Flu
WHO in talks with Roche on bird flu stockpile
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The World Health Organization is in talks with Swiss drug maker Roche on building a stockpile of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu capable of treating at least one million people, its director general said on Tuesday.
“What I am expecting to have is initially one million, and I hope that that can be multiplied,” Lee Jong-wook told reporters in Thailand, one of the countries worst hit by the virus which has killed 62 people in Asia since 2003.
Tests show promise for bird flu vaccine in humans
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Human tests of an experimental vaccine show it is effective at stimulating the immune system to fight the bird flu strain that experts worry could spur a worldwide pandemic, a top government scientist said on Saturday.
The findings are a step forward but do not overcome the major hurdle of producing enough vaccine to meet demand in the event of a flu pandemic, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The vaccine is grown in chicken eggs and production can take months.
Russian bird flu may be spreading
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A bird flu outbreak in Russia’s Siberian regions may be spreading, but no humans have been infected so far, officials and Russian media said on Monday.
The highly potent H5N1 strain, confirmed in the Siberian region of Novosibirsk, has swept parts of Asia and killed more than 50 people since 2003. Outbreaks in Russia and later in neighboring Kazakhstan have been reported since mid-July.
Bird flu spreads in Russia, maybe in Kazakhstan
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Bird flu has been officially confirmed in two more Russian regions, and the disease may also be spreading in Northern Kazakhstan, officials said on Friday.
Health officials fear that a subtype of bird flu dangerous to humans may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival or exceed the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 20-40 million people worldwide at the end of World War One.
Vietnam vaccinates poultry to fight bird flu
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Vietnam has begun to vaccinate 210 million poultry as part of an all-out effort to eradicate the deadly bird flu virus that has killed 42 people in the country, half of them since December.
The Agriculture Ministry said it would use more than 400 million batches of vaccine imported from China and the Netherlands to inoculate chickens, ducks and quails against the deadly H5N1 virus.
“All efforts are for the health of the people. We will have to take whatever action required, regardless of the cost,” Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said this week as he launched the vaccination campaign.
China swine flu outbreak fails to worry residents
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Near the epicentre of China’s worst outbreak of swine flu in years, Lao Luo is too busy stuffing his face with pork dumplings to care.
“It’s all under control,” Luo said between mouthfuls as fat dribbled off his chin at a roadside diner in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, China’s second-most populous province.
That a region famous for its fiery cuisine, bamboo forests and lovable pandas is now host to a bacterial scourge that has killed 37 and infected 205 is dismissed with a shrug and another mouthful.
Russian region culls birds after flu outbreak
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Russia’s Siberian region of Novosibirsk said on Tuesday it will slaughter 65,000 birds in 13 locations as more cases were confirmed of a strain of bird flu dangerous to humans.
“It has been decided to slaughter all hens, ducks, geese and turkeys at farms where the virus had been detected. The farms’ owners will be paid compensation for all the birds that are killed and provided with safe poultry meat and eggs at a discount price,” a Novosibirsk administration spokeswoman said.
China farmers ignore swine flu hygiene orders
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Many frugal farmers in southwest China are refusing to bury infected pigs safely, Chinese media said on Tuesday, raising fears that a deadly swine flu could spread further after infecting almost 200 people and killing 36.
Draconian measures were in place around the Chinese capital to prevent infection. The Beijing News said city authorities had blocked inward shipments of about 4,000 tonnes of pork and pork products from stricken Sichuan province up to July 31.
Russia bird flu could spread to EU
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A strain of bird flu dangerous to humans could spread to parts of the European Union from Siberia, a senior Russian veterinary official warned on Monday.
Chances were “very high” the strain found in the Novosibirsk region could spread to other parts of Siberia, the official from the Russian Veterinary and Phytosanitary Inspection Service told Reuters.
Flu viruses can quickly swap genes—study
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Strains of the influenza virus are constantly swapping genes among themselves and giving rise to new, dangerous strains at a rate faster than previously believed, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
They found that slightly mutated influenza A strains in New York that circulated between 1999 and 2004 gave rise to the so-called Fujian strain that caused a troublesome outbreak in the 2003-2004 flu season.
Such events probably are what lead to the occasional pandemics of flu that can kill millions of people, David Lipman and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found.
Many Indonesians brush off bird flu risk
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Indonesians have mostly shrugged off the risks from bird flu despite the deaths of three members of a family this month from the virus, the first in the world’s fourth most populous country.
“In the streets of Jakarta, we still find motorists carrying dozens of chickens without protection,” an editorial in Media Indonesia newspaper said on Friday.
Indonesia prepares hospitals for bird flu care, checks
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Indonesia is preparing 44 hospitals across the sprawling archipelago for treatment and detection of bird flu after recording its first deaths from the virus, the health minister said on Thursday.
Siti Fadillah Supari also told reporters authorities were yet to determine how a government official and his two young daughters living in a Jakarta suburb contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus.
Killer bird flu virus erupts again in Thailand
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The deadly bird flu virus, which has killed 55 Asians, has erupted again in Thailand despite a major campaign to eradicate it, the government said on Monday.
Infected fowl were found this month in five places of three districts in Suphanburi province, 100 km (60 miles) north of Bangkok, during follow-up inspections of previously affected areas, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said.
Migrating geese could carry bird flu out of Asia
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The spread of avian flu virus among migrating geese and other birds at a wildlife refuge in China means the birds could carry the devastating virus out of Asia, scientists reported on Wednesday.
This makes avian flu even more of a global threat than it already is, the scientists said in reports published jointly by the journals Science and Nature. Health officials fear avian influenza could cause a pandemic of human disease.
Bird flu crisis needs more money, quick response-UN
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Global health experts unveiled a plan on Wednesday for Asia to avert a pandemic of avian flu and raised to a quarter of a billion dollars the funding needed to fight the virus for the next two years.
A meeting of potential donor countries would be held by December to raise $150 million to protect humans from the disease, on top of the $100 million for animal care sought earlier by the three UN health agencies meeting in Malaysia.
