H5N1

Czech cull completed in Norin

A June 28 story in the Prague Daily Monitor: All poultry at Czech Norin farm culled over bird flu. Excerpt:

Czech military and firefighters have completed the liquidation of some 28,000 broilers this morning at a farm where the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed on Wednesday, Ales Cernohorsky from the regional firefighters' rescue corps told CTK today.

This morning the culling of the poultry of small farmers in the neighbourhood will be completed.

Soldiers and firefighters will disinfect and clean the Norin farm.

Veterinaries have closed the farm today and started to take safety measures similar to those applied in Tisova, four kilometres away from Norin, where bird flu was uncovered at a local turkey farm last week.

I've added this periodical to the list of H5N1 Hot Zone Sources.

A gathering storm in Burma

Via The Irrawaddy, a report with disturbing implications for a flu pandemic: Burma's gathering "health" storm. Excerpt:

According to the report, Burma has one of the world’s highest tuberculosis rates and is home to more than half of Asia’s malaria deaths. Ethnic and religious minorities, displaced farmers, commercial sex workers and intravenous drug users are among the groups most at risk for infectious diseases, the report said.

The Burmese government spends less than 3 percent of national expenditures o­n health, while the military, with a standing army of over 400,000 troops, consumes 40 percent, according to the report. In addition, Burma spends just 40 US cents per citizen each year on health care compared to the $61 per citizen that neighboring Thailand spends each year. 

The researchers at UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins found that the widespread distribution of counterfeit anti-malarial drugs and the rise of drug-resistant malaria and tuberculosis pose a major health threat to the Burmese people, especially those living in border areas where health care is limited.

Closing the Hong Kong bird market

Via VOA News: Hong Kong Bird Market Closed After Discovery of Avian Flu. Excerpt:

Hong Kong's famous Bird Garden in the city's busy Mongkok district usually bustles with residents bargaining for exotic birds as pets and with tourists who love the market's lively, colorful atmosphere. Now, a grim-looking guard at the entrance of the market makes sure no one enters.

The shutters of most of the 70 shops are down. A few, mostly elderly, vendors sit around with nothing to do.

They have put up a banner that sums up their feelings.

One of the vendors reads aloud, "This tourist spot has been turned into a ruin."

This woman says that her life is very hard right now. She says she does not have any customers and cannot earn any money.

Hong Kong's health officials closed the bird market about two weeks ago after a starling there was found to be carrying the H5N1 avian flu virus. All birds in that shop were removed and the market vendors were asked to thoroughly clean and disinfect their stalls. Hong Kong's agriculture and fisheries department has been collecting and testing samples from bird stalls to test for avian flu viruses.

Eric Tai, a veterinarian working for the department, said "Our last batch of samples for this exercise was collected earlier this week and if things go well, when everything is negative, showing there is no virus around, when that result comes out, then we will be opening the market again."

Free-range poultry may be hazardous to your health

Via Thanh Nien Daily, bad news for those of us who like poultry that run around and eat bugs: Southern Vietnam faces bird flu peril. Excerpt:

Vietnam’s southern provinces face the risk of bird flu outbreaks because of slack control and inoculation of free-ranging waterfowl, delegates told a conference in Vung Tau town Thursday.

Nguyen Xuan Binh, deputy head of Ho Chi Minh City’s Animal Health Center, said while provinces reported inoculation of 87% of poultry in the region, the real rate was only 70% at most.

He blamed it on the massive increase in free-range ducks – since the government lifted a ban on waterfowl hatching and rearing in March – for which the provinces had no updated statistics.

Waterfowl numbers in the south have nearly doubled to over 26 million, 24 million of them in the Mekong Delta region, according to Animal Health Department figures.
Most of the 1200 backyard farms in the south are casual about vaccinating their birds.
Delegates blamed their attitude on the lack of deterrent financial penalties – VND2 million (US$124) is the maximum fine.

Indonesia: Child in Tulungagung hospitalized with bird flu-like symptoms

I'm back from my holiday, where I was able at least to keep track of the Czech and German outbreaks. Now here's a report from Antara: Child in Tulungagung hospitalized with bird flu-like symptoms.

A nine-year-old child in Tulungagung, East Java, is suspected of having been infected with the bird flu virus, a hospital official said.

The child, identified by its initials "EN" from Bungur, Karangrejo, is currently being treated at a local state hospital. The hospital`s spokesman, Triwidyono Agus Basuki, said here on Friday the child`s conditon was worsening.

"We cannot as yet tell if the symptoms shown by the patient are really of birdflu because we have just sent samples of its blood to Surabaya for examination," he said.

He said EN was admitted to the hospital on Thursday night with symptoms associated with bird flu.

He said a number of chickens belonging to its granfather had died suddenly. "By chance, an animal health service official was conducting a counseling in the village. Upon hearing that a villager was ill with bird flu-like symptoms he immediately asked the child`s family to take it to a local health care center," he said.

From there the child was later brought to the Dr Iskak Hospital and put in an isolation room.

The animal health service official discovered at least 13 chickens had died suddenly in the village where EN lives.

Two people in Tulungagung had died in the past one year of the virus

Away again

Once again I'm on holiday, this time for almost ten days in Sointula, on Malcolm Island.

So here again are the links I posted in May to help you find the latest news and analysis.

News gatherers come first:
NewsNow: Bird Flu is usually very dependable and up to date, though it sometimes produces echo reports when some news source belatedly picks up an ancient story.

Reuters AlertNet is also very good, though it offers a much narrower range of stories and doesn't update often enough.

Bird Flu Breaking News is an excellent source of both news stories and blog posts on H5N1.

Google News - Health can be very good, but when H5N1 doesn't inspire a lot of news stories, Google will drop it altogether.

Among the hot-zone sources, here are the ones I check most often:
Jakarta Post and Antara are essential for Indonesian coverage, but click through to their National pages. Sometimes they bury the flu news.

Vietnam's Thanh Nien Daily is super. But check the other hot-zone Vietnamese links as well.

I have new links to Ghanaian sources, but allAfrica.com's Health page will give you a wider view of events in Africa. It will also give you a sobering sense of how many health problems the continent faces.

An excellent weekly news gatherer is SciDev.Net, which offers a review of the previous week's major stories every Monday.

Among the flu bloggers, three are must-reads:
The Reveres at Effect Measure have been covering H5N1 longer than anyone, and providing very informed comment.

Avian Flu Diary does great work at covering major news stories and interpreting them.

The Coming Influenza Pandemic is another longtime flu blog, but it doesn't update until late at night, Pacific time. So check it first thing in the morning.

The other flu bloggers don't update often, but they offer some valuable contributions.

If H5N1 breaks out in some new country, you may be able to find breaking news through Kidon Media-Link or Onlinenewspapers.com.

You'll find a lot of links to flu discussions, but the only ones I visit regularly are The Flu Clinic and New Flu Wiki Forum.

Of course you should check the many WHO sites listed in the upper left-hand column—especially WHO's home page and its Situation Updates.

I encourage you to use the Google search function in the upper right-hand column. Even if you just look for posts from, say, June 2005, you'll get an interesting perspective on current events. It's also a good idea to create your own Google alerts for terms like "bird flu" or "h5n1." Google will send you plenty of links to breaking news.

I may be able to post a little from Sointula, and to check my email. But don't count on it until June 30, when regular posts should resume.

And thank you again for your continuing interest in this site.

New tests on bird flu drug after teenagers' deaths

Via the Guardian Unlimited: New tests on bird flu drug after teenagers' deaths. Excerpt:

The reputation of flu drug Tamiflu suffered a fresh blow yesterday when the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche and its Japanese partner announced new clinical trials to establish whether there is a possible link between the antiviral and dozens of deaths and injuries among Japanese teenagers.

The new research on Tamiflu, which is being stockpiled as the best available treatment in a bird flu epidemic, was recommended by a Japanese health ministry drug safety panel investigating fears that it may have a link to several teenagers who killed or harmed themselves during episodes of extreme mental disorder. In February a boy and a girl, both 14, fell to their deaths.

The ministry said there was no evidence of a causal link between Tamiflu and the symptoms but ordered doctors not to prescribe it to teenagers, except those suffering extreme flu symptoms.

It advised Roche and Chugai Pharmaceutical, which sells the drug in Japan, to begin pre-clinical and human clinical trials to establish whether it could be behind side-effects such as delirium and delusion.

Chugai said that the results of the research, expected by the end of the year, would be used "for the best possible safety measures for the next influenza season".

It said it would conduct human clinical trials using 12-30 volunteers, while Roche would conduct toxicity studies using rats to gauge the drug's effects on the brain. "We are taking the situation seriously and are increasing our efforts to look into whether there is any causality."

When H5N1 tends to kill young people, we don't need an H5N1 drug that makes young people kill themselves.

The exformation issue

The failure to communicate the danger of H5N1 has been a running theme on this blog, and the hot-zone countries have been notably unable to get the word out. While urban, educated professionals may understand the problem very well, their own cultural limits evidently keep them from reaching the ordinary people.

Here's a case in point from the Jakarta Post. It's not about H5N1, but the communication problem is clearly the same: Half in Indonesia's remote Papua province unaware of HIV/AIDS. Excerpt:

Researchers found HIV infection rates in Papua were as high as 3.2 percent in mountainous areas, compared to 1.8 percent in easily accessible low-lying areas, indicating a higher risk in isolated farming communities where education is poorest.

Researchers found 48 percent of Papuans were unaware of HIV/AIDS. That figure rose to 74 percent of those who did not attend or complete elementary school.

Ghana hit by third B2B outbreak

Via Myjoyonline.com: Bird flu hits Aflao.

About 1100 birds have been destroyed following the discovery of another case of the Bird flu disease at the border town of Aflao near Lome.

Officials of the Veterinary Service Department detected the virus after a poultry farmer in a community at Aflao took his sick birds to the Veterinary laboratory here in Accra to be tested. The birds reportedly started dying since last Wednesday but did not show any signs of the disease.

The Volta Regional Director of the Veterinary Services, Dr Ben Aniwa told Joy News measures have been put in place in Aflao to prevent the disease from spreading to other parts of the region.

He assured: “We have started the control measures. We have destroyed about 1100 birds and all other birds around the area. Our people are on high alert to make sure that the disease is put under control at the shortest possible time.”

The Volta region becomes the third region to be hit by the disease after it was discovered in Tema of the Greater Accra region and Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo region.

Branswell: New flu drugs coming

Helen Branswell is covering the Toronto conference and offers some good news via C-Health: New drugs, new drug targets make prospects brighter for flu drug pipeline. Excerpt:

Potential flu drugs in development and newly identified targets for flu drugs suggest the era of dependence on merely two classes of influenza drugs could end in the next few years, experts at a major influenza conference here suggested Tuesday.

"The potential for development of other drugs is quite significant at the present time," Dr. Alan Hay of the National Institute for Medical Research in London said in a presentation to the Options for the Control of Influenza Conference.

With concerns about a possible flu pandemic, public health officials have worried that the reliance on only four flu drugs from two drug classes leaves the world in a vulnerable position.

But work presented at the conference points to progress in lessening that vulnerability, said Dr. Frederick Hayden, an antiviral expert with the World Health Organization.

"The pipeline is not full, but it's certainly more robust than it was some years ago," Hayden said.

One of the promising things about the work is that the drugs and drug targets that are in the pipeline would diversify the number of classes of flu drugs if they are successfully brought to market. That, in turn, would lower the risk posed by drug resistance.