Updates ~ Pestilence

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NEW YORK

The bird flu virus that infected a Vietnamese girl was resistant to the main drug that's being stockpiled in case of a pandemic, a sign that it's important to keep a second drug on hand as well, a researcher said Friday. The drug in question, Tamiflu, still attacks "the vast majority of the viruses out there. Kawaoka said the case of resistance in the 14-year-old girl is "only one case, and whether that condition was something unique we don't know." He also said it's not surprising to see some resistance to Tamiflu in treated individuals, because resistance has also been seen with human flu.
The girl, who had been caring for an older brother with the disease, had been taking low doses of Tamiflu as a preventive measure when the virus was isolated in late February. She later got sick and was given higher doses. She recovered and left the hospital in March.

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BEIJING, China

2,600 Birds Found Dead of Bird Flu ~ October 19, 2005

Some 2,600 birds have been found dead of bird flu in northern China's grasslands, the government said Wednesday, amid reports of new outbreaks in Europe and Russia. Preliminary tests detected the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain in samples taken from a region south of Moscow where hundreds of birds died suddenly, the Agriculture Ministry said Wednesday. If confirmed, the discovery in the Tula region, 125 miles south of Moscow, would mark the first time the lethal strain. Authorities have killed all farm birds in the area and finished disinfecting the areas, including people's houses and yards. Specialists worry that infected birds in the Danube Delta, a large wetland reservation home to 323 species of birds, could spread the virus to Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece and Africa when they migrate later this year. In Brussels, an EU official said bird flu was suspected in Macedonia, where authorities started Wednesday to cull 10,000 chickens in a small southern village as a precaution.

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JAKARTA, Indonesia ~ September 21, 2005

Indonesia scrambled to calm public fears of a possible bird flu epidemic after two more children suspected of having the disease died in the capital of Jakarta. If bird flu is confirmed as their cause of death, the country's human toll from the outbreak would climb to six. The government accused of responding slowly to the outbreak announced plans for mass chicken culls in infected areas and fired the country's chief of animal health control for allegedly failing to check the disease's spread. It assigned 44 state-owned hospitals to treat avian influenza patients and threatened to forcefully admit anyone showing symptoms of the disease, which include coughing, high fever and respiratory problems.
"If things worsen it could become an epidemic," Health Minister Siti Fadila Supari told The Associated Press. Nine suspected bird flu cases have been admitted to Jakarta's infectious disease hospital, and authorities are awaiting lab test results for them and the girls, ages 2 and 5, who died Wednesday. The H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, killing at least 63 people and resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds. Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. But the World Health Organization has warned that the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans - possibly triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions. Indonesia has reported scores of infections in chicken flocks across the sprawling country, but in the past has said it could not afford mass culls - something the United Nations suggests is the best way to prevent the virus' spread. "If we declare one area highly infected, we are going to do a mass slaughter," adding that farms in which 20 percent of poultry were infected with H5N1 would qualify.

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BANGKOK, Thailand ~ October 2005

A woman in a northern suburb of Bangkok has been diagnosed with bird flu. Thailand's 20th victim of the disease since 2003, a health official said Monday. The 50-year-old woman is in stable condition in Bangkok's Siriraj hospital. The woman fell ill a day after helping clean a chicken coop, said Thawat Suntarajarn, director-general of Thailand's Department of Communicable Disease Control. Of the 20 people who have gotten the virus, 13 have died. All three of Thailand's cases this year were reported in October. Besides the 50-year-old woman reported Monday. A 48-year-old man died after handling his neighbors' sick chickens. The man's 7-year-old son also contracted the disease after handling the birds. Taiwan confirmed on Thursday the island nation's first case of the disease in birds smuggled in from China.

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TORONTO, Canada November 1, 2005

Nearly three dozen wild ducks have tested positive for the H5 bird flu virus in Canada, officials reported Monday, but they said it was unlikely to be the strain blamed for more than 60 human deaths in Southeast Asia. Dr. Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would take at least a week to determine whether the flu found in 33 ducks from the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba was the deadly H5N1 strain that has ravaged Asian poultry farms.

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In Russia, emergency workers were killing domestic and wild fowl in and near a bird flu-affected village south of Moscow while the World Health Organization said China had destroyed 91,100 birds around a farm in the country's north to stop a bird flu outbreak. The birds were culled after 2,600 chickens and ducks died of the H5N1 strain of the virus in a breeding facility in a village in the Inner Mongolia region.

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Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday new lab results confirmed the country's 13th death from bird flu. The dead man, Bang-on Benphat, was hospitalized with pneumonia-like symptoms on Sunday, shortly after he cooked and ate his neighbor's dead chickens. His 7-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, has been hospitalized in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection and is also suspected of having bird flu. "The people in this area should have known better," he said. "They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous."

ISTANBUL, Turkey ~ October 2005

Turkey's agriculture minister confirmed the country's first cases of bird flu on Saturday and ordered the destruction of all birds in the village where it was detected to prevent the disease from spreading, the Anatolia news agency said. Military police have also set up roadblocks at the village near Balikesir in western Turkey, 250 miles from Istanbul. The officers checked vehicles to make certain no birds were going in or out. Cases of bird flu were also confirmed Saturday in Romania, which borders Turkey.

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ATHENS, Greece October 17, 2005

Authorities in Greece are confirming the country's first case of bird flu on a turkey farm on the Aegean Sea island of Oinouses , near the Turkish coast. Greece's agriculture minister says the H5 virus has been detected in one of nine turkeys tested. Tests are being conducted for the possible presence of the deadly H5N1 virus. That's the virus that world health experts fear could mutate to a human form and cause a flu pandemic.

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KIZIKSA, Turkey

European Union officials helping investigate an outbreak of bird flu in a western Turkish village said Monday that there was no indication that the virus here, which has killed some 1,800 fowl, posed a risk to humans. Officials have been seeking to allay fears across Europe after a deadly strain of bird flu was identified in Romania and Turkey in recent days. Among the key points: while the H5N1 strain of bird flu might mutate and spawn a human virus that could kill millions, in its current form it is difficult to transmit to people. Veterinarians from Turkey's Agriculture Ministry said that nearly 10,000 birds had been culled in the village of Kiziksa following a mandatory order to deliver them for destruction and that the outbreak of bird flu had been contained. Officials also said the incubation period for the bird flu detected in Kiziksa already had passed and there was no danger that the virus detected there could spread.

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