called H5N1, shows some similarities to the 1918 virus. He adds, "The H5 viruses, especially some of the more recent ones, share some of those mutations, suggesting that they might be acquiring some changes that would make them more easily adapted to humans. So that's a very worrisome situation for us."

No one knows how many mutations it would take for the virus to jump to humans, when it would happen, or the biggest question of all -- if it will happen.

Dr. Anne Moscona

Nonetheless, Dr. Anne Moscona spends her days searching for new types of anti-virals that would prevent and slow the spread of a human-transmitted bird flu and says there is a chance that the virus may not be able to jump to humans.

"It may not do it. There may just be too many changes. The virus may not be able to be a human virus,” but adds, “I don't think that once we have human to human transmission, it's going to be possible to contain it."

So the scientists work around the clock, hoping the virus doesn't mutate, but preparing for the worst.

- VOA News

LINK

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 confirmed in Sweden

March 18, 2006


Sweden on Friday reported its second case of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a mallard(duck).

It was strongly suspected (but not yet confirmed) to be the deadly H5N1 strain, said a press release of the European Commission,the executive arm of the European Union (EU).

The Swedish authorities have informed the Commission that they are applying the precautionary measures, including establishment of a high risk area (a 3 kilometers protection zone) and a surrounding surveillance zone of 10 kilometers.

The duck was found dead on a game farm near the town of Oskarshamn, on the eastern coast of Sweden.

Samples will be sent to the EU Reference Laboratory in Weybridge of Britain to confirm if this is the Asian strain of the H5N1 virus.

The affected farm is located within the surveillance zone which had already been established in response to a confirmed case of avian influenza in wild birds on February 28.

This is the second suspected or confirmed outbreak of avian influenza H5N1 on a commercial farm in the EU, with the first being the outbreak on a turkey farm in the Department of Ain in France late February.

Soldiers Hospitalized in Kutaisi Georgia With H5N1 Symptoms

Recombinomics Commentary
March 16, 2006

Three soldiers were taken to Davit Aghmashenebeli Church Hospital of Kutaisi, to the department of intensive therapy on March 17.

They are the soldiers of the subdivision under the Defence Ministry, dislocated in Kutaisi, Imereti region, western Georgia. The diagnosis of Rodani Chachanidze, Giorgi Gamezardashvili and Nikoloz Narchemashvili is the acute respiratory infection with pneumonia. They were brought to the stationary hospital with the nasal bleeding.

InterpressNews was informed that another 19 soldiers are ill with the similar symptoms but they have no acute forms of the disease like the their abovementioned colleagues.

The above comments on three soldiers with H5N1 bird flu symptoms in Georgia is cause for concern. Kutaisi is near Tbilisi, where two school children died. It is also within 200 miles of Azerbaijan, as well as eastern Turkey, where confirmed H5N1 patients have also died.

Acute respiratory symptoms with pneumonia and nose bleeding are H5N1 bird flu symptoms. Lab results and an update on the condition of the soldiers with mild and severe symptoms would be useful.

Egypt confirms first bird flu human death

Woman with disease symptoms dies in province north of Cairo, after raising poultry at her home

News Agencies Egypt confirmed its first human case of bird flu on Saturday, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said.

A report carried by the state MENA news agency said a woman with symptoms of the disease had died in Al-Qaloubiyah province, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Cairo.

The woman was raising poultry at her home and some of her birds also died, Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali said, according to the official news agency, MENA.

Police said that Amal Mohammed Ismail, 35, was admitted to hospital in the governorate's capital Qalyoub, about two weeks ago, and was subsequently transferred to the Cairo Fevers' Hospital where she died Friday night.

Ismail's home has been sealed off by security, police said.

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WHO says bird flu database should be made public

Geneva, March 18. (AP): The UN health agency says it would like to make public a confidential database it maintains on bird flu research, but that it is up to countries and scientists to agree on sharing their information.

The password-protected database, details of which were first reported on earlier this month in articles by the journal Science and The Wall Street Journal, was created in 2003 at the request of southeast Asian countries first hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Dick Thompson, spokesman for infectious diseases at the World Health Organisation.

WHO has been urging countries and researchers to allow genetic sequences of the virus stored in the database to be made available publicly, but countries and scientists have so far resisted, Thompson said.

"It's been several months since we've been saying that access to this information should not be restricted," Thompson told The Associated Press. "But these are not our viruses and this isn't our information."

Thompson declined to name, which countries were most opposed or elaborate on why they were concerned about the information becoming freely accessible.

The H5N1 virus remains primarily a bird disease, but it has infected at least 177 people and killed 98 in the last three years.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Russia says bird flu may hit US in autumn, mutate

Thu Mar 16, 2006 09:50 AM ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The deadly bird flu virus, which has hit Asia, Europe and Africa, may spread to the United States late this year and risks mutating dangerously there, Russia's top animal and plant health inspector said on Thursday.

"We think that H5N1 (strain of bird flu virus) will reach the United States in autumn," Sergei Dankvert told Reuters.

"This is very realistic. We may be almost certain this will happen after this strain is found in Great Britain, before autumn, as migrating birds will carry it to the United States from there."

He said there was also an opportunity of the virus spreading by fowl migrating from Siberia's Tyumen region to Alaska and mixing there with birds flying to Canada and to other parts of the United States.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006

India culls birds, hunts for flu in humans

Reuters

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Veterinary workers began throttling more than 70,000 birds in western India on Thursday, stepping up efforts to contain a second outbreak of avian influenza in poultry.

"There is no time for niceties. The birds have to be killed as fast as possible," said Bijay Kumar, animal husbandry commissioner of the state of Maharashtra, where bird flu resurfaced this week in backyard poultry.

Veterinary and civic workers wearing protective gear moved door-to-door collecting chickens and eggs after paying owners 40 rupees (0.5 pounds) for every bird as compensation. Eggs went free.

The birds had their necks twisted and were then stuffed in black plastic bags and buried in shallow pits. Disinfectants and lime powder were then sprinkled over the graves.

"We hope the culling will be over by tomorrow," Kumar said.

Officials said they were checking if the latest outbreak -- which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra -- was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed about 100 people, most of them in Asia.

Health authorities said they were not taking any chances and had sent dozens of medical teams looking for people with flu-like symptoms to every household of the affected area.

Hundreds of people in a nearby area have complained of fever. Doctors say they are most likely suffering from dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease -- but they have sent blood samples for bird flu tests anyway.

Hospitals in Malegaon, 140 km from the latest outbreak, have treated nearly 2,000 people in 15 days.

Authorities said they had identified four villages spread over 1,100 square km in the Jalgaon area as affected and were killing all birds -- an estimated 70,000 -- within that area.

Jalgaon is 200 km from Navapur, where India reported its first case of the H5N1 strain last month. Authorities said last week they had contained the virus there after culling hundreds of thousands of chickens. Continued ...

30,000 bird-flu deaths in south Russia in last 24 hours - ministry

10:25 16/ 03/ 2006

ROSTOV-ON-DON, March 16 (RIA Novosti, Sergei Rudkovsky) - More than 30,000 birds have died of bird flu in southern Russia over the last 24 hours, a local emergencies ministry official said Thursday.

"In Krasnodar Territory, 21,912 chickens have died over the last 24 hours, and the total number of dead birds has reached 350,288," the official said.

A further 10,818 birds have died over the last 242 hours in the North Caucasus republic of Daghestan, the official said, bringing the total including culled birds to 760,000.

A third wave of bird flu struck Russia starting February 3. The country's southern regions, where all cases in the country have so far been registered, are particularly vulnerable as a stopover for migrating birds. A vaccination program is currently underway in many of the country's regions.

No human deaths from bird flu have so far been registered in Russia.

Banks should prepare for avian flu

By Lisa Sanders, MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:29 PM ET Mar 15, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Federal officials on Wednesday urged banks and thrifts to be prepared in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak, because the critical functions they serve will need to continue even if large numbers of workers are absent from their jobs.

The advisory from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision was intended to raise awareness of what needs to be done ahead of an avian-flu epidemic in the United States.

The illness already has infected, and in many cases, killed people in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It is not known whether it would result in a pandemic.
Still, "the widespread nature of this virus in birds and the possibility that it may mutate over time raise concerns that it will become transmissible among humans, with potentially devastating consequences," the advisory said.

On Monday, the International Monetary Fund advised central banks to have an adequate supply of cash notes and the ability to deliver them to financial institutions promptly so that banks can respond to surges in liquidity demands.

"To calm markets, financial regulators may need to consider a degree of prudential forbearance," the IMF said. "For instance, liquidity requirements, capital adequacy rules and provisioning requirements could be temporarily eased, and regulatory requirements could be adjusted for a 'work at home' environment."
The advisory Wednesday also recommended that the private sector allow workers to do their jobs at home when possible; have a contingency plan to deliver goods and services; establish an infection-control policy; and create a support system by partnering with peers.

"A pandemic event is a potential threat to any financial institution regardless of size and location," according to the interagency statement.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Flu fears prompts calls for masks

By Julie Robotham, Medical Editor
The Sydney Morning Herald
March 15, 2006

PEOPLE who suspect they may have flu are being urged to wear surgical-type masks this winter, as NSW health officials try to build the public's familiarity with infection control measures that may be needed in the event of a bird flu pandemic.

The Health Department's director of communicable disease, Dr Jeremy McAnulty, said those who went to a GP or emergency department because they thought they might have flu should consider wearing a mask.


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Denmark finds first case of H5 bird flu

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark has found its first case of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a wild fowl, officials said on Wednesday.

The Ministry for Family and Consumer Affairs, which is in charge of food safety, said it would give further details at a news conference at 1100 GMT.

"At the news conference the authorities will inform about the measures taken as a result of the bird flu," it said in a statement.

It was still unclear if the case was the deadly H5N1 strain. So far H5N1 has never been found in Denmark.

Denmark, a major poultry producer with an output worth 3 billion crowns ($483.5 million) a year, has been on guard against bird flu since disease was found on the German Baltic island of Ruegen, near Denmark's southern coast in mid-February.

Denmark has since examined more than 100 dead wild birds for avian flu. Neighboring Sweden reported its first bird flu case on February 28.

"We have been expecting this and are prepared," Jan Pedersen, General Manger of the Danish Poultrymeat Association, told Reuters. "We have further tightened our rules to make sure that the virus is kept out of our poultry sheds."

The H5N1 virus usually kills poultry within 48 hours and can infect people who come into close contract with sick birds.

Sweden Confirms First Case of Bird Flu

5 Mar 2006 11:09:43 GMT
Source: Reuters

STOCKHOLM, March 15 (Reuters) - Swedish authorities said on Wednesday that tests had confirmed that two wild ducks found on its east coast carried the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Preliminary tests late last month showed that two wild ducks found near the Baltic port city of Oskarshamn carried the aggressive H5 virus, but more tests were needed to ascertain that they were cases of the deadly H5N1 strain.

"The laboratory in Weybridge has now confirmed that it is an H5N1 virus, just as we thought," the National Veterinary Institute said in a statement.

Since the first two cases were found, around a dozen wild birds found along Sweden's southeast coast and on the Baltic island of Gotland have been identified as carrying the H5 virus.

No cases have been reported in domestic fowl.

Dog has died of bird flu in Aserbaijan

Officials say Azeri dog dies of bird flu

Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:02 AM ET7

BAKU (Reuters) - A dog has died of bird flu in Azerbaijan, a country where the virus is believed to have caused the death of three young women, officials said on Wednesday.

"A dead stray dog has been found, and after analysis type A bird flu was discovered. The medical investigation is continuing," said a statement from the state commission tasked with fighting the spread of bird flu. It said the dog died on March 9 in the capital Baku.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Renowned Bird Flu Expert Warns: Be Prepared

There Are "About Even Odds" That the Virus Could Mutate to an Easily Transmitted Form, He Tells 'World News Tonight'

By JIM AVILA and MEREDITH RAMSEY

March 14, 2006 — Robert G. Webster is one of the few bird flu experts confident enough to answer the key question: Will the avian flu switch from posing a terrible hazard to birds to becoming a real threat to humans?

There are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," he told ABC's "World News Tonight." Webster, the Rosemary Thomas Chair at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., is credited with being the first scientist to find the link between human flu and bird flu.

Webster and his team of scientists are working to find a way to beat the virus if it morphs. He has even been dubbed the Flu Hunter.

Right now, H5N1, a type of avian influenza virus, has confined itself to birds. It can be transmitted from bird to human but only by direct contact with the droppings and excretions of infected birds.

But viruses mutate, and the big fear among the world's scientists is that the bird flu virus will join the human flu virus, change its genetic code and emerge as a new and deadly flu that can spread through the air from human to human.

If the virus does mutate, it does not necessarily mean it will be as deadly to people as it is to birds. But experts such as Webster say they must prepare for the worst.

"I personally believe it will happen and make personal preparations," said Webster, who has stored a three-month supply of food and water at his home in case of an outbreak.

Frightening Warning

"Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

Most scientists won't put it that bluntly, but many acknowledge that Webster could be right about the flu becoming transmissible among humans, even though they believe the 50 percent figure could be too high.

Researcher Dr. Anne Moscona at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center said that a human form may not mutate this year or next — or ever — but it would be foolish to ignore the dire consequences if it did.

"If bird flu becomes not bird flu but mutates into a form that can be transmitted between humans, we could then have a spread like wildfire across the globe," Moscona said.

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Monday, March 13, 2006

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug

By Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen
Published: 12 March 2006

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6 million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected. Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company, Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold, currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

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Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

ABC news
By BRIAN ROSS

Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions -- and Warn That Infected Birds Cannot Be Prevented From Flying In

March 13, 2006 — In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."

Industry Precautions

America's poultry farms could become ground zero as infected flocks fly over. The industry says it is prepared for quick action.

"All the birds involved in it would be destroyed, and the area would be isolated and quarantined," said Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council. "It would very much [look] like a sort of military operation if it came to that."

Extraordinary precautions are already being taken at the huge chicken farms in Lancaster County, Pa., the site of the last great outbreak of a similar bird flu 20 years ago.

Other than the farmers, everyone there has to dress as if it were a visit to a hospital operating room.

"Back in 1983-1984, we had to kill 17 million birds at a cost of $60 million," said Dr. Sherrill Davison, a veterinary medicine expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Can It Be Stopped?

Even on a model farm, ABC News saw a pond just outside the protected barns attracting wild geese.

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Saturday, March 11, 2006

Bird flu targeting the young

As death toll nears 100, scientists scramble to explain why H5N1 virus is killing healthy people under 40


Mar. 11, 2006. 07:57 AM
RITA DALY
STAFF REPORTER

With the World Health Organization set to announce the 100th death from bird flu any day now, data compiled by the Toronto Star lead to one particularly compelling question: Why does the H5N1 virus attack the young?

The Star's analysis shows that all but six of the 97 people who have died globally so far from bird flu were under 40.

People, in other words, with the strongest immune systems and not, as one might expect, the elderly and those already sick. The median age was 19, and a quarter of them were under age 12.

Children, teenagers and young adults are the unfortunate victims of the deadly H5N1 bird flu sweeping through poultry farms in Asia, Africa and now Europe.

Hooked up to breathing tubes and dialysis machines in local hospital beds, bodies soaked in sweat, and blood oozing from their nostrils and mouth, they have a mere 50 per cent chance of pulling through. The rest die in a matter of days.

Any day now the World Health Organization will announce the 100th death from the bird flu that re-emerged in late 2003.

Yesterday, health officials confirmed a 4-year-old Indonesian boy died last month, bringing the number of confirmed cases to 176 and the world death toll to 97. Another three deaths in Azerbaijan are under investigation.

Although human cases are uncommon, it is now apparent the H5N1 will eventually reach North American shores, possibly via migratory birds in Alaska within six to 12 months. So what health experts know about how and whom it strikes is crucial.

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Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Bird flu risk to humans higher in Europe, spreading across globe

AFP
March 8, 2006

BERLIN - A German minister claimed that deadly bird flu was moving closer to infecting humans in Europe after two more cats died of the virus, while China reported its 10th human fatality.

And Albania became the latest European country to report an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain, as international veterinary experts warned that the United States, Canada and Australia will probably not escape the ever-spreading disease.


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Bird Flu Virus May Infect One Third of World's Population-Russian Expert













Image by MosNews.com


Created: 07.03.2006 15:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:44 MSK
MosNews

One-third of the world's population might become infected with bird flu in a short period of time, Director of the Russian Academy of Science's Virology Research Institute Dmitry Lvov said, according to Interfax.

"Any pandemic (flu) virus appears as a result of crossing between a human virus and a bird virus. A highly pathogenic monster emerges and it can affect up to one-third of the world's population in a short period of time," he said.


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Girl dies of bird flu in China, UN ups campaign









Wed Mar 8, 2006 04:57 AM ETBy Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - A nine-year-old girl has died of bird flu in China, state media said on Wednesday, as the United Nations stepped up efforts to battle the rapidly spreading virus.

The girl, China's 10th known death from bird flu, died on Monday night in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the official Xinhua news agency said.


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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Bird flu reaches sixth German state

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed in Lower Saxony, the sixth German state to be reached by the virus.

A wild goose found dead last Sunday tested positive for the strain, said ministry spokesman Gert Hahne.

Germany's first cases of the virus, announced on February 14, were on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which still accounts for most of the approximately 140 confirmed cases.

It was also in Ruegen that authorities found a cat had died of H5N1, the only case of the virus in Germany not found in a wild bird.

Lower Saxony borders Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to the west and is home to 72 million of Germany's 125 million domestic birds.

The goose with H5N1, however, was not found near a poultry farm, officials said.

Another two wild birds also tested positive on Saturday in Schleswig Holstein - the state to the north of Lower Saxony.

The new finds make a total of seven wild birds that have tested positive for H5N1 there.

Deadly bird flu cases rise in Greece

Three new cases of the deadly H5N1 virus were confirmed yesterday from swans found at the Evros River on the Greek-Turkish border while the number of dead migratory birds found in Greece is showing signs of slowing down, authorities said.

State veterinary services said that fewer birds have been reported dead in northern Greece in the last few days as the weather improves.

A total of 120 migratory birds were tested in January for the disease while the figure fell to 98 in February.

Meanwhile, four more samples were also sent off to the EU lab in Weybridge, England, yesterday after initial tests found that they had been infected with bird flu, bringing the total number of birds found with the virus to 22.

Officials added that they will increase tests conducted on dead birds found in cities, such as pigeons, to determine whether they are being infected by the H5N1 strain.

Experts say that the virus is mutating steadily and may eventually acquire the changes it needs to be easily transmitted from human to human.

Azeri Doctors Blame Bird Flu for Death of 2 Girls


Photo from www.dni.ru

MosNews

Two girls from a family hospitalized on suspicion of contracting bird flu have died in Azerbaijan, Interfax news agency reported.

Six members of their family were rushed to a hospital earlier this month. “Those hospitalized have been diagnosed with acute pneumonia, but the cases arouse a great deal of suspicion,” Azerbaijan’s Deputy Health Minister Abbas Velibekov said. Girls, the daughters of the head of the family, died few days ago, he reported.

Experts continue laboratory tests. Blood samples have also been sent to London.

The family lives in Azerbaijan’s Salyany district and keeps poultry.

Azerbaijan, which lies at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, discovered the H5N1 strain of bird flu among wild birds last month. Bird flu has since affected a poultry farm near the capital Baku.