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MEDAN, Indonesia (AFP) — Three people have died and 13 have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of bird flu in Indonesia, a nurse treating the patients said Wednesday. Officials and residents in Asahan district of North Sumatra province said villagers began showing symptoms of avian flu after a large number of chickens died suddenly last week. The nurse at Asahan district’s Kisaran hospital said three people had died after suffering bird flu-like symptoms in Air Batu village. “According to residents there, a number of chickens died suddenly last week followed by several pigeons. Days later, three people died with the same ailments,” the nurse, Mariana, told AFP. More

HANOI, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) – Bird flu has stricken Vietnam’s central Quang Ngai province, raising the total number of affected localities in the country to three, according to a local veterinary agency on Tuesday. Late last month, bird flu killed 70 ducks and sickened 150 others raised by a household in the province’s Binh Son district, whose specimens have recently been tested positive to bird flu virus strain H5N1, the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said, adding that the whole duck flock has been culled. Now, bird flu is hitting southern Dong Thap province, and Nghe An and Quang Ngai in the central region. Bird flu outbreaks in Vietnam, starting in December 2003, have killed and led to the forced culling of dozens of millions of fowls in the country.

Niger’s Ministry of Livestock is intensifying its bird surveillance along the 1,500-kilometre border with northern Nigeria after a recent resurgence of bird deaths. The Ministry of Livestock in Niger has ordered the killing of more than 20,000 birds suspected of carrying the virus since 2006. It has also paid about US$46,000 in compensation to farmers with sick birds to encourage them to hand over infected animals. Officials in the northern Nigeria states Kebbi, Kano and Katsina reported several thousand poultry deaths on 29 July. Birds have been sent to laboratories in Italy to determine if the H5N1 avian flu virus is responsible. Two years ago, a bird flu outbreak in Nigeria spread north to Niger. Niger’s Director of Animal Services, Dr. Maiga Zourkaleni, is preparing a team that will visit high-risk border areas Zinder, Maradi, Dosso and Tahoua. “We are working as hard as we can to prevent another cross-border infection,” he said. More

Source: International Herald Tribune
An Indonesian factory worker has died of bird flu, bringing the death toll in the country worst hit by the virus to 112, a top health official said Sunday. The 19-year-old died last week in a hospital just west of the capital, Jakarta, Nyoman Kandun, the director general of communicable disease control at the Health Ministry, said by text message. He gave no more information. Indonesia has regularly recorded human deaths from bird flu since the virus began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. Its toll of 112 accounts for nearly half the 240 recorded fatalities worldwide. Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, but health experts worry that the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions. So far most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds. Scientists have warned that Indonesia, which has millions of backyard chickens and poor medical facilities, is a potential hot spot for the start of a global pandemic.

In America the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that the bird flu virus is changing and that it is developing strains and properties which could possibly increase the potential of it to infect humans from birds. They also said that it was also developing into a virus which could become more contagious between humans. The research was done on the Influenza A H7 virus types which are very contagious to birds but must not be mixed up with with the extremely deadly H5N1 bird flu virus. Nevertheless it is worth noting that if an H7 bird flu virus mutates it is likely that the H5N1 variant of the virus will also be able to follow suit. Dr. Jessica Belser who led the research project for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention explained that it is perfectly normal for influenza viruses to constantly change and in view of the fact that there is the scare of a deadly bird flu outbreak is very important that they are watched extremely carefully at the moment. More

A worldwide outbreak of avian or ‘bird flu’ is still not excluded and health officials recognize that new drugs are needed since new strains of the virus appear everyday. Now, U.S. scientists are using supercomputers to find new drugs to fight the virus and to stay ahead of these mutations. And it is encouraging to learn that a team of UC San Diego scientists has isolated more than two dozen promising and novel compounds from which new ‘designer drugs’ might be developed to combat this disease. The 27 new identified compounds appeared to be equal or stronger inhibitors than currently available anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu. More

NaturalNews — Some of the 19 people who have died from the avian flu in Egypt in the last two years were killed by a strain that shows moderate drug resistance, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced. Four people died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Egypt during the last week of December (2007?), bringing the country’s death toll from the disease to 19. This represents more than 40 percent of the 43 people who are known to have been infected by the disease. All four recent victims were women between the ages of 25 and 50, and all are believed to have had close contact with infected poultry. One of the women was a chicken seller, and the others were believed to keep domestic fowl in their homes. More

Source: Edinburghnews
THE spread of bird flu from Asia to eastern Europe and west Africa has increased the chance that the virus will mutate and cause a pandemic among humans, the United Nations’ expert on the disease has warned. Dr David Nabarro said there was no evidence yet of any change in the bird flu virus. He said: “Unfortunately, we cannot tell when the mutation might happen, or where it might happen, or how unpleasant the mutant virus will turn out to be. “Nevertheless, we must remain on high alert for the possibility of sustained human-to-human virus transmission and of a pandemic starting at any time.”

Nabarro said the arrival of bird flu in Nigeria should be “a strong wake-up call” to countries to ensure their veterinary services were on alert, and that health services quickly identified unexpected clusters of disease that could represent the start of a pandemic. “We have got bird flu now in south-east Asia, central Asia, eastern Europe, and west Africa,” he said. “Compared with eight months ago, this is a major extension of the avian influenza epidemic.” Nabarro said control measures had helped to contain the spread but bird flu was still expanding across the world, “putting at risk the health of people who are living intimately with poultry”.

Laboratory tests have shown a drug extracted from the medicinal herb St John’s Wort can be used to treat poultry infected with bird flu, a veterinary professor said. Field tests in Vietnam had also been satisfactory, he added. The results were released as World Health Organisation representatives prepared to meet officials in Beijing to discuss concerns about the mainland’s use of the human antiviral drug amantadine to suppress bird flu outbreaks. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday it was also seeking clarification from Beijing. Liang Jianping, of the Lanzhou Institute of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, said the compound hypercin had been found to be effective in treating and preventing bird flu. “We have found hypercin can kill 99.99 per cent of H5N1 and H9N2 virus in vitro within 10 minutes,” Professor Liang said. More

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico will ban all imports of poultry and poultry products from Arkansas after a small flock in that U.S. state had been exposed to a mild form of bird flu, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday. Mexico, whose largest trading partner is the United States, joined Japan, Russia and Taiwan who also closed their borders temporarily to chicken imports. Mexico said it would resume imports once the virus was completely contained. U.S. chicken from other states still can be shipped to Mexico. More
Also See: Arkansas chickens exposed to Bird Flu, test positive for H7N3 influenza antibodies

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus. The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug. The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight. More

Authorities in Hong Kong, battling the worst outbreak of avian flu in five years, have ordered the slaughter of all live birds in the city’s markets and banned the sale of live poultry. “In our surveillance we were able to detect H5N1 in our environment,” said York Chow, Hong Kong’s Food and Health Secretary. “We are able to …very quickly show that in four of the markets, that they have very similar virus. And that’s the reason why we took very timely action to cull all the chicken and make sure the public is safe. More

She had the beautiful name of Istiqomah. Ten days before her death, her brother Ahmad Rizki died with similar symptoms, and when she died her older brother Alamsyah was under treatment for flu-like symptoms. (The outcome of his case is still unknown.) Istiqomah was at least the 109th Indonesian to die of bird flu. Normally, the World Health Organization would have officially confirmed her death. But Indonesia’s health minister is a woman named Siti Fadilah Supari, who has been playing politics with bird flu for over a year. Sometime in May, Dr. Supari stopped cooperating with WHO. In effect, she clamped down on news of a disease that has killed four out of every five Indonesians it’s infected.

Dr. Supari has been a problem for a long time. Last year she refused to share H5N1 virus samples with the rest of the world, claiming that foreign drug companies would use them to create flu vaccines that Indonesia couldn’t afford. WHO tried to negotiate with her, to no effect. More recently, she led a campaign to eject a U.S. Navy medical lab, NAMRU-2, from Indonesia. The lab is one of the most advanced in Southeast Asia, and has helped Indonesia track the advance of H5N1, but Dr. Supari wanted it out. More
Go here for more info on H5N1 Bird Flu

All live poultry in Hong Kong’s street markets and shops is to be slaughtered after officials detected the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus. Tests showed infected birds in four markets. Agriculture, fisheries and conservation director Cheung Siu-hing did not say how many birds would be killed. But she said the virus has not been detected in samples from local chicken farms and distribution centres.

Health workers killed 2,700 poultry in a market on Saturday after routine testing showed five chickens were infected with the virus. The government also temporarily banned supplies of all live poultry from mainland China and local farms. More
Go here for more info on H5N1 Bird Flu

ROBIN McDOWELL/AP
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A 15-year-old girl died of bird flu last month, becoming Indonesia’s 109th victim, but the government decided to keep the news quiet. It is part of a new policy aimed at improving the image of the nation hardest hit by the disease.

“How does it help us to announce these deaths?” Heath Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Thursday, after confirming that the girl from southern Jakarta tested positive on May 13 and died one day later. “We want to focus now on positive steps and achievements made by the government in fighting bird flu.”

Indonesia’s decision could aggravate the World Health Organization, which waits to update its official tally of Indonesia’s bird flu deaths until after they are formally announced by the government. The toll on its Web site stood at 108 on Thursday — accounting for nearly half the 241 recorded fatalities worldwide. More

A HONG Kong research team has successfully tested a new drug combination that could help tackle the deadly bird flu virus in humans, scientists said in a paper due to be published tomorrow. The use of three drugs together dramatically increased the survival rate of mice who had been infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, the University of Hong Kong team said in a paper to be published a United States-based journal.

And the treatment could help improve the survival chances of people infected with the deadly virus if the success can be replicated in humans, the paper said. “Triple therapy offers some hope for surviving the devastating consequences associated with a pandemic influenza outbreak,” the 13-person team said in a paper to be released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More

Tyson Foods Inc. says it destroyed the chickens Tuesday as a precautionary measure. The company made the discovery during routine pre-slaughter testing last Friday. According to the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission, the flock came from a farm near West Fork.

The birds were tested on the farm, so they were never brought to a Tyson plant. Tests showed the virus only existed in the bird’s blood, not the tissues. That means the chickens were exposed to the disease at some point, and were carrying the dead virus.

Tyson says this is not the same strain as the bird flu virus overseas. Although the birds pose no risk to human health, it’s USDA policy to eradicate the entire flock. “One of the things that everybody needs to realize is that this is a situation where the system is working perfectly. There is no chicken in the state of Arkansas or in the nation for that matter that is processed or even leaves the farm until it is blood tested,” says Jon Fitch, Executive Director of the Livestock and Poultry Commission. [Yeah, OK, sure. This is just the beginning and don’t think for a second there aren’t birds circulating in the US food chain with the H7N3 avian influenza flu strain.] Preliminary tests on the flock indicate the presence of antibodies for H7N3 avian influenza, however, there is no indication the birds currently have the virus. The 15,000 chickens involved show no signs of illness and the situation poses no risk to human health. More

An experiment mating H5N1 avian flu viruses and a strain of human flu in a laboratory produced a surprising number of hybrid viruses that were biologically fit, a new study reveals. And while none of the offspring viruses was as virulent as the original H5N1, about one in five were lethal to mice at low doses, showing they retained at least a portion of the power of their dangerous parent.

The work suggests that under the right circumstances - and no one is clear what all of those are - the two types of flu viruses could swap genes in a way that might allow the H5N1 virus to acquire the capacity to trigger a pandemic. That process is called reassortment. “This study is just showing exactly that: There is a risk this virus can successfully reassort with a human virus,” said Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization’s collaborating centre for influenza research at St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. “The problem is we don’t know at this stage whether there’s a benefit to these H5N1 viruses in doing that.” More

Photo Tommy Mac
AVIAN Influenza, another name for bird flu is fundamentally a disease of birds caused by a variety of strains of influenza viruses that have adapted to a specific host, particularly in water fowl. The H5N1 strain of influenza - often referred to as bird flu - is first known to have jumped from chickens to humans in 1997. Since 2004 it has ripped through poultry and wild bird populations across Eurasia, and had a 53% mortality rate in the first 147 people it is known to have infected.

Health authorities fear this strain, or its descendent, could cause a lethal new flu pandemic in people with the potential to kill billions after the virus responsible for causing the disease jumped the specie-barrier to infect humans. Experts fear the nature of the disease could be more lethal than ten hydrogen bombs after causing a pandemic. Of the 382 human cases reported so far the world over, 241 have been devoured by the deadly disease. More

Mark Henderson
The H5N1 strain of bird flu that has killed 241 people is not the only one that could trigger a pandemic, according to research in America. A few H7 strains of the flu virus have started to evolve some of the traits they would need to infect people easily, scientists have discovered.

The H5N1 strain has been regarded as the most deadly strain since it appeared in Asia in 2003. Although it has a death rate of more than 60 per cent, it has not yet acquired the ability to move from person to person, which would be a prerequisite for a pandemic.

The H7 family of flu viruses also primarily affects birds. A deadly version of the H7N7 strain hit poultry in the Netherlands in 2003, and a less severe form, H7N2, broke out in the UK last year. Between 2002 and 2004 several outbreaks of H7N3 and H7N2 have been reported. In each of these incidents a few human cases of infection have been reported. One vet died during the Dutch outbreak and about 80 people suffered conjunctivitis, an eye infection that is not life-threatening. More

abc.az/eng/news
Baku, Fineko/abc.az. The State Veterinary Service of the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan completed yesterday the fourth avian influenza monitoring (May 12-23) in the country. The SVS press secretary Yolcu Khanveli said that samples of 13 wild birds and 1,352 barnyard fowls had been taken. But no signs of the disease were revealed in birds,” Khanveli said.

The monitoring involves employees and experts of the SVS, the Ministries of Environment & Natural Resources and of Health, the Society of Hunters. The SVS is preparing to conduct the next (the 5th this year) monitoring. “The next monitoring is scheduled for this November or October,” Khanveli said. The SVS prohibits storage of migrant birds under close conditions, and fowling, sale of migrant and wild birds and their cooking.

Kantipur Report
Avian Influenza Control Project has said six districts bordering India are at risk of bird flu. According to Dr Manas Kumar Banerjee, coordinator of Avian Influenza Control Project of Epidemiology and Disease Control Division under Ministry of Health and Population, Jhapa, Ilam, Panchthar, Taplejung, Sunsari and Morang districts are at risk of the flu. “There is embargo on the import of poultry items but despite the ban, items like white eggs which are found only in India are also found in the local market of the mentioned districts,” said Dr Banerjee.

He added that animal health and human health units of the government have been focusing on warning people against the risk of flu. He said the government is equipped with Personal Protective Equipment. “We also have a stock of antiviral medicine called Tamiflu that is needed in case any human gets infection by flu,” he added. Read more

2008-05-22 14:51:42 -
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - Bangladesh’s Health Ministry says the nation’s first human case of H5N1 strain of bird flu infection has been detected. A health ministry statement says a child was infected by the virus in January. The statement released by the Directorate General of Health Services on Thursday did not give the child’s name, age, or other details about the case. The child is recovering after treatment. The statement said the case was diagnosed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Bangladesh in recent months have culled hundreds of thousands of birds after the virus was detected last year.

abc.net.au
The European Commission has approved the first human vaccine for bird flu, manufactured by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.

The vaccine, Prepandrix, activates an immune response in people to the H5N1 virus.

GlaxoSmithKline, the biggest drug maker in Europe, has spent about $2 billion developing the vaccine and hopes that the approval will prompt fresh orders of Prepandrix from governments around the world looking to build stockpiles.

english.chosun.com
Researchers have found that strains of bird flu found in Korea and Japan this year are almost genetically the same. The National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service said Wednesday that the genetic makeup of a strain of bird flu sampled from chickens in Gimje, South Jeolla Province was 99.7 percent identical to a sample from swans found in Japan’s Akita prefecture. The finding gives grounds to analysis that the latest outbreak of avian influenza may have originated from migratory birds.

Kim Jae-hong, a professor of veterinary medicine at Seoul National University, said that viruses over 99 percent genetically the same are considered the same strain. This substantiates assumptions that migratory birds spread the virus on their way north in March and April after spending the winter in Southeast Asia. Read more

The Poultry Site
The animal rights group says that in the midst of avian flu outbreak in Darjeeling, they released undercover video footage of crowded and filthy conditions on chicken and egg factory farms, which leading health experts believe causes the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The findings were sent to the West Bengal government last year, and the government was warned about how unsanitary conditions on factory farms could lead to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus. Because of the conditions that many chickens raised for meat and eggs are forced to endure, disease is rampant. On its website, the Environmental Defense Fund explains that “[a]ntibiotics are routinely fed to healthy livestock and poultry to make them gain weight faster and to compensate for unsanitary living conditions”, reports PETA.

According to researcher Malati Puranik, who conducted a study of chickens sold in Mumbai, “[W]e realised that poultry sold under such unhygienic conditions is a serious health hazard. Pathogens such as campylobacter and salmonella proliferate, causing severe bacterial contamination”. During the evisceration process, chicken carcasses easily become contaminated with faecal material when the intestines are cut or torn and the contents leak out during extraction. Read more

Statesman News Service
SILIGURI, May 15: The H5N1 strain of avian influensa has surfaced in Bijanbari Block in Darjeeling sub-division. According to the Darjeeling DM, Mr Rajesh Pandey, the Bhopal based High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) has confirmed the outbreak after testing the samples sent from Bijanbari on 11 May. “The HSADL report has reached us today.

A meeting of the officials concerned has been convened at the Darjeeling district collectorate tomorrow and hopefully, we would be able to begin culling operations from Saturday,” Mr Pandey said. Read more

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials said today they have killed all poultry in Seoul, the capital, to curb the spread of bird flu following a new outbreak of the disease in the city. Quarantine officials destroyed 15,000 chickens, ducks, pheasants and turkeys raised in farms, restaurants, schools and homes in the capital, said Kim Yoon-kyu, a Seoul Metropolitan Government official. The Seoul government said the slaughter was necessary to contain the disease. It said it will now focus on preventing live poultry from being brought into the capital.
Read more

Monday, May 12, 2008
AFP
SEOUL — Another bird flu case was found in the South Korean capital Sunday, the agriculture ministry said, while it was reported an outbreak in the country’s second largest city was caused by the H5N1 strain. More than 8,000 ducks and chickens were immediately culled at an illegally-run farm in Seoul’s southeastern district of Songpa after tests showed the potentially deadly virus, the ministry said. It was later reported by Yonhap news agency that the H5N1 strain had been found in the southeastern port city of Busan.
Read more

ABC News
Australia’s readiness to deal with an outbreak of bird flu will be one of the key areas under discussion today at a conference of infectious disease experts. As the nation’s stockpile of antiviral drugs for flu nears its use-by date, delegates at the second Pandemic Influenza and Workplace Infectious Diseases conference will be debating what should be done to address the issue.
Read more

Bird flu is continuously spreading to different regions of the country. Anisur Rehaman, West Bengal’s Animal Resources Development (ARD) Minister confirmed a new H5N1 virus outbreak in the Darjeeling region of eastern India. The bird flu attack in Darjeeling district brings the total number of West Bengal regions that have been hit by the virus in the existing year to 15.

The minister confirmed that the blood samples of dead birds picked up from the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal were infected with the highly pathogenic bird flu virus. He also said that culling would begin shortly in the region. Read more

Photo Darin

Source: AAP
Japan has again detected bird flu of the virulent H5N1 strain in a swan, in the third case in the country this year. The dead swan was found in the northern-most main island of Hokkaido, the government of Hokkaido said today (May 10). The case was confirmed five days ago. On the same day local authorities said bird flu had been found in another dead swanfound the previous month on another area of the island. The latest case is the third in Japan this year.

In late April several swans were found with the H5N1 strain on the shores of Lake Towada close to the northern tip of the main island of Honshu. The livestock hygiene service centre will issue an order for chicken farms within a 30km radius to disinfect poultry houses, Kyodo news agency said. No human deaths from the disease have been reported in Japan.

Photo Raychel

SEOUL, May 6 (Yonhap) — The bird flu outbreak that has swept South Korea reached the capital Seoul on Tuesday, prompting quarantine officials to decontaminate and limit access to a nearby children’s park and open air market. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said tests conducted on four birds that started dying off from late April showed they were contaminated with the H5 avian influenza virus.
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