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Monday, December 31, 2007

Bangladesh says bird flu spreads to more farms

DHAKA, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Bangladesh culled more than 2,500 chickens after the H5N1 bird flu virus infected more farms in the northern part of the country, officials said on Monday.

The latest infection was detected in two villages in Gaibandha district, about 350 km (210 miles) from the capital Dhaka, an official at the government’s livestock department said.

Bird flu was first detected near the capital in March and has since spread mainly to northern districts and forced authorities to cull around 278,000 chickens.

About 4 million Bangladeshis are directly or indirectly associated with poultry farming, but so far there have been no cases of human infection, government and health officials say.

Avian flu story source: Reuters

Two Egyptian women die of bird flu

CAIRO, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Two Egyptian women died of bird flu on Monday, bringing to four the number of fatalities from the virus in the most populous Arab country in less than a week.

All four cases involved women and are believed to have resulted from exposure to sick or dead back-yard birds.

Firdaus Mohamed Hadad of Menoufia province in the Nile Delta was taken to hospital on Saturday and died early on Monday, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

“She suffered from a high fever and difficulty breathing and had a pulmonary infection after coming into contact with birds suspected of being infected with avian flu,” the statement said. “She was placed on a respirator but died at dawn on Monday.”

Later, John Jabbour, an Egypt-based official with the WHO, said a second, unnamed, woman died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in northern Egypt.

The deaths were the 18th and 19th bird flu fatalities in Egypt since the virus arrived in early 2006.

It is the third winter that the virus has struck after lying low during Egypt’s hot summers, when it is much less likely to spread from one carrier to another.

Bird flu story source: Reuters

Friday, December 28, 2007

Human to Human bird flu transmission in Pakistan confirmed by WHO-(World Health Org)

GENEVA (AFP) — Experts with the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday confirmed the first case of inter-human transmission of bird flu in Pakistan, but ruled out any risk of a widespread outbreak.

Laboratory tests established that the person had been infected with the potentially fatal H5N1 strain of the virus, even though had not been in contact with contaminated poultry.

“Because we have an individual not directly exposed to sick birds suggests a limited human-to-human transmission,” said spokesman John Rainford told AFP.

Human-to-human contamination has been reported in Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam in recent months, but has not spread beyond a single person. A suspected case in China was denied by the authorities there.

In the latest case in Pakistan, a WHO statement said preliminary checks had found “no evidence of sustained or community human to human transmission.”

It added: “All identified close contacts including the other members of the affected family and involved health care workers remain asymptomatic and have been removed from close medical observation.”

The WHO team was sent after the ministry announced the death of a man who was one of six people infected with the H5N1 strain in North West Frontier Province along the Afghanistan border.

A brother of the victim also died before being tested for the virus. Both had worked on a cull of infected poultry.

Avian flu story source: AFP

Two Egyptians test positive for bird flu - ministry

CAIRO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Two Egyptians have tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, a day after an Egyptian woman died of the disease, Egypt’s health ministry said on Thursday.

“There are two cases today, one in Damietta and one in Menoufia… Today lab results confirmed that they are infected with bird flu,” Amr Kandeel, head of communicable disease control at the health ministry, told Reuters.

The two new cases, both of whom are currently receiving treatment in hospital, bring the total number of human bird flu cases in Egypt to 41, Kandeel added.

State news agency MENA said the Menoufia case was 22-year-old Nora Aboul Abbas Mohamed, but gave no details for the second case.

On Wednesday, 25-year-old Ola Younis died of bird flu in Beni Suef province, south of Cairo, on the same day she was diagnosed as being infected with the highly pathogenic virus.

She was the 16th fatality from bird flu in Egypt.

The H5N1 virus which causes bird flu tends to lie dormant during the summer and Egyptian officials had hoped that after two years of outbreaks it would not re-occur this winter.

But John Jabbour, an official at the World Health Organisation, said the new cases were not surprising.

“The agent is there… Since July we’ve had no human cases and many things calmed down, so people returned to dealing with live birds as usual. Since the virus is there, we expect to have human cases. It’s not a surprise at all,” Jabbour said.

MENA reported Thursday that veterinary authorities in Sharkia province had culled 12,000 chickens after tests found the flock had been infected with bird flu.

Most of those who have fallen ill in Egypt were reported to have had contact with sick or dead household birds, primarily in northern Egypt where the weather is cooler than in the south.

The government still finds it hard to enforce restrictions on the movement and sale of live poultry.

Bird flu story source: Reuters

Bird flu infects Bangladesh farm, chickens culled

DHAKA, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Nearly 2,000 chickens have been culled in a village in northern Bangladesh after the H5N1 bird flu virus has detected at a poultry farm, officials said on Friday.

The latest infection was detected in Dinajpur district, 420 km (260 miles) from the capital Dhaka, a senior official of Fisheries and Livestock Ministry said.

Bird flu was first detected near the capital in March and has since spread mainly to northern districts and forced authorities to cull about 275,000 chickens and destroy nearly 3 million eggs.

Avian influenza story source: Reuters

Thursday, December 27, 2007

4-yr-old boy dies of bird flu a day after Gov’t gives all clear- Vietnam

HA NOI — Tests have shown that a four-year-old child in Moc Chau District of Son La Province died of the H5N1 virus on Tuesday, head of the Preventative Healthcare Department Nguyen Huy Nga said yesterday.

The infant suffered high temperatures and severe pneumonia after eating chicken and was taken to the National Paediatric Hospital for treatment.

This was the first recorded outbreak for 23 days, only one day after the country was declared free of the disease by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

MARDDeputy Minister Bui Ba Bong said people needed to be cautious and under no circumstances eat sick birds. People suspected of having the disease should be taken to hospital immediately.

The Ministry of Health were co-operating with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to control the disease and prevent it from spreading to other locations. They would also thoroughly disinfect the environment, Bong said

Bird flu story source: Vietnam News Service

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Pakistan Has Eight Suspected Human Cases of Bird Flu

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg)—Five members of a family in Pakistan are among eight people who may be the country’s first human cases of bird flu, the World Health Organization said. At least one brother died.

Pakistan’s national laboratory found the lethal H5N1 avian flu strain caused the infections in three brothers and two cousins from the same family, according to information from a Dec. 15 WHO statement and Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. Another brother from the U.S., who attended a funeral for one of the victims, and his son tested negative for the virus at a hospital in Nassau County, New York, Hartl said.

Medical teams have been sent to Pakistan to assist local authorities in investigating the cases, in which two people had only mild symptoms, Hartl said. Doctors are monitoring for signs avian flu may be adapting to humans by killing fewer people, fostering its spread.

``It’s too early to make any definitive conclusions’’ about the outbreak, Hartl said in a Dec. 15 telephone interview. ``We are still in the middle of it.’’

The remaining suspected cases in Pakistan include a man and his niece, and a male who worked on a nearby farm.

Doctors from the WHO in Geneva and Cairo, and from the U.S. Navy Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo will arrive in Pakistan during the next two days to track and stem the disease’s spread, and to analyze specimens for any genetic mutations in the virus.

It is too early to determine whether the cases were caused by an animal source or through limited person-to-person spread, he said. Some of the infected people also kept chickens and quails and it is unclear what personal protective equipment was used during culling operations, Hartl said.

Pakistan authorities sent Tamiflu to the affected area to treat cases and prevent further infection, Hartl said.

``Pakistan has been doing everything right’’ in terms of tracing people at risk of infection and preventing its spread, Hartl said.

The infections probably began late October in an agriculture ministry official involved in culling diseased poultry on a farm at Abbottabad in North-West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, Hartl said.

The man fell ill and was cared for by two of his brothers, who also became unwell. One of the brothers died about a month ago and was buried before specimens could be taken for a diagnosis. The other died on Nov. 29 and was positive for H5N1 in preliminary tests, Hartl said. Antibody screening on the first man, who recovered, found he’d been infected with H5N1.

Two cousins, at least one of who is a woman, were positive for H5N1, although they developed only mild symptoms, he said. A man and his niece, who were also involved in culling poultry on either the same or a neighboring farm, have tested positive, Hartl said. The eighth case is a male farm-worker from Mansehra, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the other cases, he said.

The suspected Pakistan cases occurred in the Peshawar area of the country and were detected following a series of culling operations in response to outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry, according to the WHO statement. Samples from the cases are being sent to a WHO reference laboratory in Cairo for confirmation and further analysis.

Avian influenza story source: Bloomberg

Friday, December 14, 2007

WHO confirms Myanmar’s first human case of bird flu

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday confirmed Myanmar’s first human case of bird flu in a seven year-old girl who survived the disease.

The United Nations agency, in a statement, said that the girl in Shan state developed symptoms on November 21 in an area where there had been an outbreak of the H5N1 virus in poultry, and was hospitalized six days later. “She has now recovered.”

Samples taken from the girl were confirmed as having the virus at a WHO laboratory in Japan after first testing positive at a laboratory in Yangon, the WHO said.

Bird flu story source: Reuters

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Indonesian man dies from bird flu

JAKARTA, Dec 13 (Reuters) - A Indonesian man from an area west of the capital Jakarta died from bird flu on Thursday, an official said, bringing the total number of deaths in from the illness in Indonesia to 93.

Runizar Roesin, head of the bird flu centre in Jakarta, told Reuters the 47-year-old man from Tangerang died on Thursday evening.

The man, who had kept ducks at his home, had tested positive for bird flu and was being treated at a hospital in Jakarta, a Health Ministry official said on Wednesday.

Update to previous story posted here

Source for this bird flu story: Reuters

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

H5N1 bird flu found at fifth site in Poland

WARSAW, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in wild birds at a fifth site in Poland, officials said on Wednesday.

A stork and two buzzards, which died from the virus, were being kept at a wild bird rehabilitation center near the town of Orneta, northeastern Poland, regional government veterinarian Ludwik Bartoszewicz was quoted as saying on the TVN24 Web site.

Emergency services set up a safety perimeter around the site. The rehabilitation center is home to several other wild birds, including cranes and swans. Since some of the species are endangered it was unclear if culling would proceed as usual.

Avian flu story source: Reuters