Bird Flu - Avian Influenza - news - information

Friday, October 26, 2007

Human-transmissible bird flu found (Vietnam)

A Fujian-like bird flu virus was found in poultry in Vinh Long Province and northern Vietnam.

Tests done in two national and international laboratories, the Veterinary Institute and the National Center for Veterinary Diagnosis, confirmed the findings.

The name of the mutated virus, Fujian bird flu, is taken from the Chinese province where the new strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus was found in March 2005. The virus is transmissible from birds to humans.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat asked relevant agencies to strictly control the trading and transportation of poultry and poultry products across borders and in local markets to prevent the spread of this dangerous strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Bird flu article source: Thanhnien News

Bird flu hits Vietnam village near Chinese border

HANOI, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Bird flu has killed poultry in a Vietnamese village on the Chinese border, the third outbreak of the highly infectious virus in the country this month, Hanoi’s Aninal Health Department said.

“Tests on the samples from the dead poultry were positive to the bird flu virus H5N1,” it said in a statement seen on Friday.

About 560 ducks and chicken were infected in the village of Lung Na in the Trung Khanh district of Vietnam’s northern province of Cao Bang,, the statement said.

It made no mention of human infections by the virus, which has killed four of the seven Vietnamese who have caught it this year, taking the country’s death toll since late 2003 to 46.

The virus has already struck duck farms this month in the central province of Quang Tri and Tra Vinh in the south despite a major vaccination campaigns.

Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said earlier this month bird flu would return among unvaccinated birds, especially as the weather cooled in late autumn and winter in northern provinces.

Vaccinations are under way in 40 of Vietnam’s 64 provinces and 62.65 million birds have been injected, nearly one third of the poultry stock, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Bird flu story source: Reuters

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Indonesian girl dies of bird flu-health ministry (4-year-old)

JAKARTA, Oct 23 (Reuters) - An Indonesian toddler from Tangerang west of the capital Jakarta has died of bird flu, bringing the country’s death toll from the disease to 89, a health ministry official said on Tuesday.

The four-year-old girl died on Monday after being hospitalized two days earlier, health ministry spokeswoman Lili Sulistyowati said by telephone.

Bird flu story source: Reuters AlertNet

Indonesian girl did not die of bird flu: official (Update to earlier story)

JAKARTA (AFP) — A young Indonesian girl who died at the weekend on the island of Sumatra was not infected with bird flu, a health ministry official said Monday.

The 10-year-old was admitted to hospital on Saturday suffering symptoms that led doctors to suspect she could be carrying the H5N1 virus, which has killed 88 people in Indonesia, the highest number anywhere in the world.

“The test result is negative,” said Haris Sugiantoro, an official at the health ministry’s bird flu information centre.

If the ministry result is positive, a second test is carried out at a separate laboratory before a patient is confirmed as infected with bird flu in Indonesia.

Source: AFP

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Indonesian girl thought to have bird flu dies

An Indonesian Hospital official stated Sunday that a 10-year-old girl from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, who was admitted to the hospital with bird flu like symptoms, has died.

“She was admitted on Saturday but died less than 12 hours later, at around 11pm (0200 AEST),” said Azizman Daad, a doctor at the Arifin Achmad hospital in Riau province.

Daad said that samples from the 10-year-old’s body were to be sent to the capital Jakarta for testing to confirm the cause of death. Local tests indicated that she had bird flu.

Bird flu article source: The West Australian

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Indonesian boy dies of bird flu - health ministry

JAKARTA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A 12-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, taking the total death toll from the disease in the country to 88, a health ministry official said on Saturday.

Another official at the ministry’s bird flu center had earlier said was not clear how the boy, from Tanggerang city in West Java, contracted the virus, but that some chickens had died in his neighborhood.

“A team has conducted an investigation to find out how the boy got infected and we are waiting for the result,” the bird flu center’s Daswir Nurdin said.

Bird flu story source: Reuters‘

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Azerbaijan releases results of bird flu monitoring

The State Veterinary Service of the Agriculture Ministry of Azerbaijan has released results of the 9th monitoring carried out since September 24.

Samples from 26 wild birds and 727 domestic birds were analyzed in a laboratory.

“All the samples tested negative for bird flu,” said the Veterinary Service. The State Veterinary Service, Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry, Health Ministry and Hunters’ Society have monitored Absheron Peninsula, Pirallahi Island, regions of Devechi, Salyan, Aghjabadi and Lenkeran. No sick birds were found.
The 10th monitoring will start on October 22

Bird flu story source: APA

Friday, October 05, 2007

Riau bird flu suspect dies (Indonesia)

PEKANBARU (Antara): A woman thought to be suffering from bird flu died at the Arifin Achmad Regional General Hospital on Friday, an official said.

“The patient was treated in an isolation ward for bird flu patients at Arifin Achmad Regional General Hospital,” Burhanudin Agung of the Riau provincial health office said.

LT, 44, who lived at the Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) housing complex in Rumbai, Pekanbaru, had been treated at the Awal Bros hospital for four days before he was transferred to the Arifin Achmad Hospital on Thursday when his condition deteriorated.

A hospital representative said a blood sample had been sent to the Health Ministry’s laboratory in Jakarta to determine whether LT tested positive to the virus.

The hospital also sent a blood sample from another suspected bird flu patient, identified as RS, 5, from Risak Hulu in Riau Province’s Kampar District, to be tested.

Bird flu story source: Jakarta Post

Bird flu virus mutating into human-unfriendly form

NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.

The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study.

“The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus,” Kawaoka said.

Recent samples of virus taken from birds in Africa and Europe all carry the mutation, Kawaoka and colleagues report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens.

“I don’t like to scare the public, because they cannot do very much. But at the same time it is important to the scientific community to understand what is happening,” Kawaoka said in a telephone interview.

The H5N1 avian flu virus, which mostly infects birds, has since 2003 infected 329 people in 12 countries, killing 201 of them. It very rarely passes from one person to another, but if it acquires the ability to do so easily, it likely will cause a global epidemic.

All flu viruses evolve constantly and scientists have some ideas about what mutations are needed to change a virus from one that infects birds easily to one more comfortable in humans.

Birds usually have a body temperature of 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees F), and humans are 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F) usually. The human nose and throat, where flu viruses usually enter, is usually around 33 degrees C (91.4 degrees F).

“So usually the bird flu doesn’t grow well in the nose or throat of humans,” Kawaoka said. This particular mutation allows H5N1 to live well in the cooler temperatures of the human upper respiratory tract.

H5N1 caused its first mass die-off among wild waterfowl in 2005 at Qinghai Lake in central China, where hundreds of thousands of migratory birds congregate.

That strain of the virus was carried across Asia to Africa and Europe by migrating birds. Its descendants carry the mutation, Kawaoka said.

“So the viruses circulating in Europe and Africa, they all have this mutation. So they are the ones that are closer to human-like flu,” Kawaoka said.

Luckily, they do not carry other mutations, he said.

“Clearly there are more mutations that are needed. We don’t know how many mutations are needed for them to become pandemic strains.”

Bird flu story source: Reuters‘

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Abuse of Tamiflu can create bird flu resistant strains: study

PARIS (AFP) — Swedish scientists say that Tamiflu—the frontline weapon in any bird-flu pandemic—cannot be broken down by sewage systems and this could help the virus mutate dangerously into a drug-resistant strain.

Countries around the world are stockpiling Tamiflu in the belief it will help curb any future outbreak of H5N1 avian flu among humans.

Tamiflu, whose lab name is oseltamivir, is not a cure for flu but can ease its symptoms, thus aiding vulnerable patients such as the elderly, and reduce the time of illness, thus easing the burden on caregivers.

Scientists led by Jerker Fick, a chemist at Umea University, tested the survivability of the Tamiflu molecule in water drawn from three phases in a typical sewage system.

The first was raw sewage water; the second was water that had been filtered and treated with chemicals; the third was water from “activated sludge,” in which microbes are used to digest waste material.

Tamiflu’s active ingredient survived all three processes, which means that it is released in the waste water leaving the plant.

The finding is important because of the risk that Tamiflu, if overprescribed, could end up in the wild in concentrations high enough to let H5N1 adapt to this key drug, the authors say.

Flu viruses are common among waterfowl, especially dabbling ducks such as mallards which often forage for food near sewage outlets.

“The biggest threat is that resistance will become common among low pathogenic influenza viruses carried by wild ducks,” said co-author Bjoern Olsen, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Uppsala and University of Kalmar.

These avian viruses could then recombinate with ordinary human flu viruses, creating new strains that are resistant to Tamiflu, he said.

“Antiviral medicines such as Tamiflu must be used with care and only when the medical situation justifies it,” Olsen warned. “Otherwise, there is a risk that they will be ineffective when most needed, such as during the next influenza pandemic.”

The study, published online on Wednesday by the open-access Public Library of Science (PLoS), pointed the finger at Japan.

It quoted figures from Swiss maker Roche, which estimated that in the 2004-5 influenza season, 16 million Japanese fell ill with flu, of whom six million received Tamiflu.

At such dosages, the amount of Tamiflu released into the Japanese environment is roughly equivalent to what is predicted in areas where the drug would be widely used in a pandemic.

Coincidentally, “Japan also has a high rate of emerging resistance to Tamiflu,” the paper said. A 2004 study published in The Lancet found that among a small group of infected Japanese children, 18 percent had a mutated form of the virus that made these patients between 300 and 100,000 times more resistant to Tamiflu.

Bird flu story source: AFP