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Biotech / Medical : SARS and Avian Flu -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (1202)	1/14/2004 8:54:49 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4232

Battle Against Bird Flu Intensifies as Fears Grow Wed 14 January, 2004 12:35 reuters.co.uk By Ho Binh Minh HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam reported two more suspected human cases Wednesday of the bird flu, which experts said could have a far more devastating impact than SARS if it combines with a human influenza virus. Dr. Veronica Chan, head of the microbiology and parasitology department at the University of the Philippines' College of Medicine, said humans would have no protection against the resulting strain of flu and there would be an epidemic. "We should worry. It kills. It kills," she told Reuters. How the bird flu has skipped to humans -- killing three in Vietnam -- is still a mystery. But its ability to combine with the human flu virus is not. "The bird and the human influenza can re-assort their genetic components and come out with progenies, meaning products or a new virus," Chan said. Leo Poon, an assistant professor in microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, voiced similar fears. "We don't rule out a large-scale outbreak if the virus mutates in pigs or humans in such a way as to raise man-to-man transmissibility," he said. The World Health Organization (WHO), which has confirmed that three of Vietnam's 15 suspected bird flu victims died of the disease, is just as worried. Senior WHO experts have flown to Hanoi, including Hiroshi Oshitani, who led the response to the SARS outbreak that killed several hundred people from China to Canada last year. "That gives you a measure of how seriously we're taking this situation," said Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the WHO's Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, which says there is no evidence yet the bird flu virus has passed from human to human. State-run Vietnam radio said Wednesday that WHO in a meeting with health ministry officials had committed to introduce a new vaccine to fight the bird flu outbreak. The vaccine would arrive "in the next several weeks at the earliest," it said. "TREAT IT LIKE SARS" Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome infected 8,000 people in about 30 countries early last year, killing more than 700. Vietnam, one of those 30 countries, is treating the bird flu outbreak in much the same way it did SARS, which produced such fear that the usually teeming streets of Beijing were virtually empty for several days last year. "When people are found with fever and flu symptoms, they must be isolated and treated in the same way as treatment for SARS patients," the official Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted Health Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien as saying. Finding out just how the disease had spread to humans and whether culling of birds was being conducted safely was the main focus of the WHO mission to Hanoi, Cordingley said. Japan, which along with Vietnam and South Korea has reported major outbreaks of bird flu that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of poultry being put to death, is still trying to figure out where its first outbreak in 80 years came from. "We don't want to make any assumptions at this moment," said one Agriculture Ministry official. "We are studying all possibilities," including the possibility migratory birds were responsible for its spread. PIGS TOO? Vietnam, which said a 15-month-old girl and a man were suspected of catching the disease, fears pigs might also be carriers of bird flu. "It is possible that the bird flu virus spreads from chickens to pigs before jumping on humans," said Dau Ngoc Hao, deputy director of the Agriculture Ministry's Veterinary Department. One Japanese official said that was not a cause of worry in Tokyo because in Japan "you don't find pigs and chicken mingling in the same yard as you might in some other Asian countries." Nevertheless, the outbreak of bird flu has dismayed Japanese consumers, already worried about food after reports of mad cow disease, koi carp herpes and food labeling scandals. Asia has a vast poultry industry and containing the bird flu outbreaks is a top priority. About 13,700 chickens at one farm in Japan's Yamaguchi were believed to have died of the disease by Tuesday, a local government official said. All the remaining chickens on the farm, which initially had some 34,600 birds, would be slaughtered and farms within a 20-mile radius have been banned from shipping eggs and chicken to prevent the spread of the disease, he said.

To: maceng2 who wrote (1202)	1/14/2004 9:52:58 AM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4232

>>Go with the flow a little<< I think the flow was the problem. The mutations kept increasing in human isolates last season and this season the animal isolates had many more mutations than last season. I think the cat is already out of the bag, so we will see what happens with the new mutations.

To: maceng2 who wrote (1202)	2/3/2004 2:18:14 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4232

Asia should change lifestyle to avoid bird flu: WHO www.chinaview.cn 2004-02-03 01:59:47 news.xinhuanet.com MANILA, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Asian countries afflicted with bird flu should change their lifestyle and ways to deal with chickens to prevent and control the fatal virus, an official of the World Health Organization (WH O) said here Tuesday. Peter Cordingley, spokesman of the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office based in Manila, said in an interview with Xinhua that Asian countries affected by the bird flu crisis should adopt a more healthy and cautious way in raising and selling chickens. "They have to completely change their lifestyle and attitude toward animal," he said. He said it is quite popular in Asia that farmers live closely with their chickens and sell live chickens on the market. This proximity greatly raises the possibility for human to be infected with bird flu, he said. Bird flu, or avian influenza, is a contagious disease of animals caused by virus that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs. There have been 11 Asian countries and regions reporting bird flu cases in animals so far. Among them, only Vietnam and Thailand have reported bird flu cases in humans. Cordingley cited Hong Kong as a success in dealing with bird flu. Although the first documented human infections with the virus occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, ailing 18 persons and killing six of them, it witnessed no second bird flu outbreak afterward. "In Hong Kong, Chinese people loved to go to the markets to choose live chickens and have them killed, but maybe those days have been over," he said. After "big scare" in 1997, Hong Kong has immediately taken measures to cope with bird flu. "They separate animals in the market, separate live chickens from the chicken meat, have all farmers take licenses and accept examination every week. The poultry market will close twice a week and get cleaned," he said. Cordingley also said that Japan and South Korea appear to have controlled bird flu outbreak quickly. They can more easily stop the spread of bird flu because chicken farms there are usually more concentrated. On the contrary, he said, chickens farms in countries like Thailand and Vietnam are more scattered, making it more difficult to control the virus spread. Cordingley said medical and scientific groups in America, Chinaand some other countries are studying on bird flu vaccine, which is expected to be finished in six months. WHO, Food and Agriculture Organization and other international health organizations have also been urging the international community to provide assistance to the affected areas as to contain the spread of the virus more quickly and effectively. Enditem