Sunday, April 30, 2006

Indonesians Love Chicken, Bird Flu Scare or Not

As Others Panic, Citizens Accept Life With Virus and Do Not Alter Their Diet

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 30, 2006; Page A18

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Here at the heart of the epidemic, where bird flu continues to rip through poultry flocks and more people now succumb to the virus than anyplace else on Earth, the lunchtime crowd at the Ayam Goreng Suharti restaurant can't get enough of the chicken.

The ravenous and the merely peckish cram nearly every one of the two dozen tables. They hunch over their plates, tearing off chunks of the succulent meat with their hands, licking their greasy fingers. While international health experts continue to sound the alarm about the prospect of pandemic and U.S. officials warn ominously that the disease could appear in American birds by fall, the overriding concerns at this Jakarta eatery turn on whether to order the chicken fried or grilled, with chili or spices; to have half a bird or to splurge on a whole one.


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Friday, April 28, 2006

Indonesia: Man dies of bird flu

Friday, April 28, 2006 Posted: 0709 GMT (1509 HKT)

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia reported its 25th death from the H5N1 strain of bird flu on Friday and China said an 8-year-old girl had contracted the disease.

Vietnam's agricultural minister, meanwhile, said his country would need an additional US$400 million to help fight the virus and prepare for a potential pandemic.

The 30-year-old Indonesian man who died this week had contact with infected chickens in Tangerang, a city 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Jakarta, said Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono.

Local tests indicated he had bird flu, Wibisono said, but the results still need to be confirmed by a World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong.

That could take three to seven days.

Indonesia's human toll from H5N1 is currently at 24, according to WHO, the second highest in the world after Vietnam.

The sprawling archipelago is logging cases faster than any other country, leading some international health experts to say it could do more to battle the virus.

The government, saying it lacks the money for mass bird slaughtering in infected areas, is relying mostly on vaccinating birds and carrying out limited culls in places where people have died.

China reported its 18th case of the virus, 12 of which have resulted in death.

The 8-year-old girl from Suining, a city in the southwest province of Sichuan, showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on April 16 and was being treated at a local hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Investigations show that poultry deaths were reported at her home before she got sick, the ministry said, without giving any more details on the outbreak.

People who came into close contact with the girl, surnamed Sun, have been put under medical observation and none have shown any abnormal symptoms, the ministry said.

Vietnam has been applauded in recent months for strides it has made in fighting the virus through a mass poultry vaccination campaign that began last year, combined with increased surveillance and awareness.

It has not reported any poultry outbreaks since December and no human bird flu cases since November.

But Hans Troedsson, WHO representative in Vietnam, said the Southeast nation must remain on alert.

"If there would be complacency now, Vietnam would be facing imminent risk," he said. "What's important is that we are not having a false security thinking that the threat is over from avian influenza in Vietnam."

The country's agriculture minister, Cao Duc Phat, said Friday some US$400 million would be needed in the next five years to fight the virus and prepare for a potential pandemic.

Half of the money, he said, should come from international donors.

Bird flu has killed at least 113 people since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003.

The virus remains hard for people to catch, but health experts fear it could eventually mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person, potentially sparking a pandemic.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Human Bird Flu Cases Top 200 After Egypt Confirms 12 Infections

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu cases worldwide topped 200 after a dozen people were confirmed to have been infected with the virus in Egypt, the World Health Organization said.

``Of the 12 cases in Egypt, four patients have died and one remains hospitalized in stable condition,'' the Geneva-based United Nations agency said in an April 21 statement on its Web site. ``Seven patients have fully recovered and been discharged from hospital.''

An 18-year-old girl from the north Egyptian governorate of Minufiyah is the country's latest confirmed fatality, the WHO said. She developed symptoms on April 5 and died nine days later. Egypt's Ministry of Health regards cases as confirmed when positive results are obtained in its national public health laboratory and the Cairo-based U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit 3. Test results on Egypt's initial cases were validated by a WHO collaborating laboratory in the U.K.

Cases in Egypt of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza take to 204 the number of people infected with the lethal virus since late 2003, according to the WHO. Of those, 113 have been fatal. More people are becoming infected after at least 33 countries reported initial outbreaks in animals since February.

The spread of the virus in birds creates more opportunity for human infection and raises the risk that H5N1 will evolve into a pandemic form capable of killing millions of people.

In Egypt, H5N1 outbreaks in poultry have been reported in 20 of the country's 26 governorates, the government said in an April 20 statement on its Web site.

So far this year, 60 H5N1 cases and 37 fatalities have been reported worldwide, compared with 95 cases and 41 fatalities in the whole of 2005. Countries to have reported human cases are Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Egypt.

In almost all human H5N1 cases, infection was caused by close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them, or adults butchering them or taking off the feathers, the WHO said last month.

The total number of H5N1 fatalities is a fraction of deaths caused each year by seasonal flu, which usually numbers between 250,000 and 500,000 worldwide, according to the agency. Most deaths from seasonal flu in developed countries occur in people over 65.

A pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges and starts spreading as easily as seasonal flu, through coughing and sneezing, according to the WHO.

Humans have no natural immunity to the H5N1 virus, making it likely that people who contract any pandemic flu strain based on H5N1 will become more seriously ill than when infected by seasonal flu, the WHO said. A flu pandemic in 1918 killed about 50 million people worldwide.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

WHO tests confirm 24th bird flu death in Indonesia - official

04.19.2006, 09:09 AM

JAKARTA (AFX) - Indonesia's 24th bird flu death has been confirmed by World Health Organisation tests, a hospital spokesman said.

'The latest results from the WHO were received yesterday concerning a man who died at (Sulianti Saroso hospital) on April 8 or 9,' hospital spokesman and spokesman for the national bird flu team, Ilham Patu, told Agence France-Presse.

He said the results were positive and the victim was aged 24.

Besides the fatalities, Indonesia has confirmed 10 other infection cases where the sufferer has survived.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Bird Flu: Small poultry farmers severely hit

Sunday, April 16, 2006 (Pataudi):

In the aftermath of bird flu, as the poultry industry faces huge losses, it's the small poultry farmers who have been the worst hit.

Over a million farmers across the country have virtually lost their livelihood and have found desperate measures to tide over the crisis as they wait for the government to intervene.

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Bird flu scare in Indore, seven quratined

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 (Indore):

Seven people have been quarantined in a government hospital in Indore after they complained of bird flu-like symptoms.

All the patients hail from Onkareshwar near Indore.

Although 40 chickens died in the area, their samples have tested negative.

The Centre is sending a rapid response medical team to Indore to collect blood samples of the patients.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Program For Flu Response Readied

Program For Flu Response Readied
Multi-Agency Proposal Awaits Bush's Approval

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page A08

President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific tasks for federal agencies, including determining which frontline workers should be the first vaccinated and expanding Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of people working from their home computers.

The Treasury Department is poised to sign agreements with other nations to produce currency if U.S. mints cannot operate. The Pentagon, anticipating difficulties acquiring supplies from the Far East, is considering stockpiling millions of latex gloves. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has developed a drive-through medical exam to quickly assess patients who suspect they have been infected.

The document is the first attempt to spell out in some detail how the government would detect and respond to an outbreak, and continue functioning through what could be an 18-month crisis, which in a worst-case scenario could kill 1.9 million Americans. Bush was briefed on a draft of the implementation plan on March 17. He is expected to approve the plan within the week, but it continues to evolve, said several administration officials who have been working on it.

Still reeling from the ineffectual response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House is eager to show it could manage the medical, security and economic fallout of a major outbreak. In response to questions posed to several federal agencies, White House officials offered a briefing on the near-final version of its 240-page plan. When it is issued, officials intend to announce several vaccine manufacturing contracts to jump-start an industry that has declined in the past few decades.

The background briefing and on-the-record interviews with experts in and out of government reveal that some agencies are far along in preparing for a deadly outbreak. Others have yet to resolve basic questions, such as who is designated an essential employee and how the agency would cope if that person were out of commission.

"Most of the federal government right now is as ill-prepared as any part of society," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm said the administration has made progress but is nowhere near prepared for what he compared to a worldwide "12- to 18-month blizzard."

Many critical decisions remain to be made. Administration scientists are debating how much vaccine would be needed to immunize against a new strain of avian influenza, and they are weighing data that may alter their strategy on who should have priority for antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza.

The new analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that instead of giving medicine to first responders and health-care workers, as currently planned, it might be wiser to give the drugs to every person with symptoms and others in the same household, one senior administration official said.

The approach offers "some real hope for communities to put a dent in the amount of illness and death, if we go with that strategy," a White House official said.

Each year, about 36,000 Americans die from seasonal influenza. A worldwide outbreak, or pandemic, occurs when a potent new, highly contagious strain of the virus emerges. It is a far greater threat than annual flu because everyone is susceptible, and it would take as much as six months to develop a vaccine. The 1918 pandemic flu, the worst of the 20th century, is estimated to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide.

Alarm has risen because of the emergence of the most dangerous strain to appear in decades -- the H5N1 avian flu. It has primarily struck birds, but about 200 people worldwide have contracted the disease, and half have died. Experts project that the next pandemic -- depending on severity and countermeasures -- could kill 210,000 to 1.9 million Americans.

To keep the 1.8 million federal workers healthy and productive through a pandemic, the Bush administration would tap into its secure stash of medications, cancel large gatherings, encourage schools to close and shift air traffic controllers to the busier hubs -- probably where flu had not yet struck. Retired federal employees would be summoned back to work, and National Guard troops could be dispatched to cities facing possible "insurrection," said Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration hopes to help contain the first cases overseas by rushing in medical teams and supplies. "If there is a small outbreak in a country, it may behoove us to introduce travel restrictions," Runge said, "to help stamp out that spark."

However, even an effective containment effort would merely postpone the inevitable, said Ellen P. Embrey, deputy assistant secretary for force health preparedness and readiness at the Pentagon. "Unfortunately, we believe the forest fire will burn before we are able to contain it overseas, and it will arrive on our shores in multiple locations," she said.

As Katrina illustrated, a central issue would be "who is ultimately in charge and how the agencies will be coordinated," said former assistant surgeon general Susan Blumenthal. The Department of Health and Human Services would take the lead on medical aspects, but Homeland Security would have overall authority, she noted. "How are those authorities going to come together?"

Essentially, the president would be in charge, the White House official replied. Bush is expected to adopt post-Katrina recommendations that a new interagency task force coordinate the federal response and a high-level Disaster Response Group resolve disputes among agencies or states. Neither entity has been created.

Analysts at the Government Accountability Office found that earlier efforts by the administration to plan for disasters were overly broad or simply sat on a shelf.

"Our biggest concern is whether an agency has a clear idea of what it absolutely has to do, no matter what," said Linda Koontz, director of information management issues at GAO. "Some had three and some had 400 essential functions. We raised questions about whether 400 were really essential."

In several cases, agencies never trained for or rehearsed emergency plans, she said, causing concern that when disaster strikes, "people will be sitting there with a 500-page book in front of them."

The federal government -- as well as private businesses -- should expect as much as 40 percent of its workforce to be out during a pandemic, said Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at HHS. Some will be sick or dead; others could be depressed, or caring for a loved one or staying at home to prevent spread of the virus. "The problem is, you never know which 40 percent will be out," he said.

The Agriculture Department, with 4 million square feet of office space in metropolitan Washington alone, would likely stagger shifts, close cafeterias and cancel face-to-face meetings, said Peter Thomas, the acting assistant secretary for administration.

The department has bought masks, gloves and hand sanitizers, and has hired extra nurses and compiled a list of retired employees who could be temporarily rehired, he said. A 24-hour employee hotline would provide medical advice and work updates. And as it did during Katrina, Agriculture has contingency plans for meeting the payrolls of several federal departments totaling 600,000 people.

Similarly, the Commerce Department has identified its eight priority functions, including the ability to assign emergency communication frequencies, and how those could be run with 60 percent of its normal staff.

Operating the largest health-care organization in the nation, the VA has directed its 153 hospitals to stock up on other medications, equipment, food and water, said chief public health officer Lawrence Deyton. "But it's a few days' worth, not enough to last months," he added.

Anticipating that some nurses may be home caring for family members -- and to reduce the number of patients descending on its hospitals -- the VA intends to put nurses on its toll-free hotline to help veterans decide whether they need professional medical care. At many VA hospitals, nurses and doctors would stand in the parking lots armed with thermometers and laptop computers to do drive-through exams. Modeled after its successful drive-through vaccination program last fall, the parking-lot triage is intended to keep the flow of patients moving rapidly, Deyton said.

Much of the federal government's plan relies on quick distribution of medications and vaccine. The Strategic National Stockpile has 5.1 million courses of Tamiflu on hand. The goal is to secure 21 million doses of Tamiflu and 4 million doses of Relenza by the end of this year, and a total of 51 million by late 2008.

In addition, the administration will pay one-quarter of the cost of antivirals bought by states. The Pentagon, VA, USDA and Transportation Department have their own stockpiles-- and most intend to buy more as it becomes available.

Blumenthal, the former assistant surgeon general, questioned why two years after Congress approved a $5.6 billion BioShield program to develop new drugs and vaccines, so little progress has been made.

Homeland Security's Runge has a different concern: "One of the scariest thoughts is, if this country has successfully developed a vaccine within six months of an outbreak or our supply of antivirals is greater, there may be a rush into the United States for those things."

And even if those fears do not materialize, officials have warned that the federal preparations go only so far. Much is left to the states, communities and even individuals.

"Any community that fails to prepare -- with the expectation that the federal government can come to the rescue -- will be tragically wrong," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a speech April 10. The administration is posting information on the Internet at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/

Experts debate whether eating infected poultry spreads avian flu virus

By DECLAN BUTLER Nature

Can people catch the H5N1 avian flu virus by eating infected poultry? Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the U.K. Medical Research Council, says the public need not worry.

"There is no evidence of transmission to people by eating cooked eggs or chicken," he said on BBC radio last week, adding that the only food risk he could see was from "drinking swans’ blood."

Blakemore’s sound bite came a day after Britain’s first case of H5N1 in a wild bird was confirmed in a dead swan found floating in a harbour in Cellardyke, Scotland. His advice echoes a slew of recent reassurances by governments worldwide and by the World Health Organization, all conscious of damaging public confidence in the poultry industry.

But many flu scientists are concerned that, although the risks are low, there is not enough evidence to say that the virus cannot be transmitted by eating infected poultry.

"Oral transmission is an open question," says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. "Direct evidence of oral infection is lacking, but so too is proof against."

On March 23, the European Food Safety Authority published a prominent scientific risk assessment. Its advice is that poultry products are safe to eat and have "not been implicated in the transmission of the H5N1 avian influenza virus to humans."

H5N1 is present in the meat and eggs of infected birds, and animals have become infected by eating diseased birds. But the EFSA plays down this route in humans, arguing that "humans who have acquired the infection have been in direct contact with infected live or dead birds."

That overstates the case, says Jody Lanard, a physician and risk-communication consultant based in Princeton, N.J., who recently advised the World Health Organization about pandemic communication. She points out that the report itself acknowledges frequent instances of insufficient epidemiological evidence to identify the source of infection. She adds that the report also says sources of infection such as poor preparation and cooking of food cannot be excluded.

"Such cases could equally well indicate a likely gastrointestinal portal of entry," agrees Menno de Jong, a virologist at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

However, the report dismisses the idea that H5N1 can enter the body through the human gut, concluding that there is "no proof that virus replicates in the human intestine." Although the report mentions the presence of diarrhea in infected humans, together with the detection of viral RNA in intestines and of the virus in rectal swabs, it says these "do not allow one to conclude that the gastrointestinal tract is a portal of entry or a target organ."

De Jong, who has treated many of the cited diarrhea cases, says the report’s authors are "formally right" to say there is no proof that the virus replicates in the intestine. But there is no proof that it doesn’t either, he says.

Russia loses half of farm poultry because of bird flu


14.04.2006, 20.07

TAMBOV, April 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia has lost nearly half of farm poultry because of bird flu, Chief Public Health Official and head of the Federal Consumer Rights and Human Well Being Service Gennady Onishchenko said at a Friday meeting of the Central Federal District Council.

“Bird flu has affected nine constituents of the Russian Federation,” Onishchenko said. “Wild birds will fly to Siberia in late April, and a pan-epidemic may spread onto the Urals. The bird flu forecast for the Central Federal District is favorable.”

“We do not expect the infection [in the Central Federation Region} that does not have much places for nesting,” Onishchenko said. “Yet the spring hunting season has been banned, and specialists would try to prevent the nesting.”

Some 150 million doses of bird flu vaccine for the inoculation of domestic birds are being bought from Vladimir and Stavropol factories. The majority of poultry farms of the Central Federal District are not ready for keeping their birds indoors. “This unpreparedness may fully deprive Russia of poultry farms,” Onishchenko said.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

New bird-flu outbreak in southern Russia hits vaccinated fowl

13/ 04/ 2006


VOLGOGRAD, April 13 (RIA Novosti) - Quarantine regulations have been introduced at a village in southern Russia after mass death of birds already vaccinated against the disease, a local official said Thursday.

The official said 20 birds vaccinated against the lethal H5N1 strain of the disease April 4 had died at a small homestead in a Volgograd region village.

"The birds had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu," he said, adding that the remaining 25 birds at the homestead have been slaughtered.

In late March, bird flu hit another village in the region, where 85 birds kept in the yard of a house had died.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said this week that around 1.1 million birds had died of the disease in Russia while 0.3 million have been culled in measures to control the spread of the virus since February 3.

The H5N1 strain returned to southern Russia, a stopover for migrating birds, in February, following outbreaks last year

Before today's deaths, officials said a massive vaccination campaign had made it possible to prevent an epidemic, with around 20 million birds vaccinated in 62 Russia's regions since March 10.

No human cases of bird flu have been diagnosed in Russia.

Bird flu: Seven suspected patients hospitalised

Press Trust of India

Indore, April 13, 2006

Seven persons, including six women, suspected to be affected with bird-flu were admitted in the isolation ward of the TB Hospital, Chief Medical Officer KK Vijayvargiya said on Wednesday.

"Their blood samples have been collected and were sent to Delhi for examination," he said.

"The suspected persons were referred from Mortakka in Khandwa district with suspected bird flu fever," he said, adding that they were examined by doctors and initial reports did not reveal anything suspicious.

Only after getting the report from the Delhi laboratory it can be confirmed whether they are affected with the bird flu or not, he said.

The suspected persons consumed a chicken dish few days back following which it was suspected that they are affected with the disease, he said.

They complained of vomiting, fever and pain in hands and legs, he added.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Nine poultry farmers commit suicide in flu-hit India



Reuters
April 12, 2006

MUMBAI - Nine poultry farmers in India have killed themselves and more are facing a grim future after bird flu slashed demand for chicken meat, an industry group said on Wednesday.

India has culled hundreds of thousands of birds to contain several outbreaks of the H5N1 avian flu virus in poultry since February, but the disease has continued to resurface, mostly in western Maharashtra state.

The scare has decimated the country's $7.8 billion poultry industry, which says losses in the past two months have reached $2.2 billion.

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Monday, April 10, 2006

Revealed: the secret No 10 plan to tackle bird flu food shortages

By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

Emergency plans to tackle widespread food shortages in the event of a bird flu pandemic are being drawn up by ministers, according to secret Cabinet documents.

Off-duty firemen and retired lorry drivers would be pressed into service to ensure that essential food and drink supplies were delivered. Laws that restrict the daily hours of drivers and other vital workers would be suspended.

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'100 bird flul outbreaks' in Burma

BBC
Monday, 10 April 2006

Bird flu has spread in Burma with more than 100 outbreaks across the country, a UN official has said.

He Changchui of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a press conference the situation was "more serious than we imagined".

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Thursday, April 06, 2006

Health experts worried about bird flu impact on Gaza diet

AFP
Wed Apr 5, 10:19 AM ET

JERUSALEM - An outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 strain of bird flu in the Gaza Strip is "partially under control", health experts said, while voicing concern for its impact on the local diet.

"The situation is partially under control and that control should improve," local World Health Organisation chief Ambroglio Manenti told journalists.

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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Bird flu kills 12-year old in Cambodia

Reuters
Wed Apr 5, 2006 05:42 AM ET

PHNOM PENH - Bird flu has killed a 12-year-old boy in Cambodia, the impoverished Southeast Asian nation's sixth victim, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The boy, from the southeastern province of Prey Veng, abutting Vietnam, died on Tuesday night, said Michael O'Leary, the WHO representative in Phnom Penh.

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Monday, April 03, 2006

Bird flu goes for the throat

Helen Carter
ABC Science Online

Humans infected with bird flu appear to have more of the virus in their throat and nose than people with standard human influenza strains, a conference is due to hear today.

The findings may help explain why avian influenza A (H5N1) has such a high death rate in humans, more than 50% mortality.

Dr Menno de Jong, head of the virology department at the University of Oxford's clinical research unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, studied 17 patients with bird flu.

He found the virus is often associated with disseminated infection in blood and faeces, and with higher levels of viral replication in the nasopharynx compared with contemporary Vietnamese influenza cases.

High viral levels, disseminated infection and an intense inflammatory response also seem associated with poor outcomes, he is due to tell the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases annual scientific meeting in Wellington, New Zealand today.

"Our main findings are that influenza H5N1 seems to be characterised by high virus levels in the respiratory tract, evidence suggesting disseminated infection [virus detection in blood and rectum] and [likely as a result of this] an intense inflammatory response," de Jong says.

High levels of viral replication are likely to play a role in determining a patient's outcome by direct effects of the virus or by the inflammatory response to the virus, he says.

"The reason for the high mortality probably is not high replication rates per se, but high replication rates of an extremely virulent virus," he says.

Antiviral drugs should be started early to prevent as much inflammatory response as possible, he says.

Two of the people in his study developed resistance to the antiviral drug oseltamivir and died, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last December.

Resistance implies suboptimal suppression of replication and strategies to minimise it include ensuring adequate levels of the drug in the body by increasing the dose or giving it intravenously, or combining it with other antiviral drugs, he says.

De Jong says avian-type cell receptors being mostly in the lower respiratory tract could explain why bird flu does not spread among humans, as reported in the journal Nature recently.

This may explain why viral load seems higher in the throat than nose, and why all infected developed pneumonia, he says.

'If H5N1 Mutates, We Should Prepare Mass Burials'

By Anadolu News Agency (aa), LONDON
Published: Sunday, April 02, 2006
zaman.com

A confidential British report noted that if the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus mutates into a form transmissible to humans, 320,000 people could die in Britain and mass graves might have to be buried.

The British Sunday Times newspaper claimed that they reached the British Interior Minister’s March 22, 2006 dated classified report, titled “To deal with mass deaths in case of a bird flu epidemic.”

According to the news, the report recalls the painful memories of the great epidemic of 1665 and warns that an epidemic could cause a delay of up to 17 weeks for burial or cremation.

The report claims that in case of a 15-week epidemic, Britain and Wales could face 48,000 deaths. The Interior Ministry Spokesman was quoted as saying, “The government takes serious the threat caused by the possibility of a mutation in the bird flu virus.”

Meeting Doctor Doom

Forrest M. Mims III
Citizen Scientist

There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts, Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).

But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

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400 Chinese students hospitalized with unknown flu

AFP
Sun Apr 2, 8:37 AM ET

BEIJING - Over 400 students at a university in central China's Henan province were hospitalized with high fevers linked to an unknown flu virus, state press and a school official have said.

The outbreak began on March 26 when 22 students were hospitalized with high fevers, Xinhua news agency said.

read more

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Indonesia Health Official Reports Human Bird Flu Case

By VOA News
01 April 2006


Indonesian health officials say local tests have confirmed a man has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.

Authorities say the man, in his 20s, is in stable condition at a hospital in West Sumatra province.

Friday, the World Health Organization confirmed that a one-year-old girl had become the 23rd person in Indonesia to die of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Also Friday, representatives from the Pan American Health Organization, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture and the Organization of American States met in Washington to discuss ways to head off a possible bird flu epidemic.

About 25 centers throughout the region already monitor outbreaks of influenza. With the world sending much of its financial and technical aid to other geographic areas, the officials say it is important for the region to pool its resources.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.

Egypt reports two more human bird flu infections

02 Apr 2006 11:10:06 GMT
Source: Reuters

CAIRO, April 2 (Reuters) - Two more Egyptians have been infected with the bird flu virus, Egyptian Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali said on Sunday, taking to eight the number of reported human cases in the country.

The two were sisters, one aged 18 months and the other six years, from Kafr el-Sheikh province north of Cairo. The pair, who had handled dead birds, were in a stable condition. Blood tests on their immediate family were negative for the virus.

An Egyptian labourer working in Jordan was diagnosed with the disease on Friday.

A World Health Organisation spokesman said only five cases had been confirmed by the organisation. Of the five, two have died, two have recovered and one is still in hospital. Bird flu has killed at least 105 people worldwide.

The disease was first detected in Egypt in February and has since devastated its poultry industry. Efforts to combat the disease have been hampered by poor Egyptians breeding poultry in backyards or in homes to supplement their income, despite a ban.

The avian flu virus has so far not been transmitted from human to human, but can be caught from infected birds.

Although difficult for humans to catch, scientists fear bird flu could mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans, causing a pandemic.