ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending January 22nd, 2005

Vietnam on Thursday confirmed the sixth human death from bird flu in three weeks and neighboring Thailand recorded its first case among poultry this year as health experts expressed concern about a possible repeat of last year's devastating outbreak.

About 330,000 birds have died or been slaughtered because of the virus in Vietnam this year, and the World Health Organization is worried infection could spread rapidly with the start of the Feb. 9 Lunar New Year holiday. Chicken is the centerpiece of Vietnamese meals during the festivities known as Tet.

Since Tet is a time when people are traveling and more poultry is going to the market ... there is, of course, a high risk of the spread of the virus and infection," said Hans Troedsson, WHO's representative in Vietnam.

Troedsson said there is an urgent need for more research to better understand some of the mysteries surrounding the disease, including the ways in which it is transmitted and why it tends to often affect younger people, especially children..

Health professionals applauded the government's new recommendation that rape victims and occasional intravenous drug users get emergency drug treatment to prevent the AIDS virus, describing it as "progressive" and "a safety net."

The seismic shift in policy, announced Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says a preventative regimen of drugs should be given to anyone exposed to HIV from rapes, accidents or isolated episodes of drug use or unsafe sex. The previous recommendation, made in 1996, had been only for health care workers accidentally exposed on the job.

"We have probably the most conservative administration in the last 50 years, and yet the CDC is coming out with a policy that is more progressive than perhaps any country's in the world," said Dr. Josh Bamberger of the San Francisco public health department, who helped craft the city's prophylactic HIV treatment plan.

Imaginary patients started stumbling into emergency rooms in Munich and Frankfurt, then Istanbul and Los Angeles, and within hours after the start of a war game yesterday, Western intelligence agencies concluded that there had been a choreographed attack on numerous cities by terrorists wielding smallpox pathogens.

By mid-afternoon, health experts realized that millions of people worldwide would soon die agonizing deaths. World leaders - or at least people posing as them - who were assembled at a mock Washington summit yesterday interrupted each other and waved their arms as they debated potential real-life choices. Perhaps the most important: Would wealthy nations that possess smallpox vaccine share it with their unprepared neighbors?

The exercise, called Atlantic Storm, featured former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright as the U.S. president and eight current or former high-ranking officials of America's European allies - such as Britain, France and Germany role-playing as the prime ministers of their respective countries. In the war-game scenario, they were gathered for a routine Washington summit to discuss problems such as the global response to the South Asian tsunami when word emerged of a rampaging virus...

A man was arrested after authorities allegedly found the deadly toxin ricin stashed in a cardboard box at his home along with a small cache of weapons, officials said Thursday.

Steven Michael Ekberg, 22, faces up to 10 years if convicted of possession of a biological agent. FBI agents said they didn't believe Ekberg, arrested Wednesday, had any connection with terrorist groups.

There was no explanation for how or why he obtained the ricin. Ricin can be fatal if ingested, inhaled or injected. There is no antidote.

"The chemical substance is derived from the castor bean and that's a natural substance. I don't think castor beans are difficult to obtain," said FBI Special Agent Jeff Westcott in Jacksonville.

The suspect's mother, who lives with her son, told reporters that he is "not a bad kid."

The fifth case of human bird flu in two weeks in Vietnam has raised fears of a new epidemic. A 35-year-old woman is reported to be in a critical condition, after being taken hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. The four earlier cases have been fatal. Bird flu swept through Asia last year, killing more than 30 people and leading to culls of poultry in 10 countries. A World Health Organization (WHO) expert has warned that many more could die if the virus is not contained.

"If strong measures are not in place, the epidemic can spread to an unmeasurable extent," Hans Troedsso was quoted as saying at a conference in Hanoi on Thursday.

The latest victim, from Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta province, had reportedly been hired by a neighbour to bury dead ducks and to pluck sick ducks' feathers for sale. She developed a fever and breathing difficulties a few days ago, doctors said. The outbreak in Vietnam was first reported last month, when the authorities said some 4,000 chickens had either died or been culled in the south of the country.

More than 100 million birds have died or been killed around Asia last year because of the bird flu virus. The virus has killed 25 people in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand over the last 12 months..

HIV/AIDS is spreading at a devastating pace in Russia, with a new study showing an estimated 1 million people infected - three times the number officially reported - U.S. and Russian experts said Wednesday. A recently released 90-page report by Murray Feshbach and Cristina Galvin of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars urged Russian authorities to take aggressive steps to fight the epidemic. The study was sponsored by U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to official statistics, Russia has some 300,000 HIV-positive people. But Feshbach, as well as Russian experts, said the true number is closer to 1 million. The study estimated the number of AIDS deaths in Russia at 13,000, almost three times the official figure of 4,800.

If officials ignore the problem, "the consequences will be devastating to the society, family formation, to the military, labor productivity" within two to three years, Feshbach said by telephone from Washington...

Researchers have made an unexpectedly sudden advance in synthesizing long molecules of DNA, bringing them closer to the goal of redesigning genes and programming cells to make pharmaceuticals.

But the success also puts within reach the manufacture of small genomes, such as those of viruses and perhaps certain bacteria. Some biologists fear that the technique might be used to make the genome of the smallpox virus, one of the few pathogens that cannot easily be collected from the wild.

The advance, described in the Jan. 6 issue of the journal Nature by Dr. George M. Church of the Harvard Medical School and Dr. Xiaolian Gao of the University of Houston, involves the use of a new technique to synthesize a DNA molecule 14,500 chemical units in length. The molecule contained a string of 21 genes used by a harmless laboratory bacterium.

The full power of the technique is still being explored, but genomes like that of the smallpox virus - 186,000 chemical units long - seem well within reach. Dr. Church has completed the first part of a plan to synthesize the 777,000-unit genome of a small bacterium known as Mycoplasma mobile.

"This has the potential for a revolutionary impact in the ease of synthesis of large DNA molecules," said Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University with an interest in bioterrorism.

"This will permit efficient and rapid synthesis of any select agent virus genome in very short order," he added, referring to the list of dangerous pathogens and toxins that possessors are required to register with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Ebright said any facility possessing the new DNA synthesis equipment should be assumed capable of making any virus on the select agent list.

The genetic sequences of smallpox and many other dangerous pathogens are easily obtained because they were deposited in public databases as an aid to medical researchers at a time when synthesizing large DNA molecules seemed prohibitively expensive or impossible...

Having extra copies of a gene that produces a blocking protein helps protect people from AIDS, a finding that may explain why some people are more susceptible to the disease than others, a new study reports.

researchers wondering why people from the same ancestry varied in their ability to resist HIV and AIDS found differences in the number of copies of the gene that encodes CCL3L1, a protein that blocks HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Researchers hope the finding, reported in Thursday's online issue of the journal Science, help them identify people who have a higher or lower susceptibility to the disease.

"Individual risk of acquiring HIV and experiencing rapid disease progression is not uniform within populations," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infections Disease, which funded the study...

9-year-old boy in Vietnam has died of bird flu, bringing the number of people in the country killed by the virus to 21, a doctor said Wednesday.

The boy from the southern Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh was admitted to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City early Tuesday morning and died later that day, hospital deputy director Tran Tinh Hien said.

"He was tested positive for H5N1 virus," Hien said, refering to the strain of the virus that is deadly to humans.

World health experts fear that bird flu might mutate and create the next influenza pandemic. So far, there has been no concrete evidence of human-to-human transmission of bird flu. Only Vietnam and Thailand have recorded human deaths from the virus.

Health officials are preparing to add another jab to the national baby immunisation programme which already sees infants given two injections containing six vaccinations by the age of four months.

Government advisers have given their support in principle to a vaccination against bacterial meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia, infections which strike about 550 under-fives in England and Wales each year and may kill between 50 and 100.

But they are seeking assurances that parents would accept another jab for very small babies who already receive a five-in-one injection against a range of infections and one against meningitis C. Further work is also being done to determine the dosage and timing of the injection against pneumococcal infections, although there have already been trials giving infants this vaccine alongside the others at two, three and four months.

The Department of Health is anxious to allay what it regards as unfounded fears that babies might face immunisation overload if another jab were added...

A small fleet ventured out from a south Sri Lankan port on Wednesday - the first step in rebuilding the country's vital but devastated fishing industry. Seven boats left Mirissa and returned with a symbolic catch, some to be sent to President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

They hope she will eat the fish publicly to dispel fears that catches are contaminated by decomposing bodies. The tsunami killed more than 30,000 in Sri Lanka. The nation's Central Bank puts damage costs this year at $1.3bn. Between 800,000 and one million people are thought to have been displaced.

The BBC's Gina Wilkinson in Mirissa says many fishermen in Sri Lanka are still reluctant to leave the shore as they are worried that more huge waves may swamp the coast.

Many more Sri Lankans believe mistakenly that fish, a staple food in Sri Lanka, are contaminated with disease...

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...