ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending February 28th, 2005

Amid dire warnings of an Asian pandemic, the government is preparing to test an experimental bird flu vaccine and is increasing disease surveillance in hopes of reducing the toll from any eventual American outbreak. Antiviral drugs are being stockpiled, and 2 million doses of vaccine are being stored in bulk form for possible emergency use and to test whether they maintain their potency.

United Nations officials warned on Wednesday that the Asian bird flu outbreak poses the "gravest possible danger" of becoming a global pandemic.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the National Press Club this week that "it is a worrisome" situation,though she also said the United States "is not immediately on the brink of an avian flu epidemic."

The flu has affected poultry in eight Asian countries, with 45 human deaths among people who caught the illness, a strain of flu known as H5N1. So far, humans appear to have caught this flu from chickens and other poultry, and the virus is not known to have spread from person to person. What health authorities most fear is that the virus will mutate into a form that can pass easily from one human to another. That' when a global threat would be most likely.

The deadly flu of 1918, which killed from 20 million to 50 million people worldwide, didn't appear suddenly but mutated gradually into the deadlier form, Gerberding explained...

Health officials have urged governments to do more to fight a bird flu outbreak that could affect people. UN experts at a conference in Vietnam said there was still time to prevent the virus from spreading to humans. But one UN official called the response from donors and governments so far "glaringly insufficient".

He said the international community needed to spend at least $100m to fight the virus - five times more than the sum donated last year. "I see an alarming lack of commitment from donors and affected governments," said Dr Samuel Jutzi from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "I perceive a lack of political will in supporting efforts to reduce the risk," he added. He went on to say that the $100m would simply improve monitoring procedures and veterinary services, but would not cover the costs of compensating farmers for their financial losses.

In recent weeks, the virus has been detected in mammals that had ever been affected before, such as tigers, lions and cats. This has sparked fears that the virus might be becoming resistant to treatments and therefore more dangerous...

LONDON (Reuters) - The threat of a biological terrorist strike by al Qaeda is very real but the world is still not prepared, the head of Interpol said. Ronald Noble said governments, police and security services were more organized than ever before but he warned it would be wrong to assume the threat from Osama bin Laden's group, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, had eased.

"The terrorist threat is as real today as in 2001 when September 11 occurred," Noble said in an interview with the BBC late on Tuesday. "The number of terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world and the evidence that has been seized revealing the kind of planning that al Qaeda has done in the area of biological weapons or chemical weapons ... is enough evidence for me to be concerned about it."

Interpol is due to hold its biggest ever conference next month in Lyons, France, which 400 senior police officers and health officials from around the globe will attend. Sharing information to combat the threat of a potential biological attack will be a central theme. "Anyone who is honest about this has to admit that if al Qaeda launches a spectacular biological attack which could cause contagious disease to be spread, no entity in the world is prepared for it," Noble said. "Not the US, not Europe, not Asia, not Africa."

His warning comes a week after U.S. intelligence chiefs cautioned that al Qaeda or other militants were seeking chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, with new CIA head Porter Goss saying "it may only be a matter of time" before they used such arms...

A bird flu virus may mutate to a human form that becomes as deadly as the ones that killed millions during three influenza pandemics of the 20th century. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that scientists believe it is highly likely that the virus that has swept through bird populations in Asia will evolve into a pathogen deadly for humans.

"We are expecting more human cases over the next few weeks because this is high season for avian influenza in that part of the world," Gerberding said in remarks at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Although cases of human-to-human transmission have been rare, "our assessment is that this is a very high threat" based on the known history of the flu virus, she said.

In Asia, there have already been a number of deaths among people who caught the flu from chickens or ducks. The mortality rate is very high _ about 72 percent of identified patients, said Gerberding. There also have been documented cases of this strain of flu being transferred from person-to-person, but the outbreak was not sustained, she said.

The avian flu now spreading in Asia is part of what is called the H1 family of flu viruses. It is a pathogen that is notorious in human history.

"Each time we see a new H1 antigen emerge, we experience a pandemic of influenza," said Gerberding. In 1918, H1 appeared and millions died worldwide. In 1957, the Asian flu was an H2, and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 was a H3.

There had been small appearances of the H1-type of avian viruses in other years, but nothing like the H5 now rampaging through the birds of Asia.

"We are seeing a highly pathogenic strain of influenza virus emerge to an extraordinary proportion across the entire western component of Asia," she said. "The reason this is so ominous is because of the evolution of flu. ... You may see the emergence of a new strain to which the human population has no immunity...

The bird flu virus could mutate to pass from human to human and trigger a pandemic, latest evidence suggests, according to scientists. Outbreaks so far have been through the flu spreading from animals to humans. But Nancy Cox, of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, says a number of subtypes have proven their ability to jump the species barrier. The H5N1 strain, which has killed 42 people in Asia since 1997, was one of many possible candidates, she said.

Strains had emerged in the last year that were more lethal to animals than the 1997 strain, she said. The recent spurt of human infections increases the likelihood that a mutant strain would arise that could spread between humans, she added. We could have a relatively severe pandemic as occurred in 1918 or perhaps even worse.

"It's impossible to predict what the consequences would be. We might have a relatively mild pandemic like we did in 1968," Dr Cox told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"Alternatively, we could have a relatively severe pandemic as occurred in 1918 or perhaps even worse." The virus could mutate by shuffling genetic material with the human flu virus, Dr Cox added. This would make it better at specifically targeting human airways for attack...

At least 60 people are thought to have died in an outbreak of plague in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has said. It is thought to be the worst outbreak of pneumonic plague, which affects victims' lungs, for 50 years.

The people who have died are all diamond miners. Another 350 miners have been infected. The WHO is to send an emergency team to the area, in the former Zaire, in a bid to stem the outbreak. An advance team has already visited the area to confirm that people are infected with the plague. The WHO said the mine was near Zobin, in Oriental province, north of the country's biggest city, Kisangani, a major trading centre on the Congo River.

The outbreak began in late December, but the WHO were only alerted to it last week. Around 7,000 people worked at the mine. The WHO team will focus on trying to trace the 2,000 who have left since the start of the outbreak.

Bubonic plague is endemic in parts of Africa, including the DRC, but pneumonic plague, which occurs when the bacteria infects the lung, has a very high fatality rate and is "invariably" deadly when left untreated, the WHO said.

Humans are generally infected with plague by rodents and fleas, but the pneumonic form of the disease can also be transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets...

City health officials are working to track down sex partners of a man diagnosed with a rare strain of highly drug-resistant HIV that progressed rapidly to AIDS.

The virus was found in a man in his mid-40s who had unprotected sex with other men, often while using crystal methamphetamine, an addictive stimulant, health officials said Friday.

j "We are not aware of another case like this in the United States, or elsewhere," said Dr. Ron Valdiserri, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention.

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said the rare HIV strain is "difficult or impossible to treat." The New York Times, citing a person familiar with the case whom it did not identify, reported Saturday that the man was believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of people.

The man - who had not previously undergone antiviral drug treatment - was diagnosed with the rare strain in December 2004. He apparently had been infected recently..