ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending January 3rd, 2005

Vietnam may face fresh outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus next month as poultry is transported around the country ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations in February, the World Health Organization said.

The WHO warning comes after a 16-year-old girl remained in a stable condition in Ho Chi Minh after doctors confirmed she was infected with the virus. "As avian influenza viruses become more active at cooler temperature, further poultry outbreaks, possibly accompanied by sporadic human cases, can be anticipated," the U.N. health agency said...

The key to averting a health catastrophe emerging from the tsunami ruins will be basic hygiene -- clean water and toilets -- medical officials said Saturday, reporting no major disease outbreaks but warning the worst may be just around the corner.

Dirty drinking and washing water combined with lack of proper sewage disposal, they said, are a recipe for explosive outbreaks of life-threatening diarrhea diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery, as well as some forms of hepatitis.

"These are the sort of diseases that could occur any time now," Dr. Michelle Gayer, an infectious diseases specialist at the World Health Organization, said Saturday.

More than 123,000 people are reported dead and officials say the toll is likely to climb as more bodies are found. Most of the victims were killed by the massive tsunamis that smashed coastlines after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake last Sunday off Indonesia's coast..

A teenager who became the first person known to survive rabies without a vaccination went home Saturday after nearly 11 weeks in the hospital, officials said.

Jeanna Giese, 15, was infected when a bat bit her at church in September but she did not immediately seek treatment. She began showing symptoms of rabies in mid-October.

"My biggest goal when this started, when I walked through those doors downstairs, was to someday take my daughter through those doors back out, and today that gets to happen," Giese's father, John Giese, said Saturday before the family left the hospital.

A team of physicians at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a coma as part of efforts to stave off the usually fatal infection. Only five people besides Giese are known to have survived the rabies virus after the onset of symptoms. But unlike Giese, they had either been vaccinated or had received a series of rabies vaccine shots before showing symptoms...

As the death toll from the Asian tsunamis soars past 33,000, relief workers warn of even greater tragedy ahead if disease breaks out on a wide scale.

The threat of typhoid, malaria, cholera, dysentery and waterborne disease is particularly acute in the worst-hit areas of Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia, where a combination of surging seawater, hot and humid weather, and decomposing bodies means many water supplies are contaminated.

Medical workers must focus above all else on ensuring those affected by the tsunami have access to clean water, said Gerald Martone, of the International Rescue Committee, a non-governmental organization that provides assistance to refugees around the world.

Contaminated water, which can carry more than 50 diseases, "is the leading killer of populations affected by disasters," Martone told CNN...

ases of West Nile virus plummeted in New York state in 2004, health officials said. The mosquito-borne illness prompted some panic when it first hit America in 1999, but drew little attention this year in New York. In all, 10 people tested positive statewide for the virus in 2004, compared with 71 last year. Around 200 birds had confirmed West Nile this year, down from 1,367 in 2003. Experts aren't sure yet if cases will remain scarce or whether the drop is simply part of a down cycle in the virus' lifespan...

Indian Ocean states from Indonesia to Sri Lanka scrambled on Tuesday to cope with the widespread devastation of a tsunami that killed over 23,000 people and could claim more lives through disease and privation. The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods would be heading for the region from some two dozen countries within the next 48 hours. The sheer scale of Sunday's disaster, however, is still unclear amid the chaos. "The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars," said Jan Egeland, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "However, we cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages...that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."..

Japan reported its first case of bird flu in a human on Wednesday ┠a man who got the disease from birds. Bird flu has swept through farms across Asia this year, forcing officials to cull more than 100 million birds. The disease has also jumped to humans, killing 12 people in Thailand and 20 in Vietnam.

Although there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission, experts worry that the virus could mutate into a version easily spread among people, setting off a global pandemic...

In an effort to make medication regimens easier for HIV-positive patients, two drug companies have announced plans to collaborate on the first all-in-one, one-a-day pill to treat the infection. Currently, the best AIDS treatment requires patients to take two to four pills a day. Less than a decade ago, many patients had to take 25 to 30 pills a day, often at precise times and under specific conditions such as with food, making it extremely difficult for patients to stick to the complex schedule. Missing doses makes it easier for the virus to mutate and become resistant to medication.

In the first collaboration by competing AIDS drug makers, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. announced Monday that they have formed a joint venture to test and market a single pill combining three widely used medicines...

Health officials warned Monday that the world was close to its next pandemic a powerful and highly contagious mix of avian influenza and flu virus that would likely be centered in Asia.

Authorities also warned that humans, and not animals as initially thought, would probably be the carriers.

"We are getting closer, but when it's going to happen, I don't know," said Francois Xavier-Meslin, the World Health Organization's coordinator for disease control, prevention and eradication.

"If it happens, which is not yet proven, it's going to be worse than SARS," ...

President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress party carried an article in its online journal Friday accusing top U.S. officials of treating Africans like guinea pigs and telling lies to promote the sales of a key AIDS drug. The article, published in ANC Today, was responding to Associated Press reports this week that U.S. health officials withheld concerns about a key nevirapine study before President Bush launched a 2002 plan to distribute the drug in Africa to protect newborns from catching HIV from their infected mothers. In the United States, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a U.S. congressional investigation into the report and he demanded nevirapine no longer be distributed in Africa...

Jauhara Naluyange has been off the street for eight months now. Three years ago, at age 16, she left home and entered the commercial-sex trade. She wanted to be like the hip kids in school, craving their "cool clothes, cool bags, and cellphones." But she was from one of Uganda's poorest slums and could seldom afford more than porridge for lunch.

Then one day the older girls shared their secret. "During holidays we go onto the street," they said. "Come with us."

Thus began her journey down into prostitution - and up, eventually, into a new life. It was a woman with a gruff voice and a quick smile who helped her escape. Now Jauhara cuts and braids hair for a living.

Jauhara's story is an extreme example of the pressures facing African girls and women today. While most women don't choose prostitution, many are compelled by a lack of economic, legal, and cultural power to do things that expose them to AIDS. And in a part of the world where a new United Nations study says young women are three times more likely to contract HIV than men their age..

Governments must brace for a future flu outbreak because one will strike inevitably, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

"Influenza pandemics are natural phenomenon, like earthquakes," said Klaus Stohr, coordinator of the global flu program at the WHO. "The problem is bad preparedness."

Influenza is highly contagious and has killed millions over the past 100 years. It has traditionally moved in cycles, and some scientists say a major outbreak is already overdue. The 1918-1919 Spanish Flu outbreak killed up to 40 million people around the world, many more than World War I. There also were major outbreaks in 1957-58 and 1968-1969 that killed more than a million people each. The most virulent strains hit about every 30 years.

WHO has warned that 7 million could die in a new outbreak and that governments must do more to prepare - and try to cut the death toll. "We're living on borrowed time," said Stohr. "..

Scientists warned Tuesday that a long-term, four-degree increase in the average global temperature could threaten Latin American water supplies, reduce food yields in Asia and result in a rise in extreme weather conditions in the Caribbean. The warnings came in a report released by a group of European scientists on the sidelines of an annual U.N. conference on climate change. The study aimed to determine the impact of climate change in select areas around the global and to assess how much change may be "tolerable," said Carlo Jaeger, the head of the Global Change and Social Systems at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "Long-term temperature increases of more than two degrees constitutes dangerous interference with the climate system," said Jaeger, who helped assemble the report entitled "What is Dangerous Climate Change?"

The planet's temperature is used as a guideline by environmentalists and government official seeking to control the amount of greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warnings...

Monica is 12, likes ice cream, thinks boys are rough and dirty, and wants to grow up to be a flight attendant "because they work hard and play hard." Robert is 13, good at science, likes french fries, dreams of being a pilot and thinks corruption is hurting Africa. The two bright-eyed Kenyans with brilliant smiles share the dreams, tastes and pet hates of lively children everywhere. They also share a secret no child should ever have to keep.

The two are HIV-positive, and the deep stigma the condition attracts in Africa means that they must never reveal the status to outsiders if they are to achieve their glittering ambitions..

A terrorist attack involving a dirty bomb hidden in a cargo container wouldn't have to match the human toll of Sept. 11, 2001, to be effective. Shutting down even a few of the largest ports would have a devastating economic effect, so it's puzzling that so little is being spent to avoid such a catastrophe. Oceangoing freighters will offload more than 9 million cargo containers at U.S. ports this year. Until we can know with certainty what's inside them, the boxes will remain, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner has said, "the potential Trojan horse of the 21st century." Some progress is being made. The major foreign ports have agreed to give U.S. customs agents 24 hours' notice before U.S.-bound containers are loaded, and the port of Dubai on Monday became the first port in the Middle East to join the program. The United States also is dispatching customs agents to the world's busiest ports to establish offices. Shipping companies and cargo handlers around the world are completing self-evaluations to help identify weaknesses that terrorists might try to exploit...

The first United States vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which swept parts of Asia and around the world in 2003, is ready to be tested in human volunteers, government researchers said on Monday.

The Phase 1 safety trial, done to show the Sars shot causes no harm, will take place at the Vaccine Research Center, part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The researchers will use a vaccine that was reported in March to work safely and effectively in mice. They will seek 10 volunteers for the trial.

Chinese researchers began human testing of a Sars vaccine in May. The team at Sinovac Biotech Ltd. said on Monday...