ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending May 29th, 2005

lineup of leading infectious disease experts warned Wednesday that the world is unprepared for the health and economic consequences of an outbreak of pandemic influenza that could spring from a lethal strain of bird flu now ravaging poultry flocks in Southeast Asia.

In commentaries published in the British science journal Nature, doctors used some of the strongest language yet to suggest that the bird flu virus known as H5N1 could mutate into a form easily transmitted among people, creating a strain capable of killing millions.

"This virus has the potential to trigger the next pandemic, which, judging from history, is well overdue,'' wrote Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. "Clearly, there is much to be accomplished, and time is of the essence.'' Flu pandemics are global outbreaks of virulent influenza caused by a viral strain so different from those of prior years that the human population has no natural resistance to it.

The 1918 Spanish flu was such a pandemic, and it killed an estimated 20 million to 100 million people around the globe. The H5N1 virus has worried flu experts since 1997, when it first appeared in the Hong Kong chicken markets as a lethal virus dubbed bird Ebola..

The United States still has no licensed vaccine to prevent avian flu and has nowhere near enough drugs on hand to treat the sick if there is an epidemic, experts told Congress Thursday.

Hospitals have too little capacity to deal with the huge numbers of people who would become sick and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department does not even have a plan for dealing with an epidemic, the experts said.

lthough many levels of government are paying increased attention to the problem, the United States remains woefully unprepared for an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of Americans, said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chairman of the Infectious Disease Society of Americaâ™s Pandemic Influenza Task Force.

Clearly, we need a much larger supply of drugs and vaccine to control a flu pandemic. We need to build up U.S. manufacturing capacity so that we are not dependent on other countries to meet..

A leading scientist says the virus is becoming more efficient at infecting humans, increasing the chances of a horrific death toll around the world.

A leading scientist says that the bird flu virus is on the point of mutating into a pandemic disease, warning that current estimates that such a pandemic could cause 7.5 million deaths may understate the threat.

Professor Albert Osterhaus' warnings came as China announced it had developed vaccines that block the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and mammals.

Experts writing in the magazine Nature have also voiced concern about the world's inability to manufacture sufficient vaccine for a pandemic and warned of the impact that the virus - H5N1 - could have on the global economy.

In an editorial, Nature says such warnings have "fallen on deaf ears".

The magazine backs a call by Professor Osterhaus and his colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam - one of the world's leading virus research laboratories - for a global taskforce to strengthen agencies on the ground.

There have been 90 human infections in South-East Asia, from which 54 people have died. But while culling and the vaccination of poultry appears to have slowed outbreaks in Thailand and other parts of South-East Asia, this year Vietnam has had a worrying number of human infections in the same family groups.

According to Professor Osterhaus, such clustering could mean the virus is becoming more efficient at infecting...

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Geneva have approved recommendations for further research on the smallpox virus. Health officials say it is necessary in order to develop new and better vaccines and anti-viral treatments.

Smallpox, which once killed millions, was eradicated worldwide in the late 1970s but stocks of the virus remain in laboratories in the US and Russia. The WHO initially planned to destroy those stocks almost a decade ago. Since 1998, the WHO has been steadily moving away from its promise to destroy all stocks of smallpox.

The fear that the virus could get into the wrong hands and be used as a biological weapon has led many scientists to call for further research in order to develop new vaccines and anti-virals.

The WHO's Dr Mike Ryan believes the organisation would be failing in its responsibility if it did not keep treatments up to date. "We need to be absolutely sure that we have the necessary anti-virals and the necessary vaccines that we need to fight this virus, should someone release this from another source," he said.

WHO members, reflecting fears of a release...

wo new viruses from the same family as HIV have been discovered in central Africans who hunt nonhuman primates.

Researchers say their work proves it is not unusual for potentially dangerous viruses to jump from primates to man. They say it is important to monitor disease in bushmeat hunters closely, as any virus they contract from animals may spread to the community at large. The study, led by the US Johns Hopkins University, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Far from being rare events, retroviruses are actively crossing into human populations

The new viruses identified in the latest study come from a group known as the retroviruses, which are known to cause serious illnesses in humans. They have been named Human T-lymphotropic Virus types 3 and 4 (HTLV-3 and HTLV-4). Humans have previously been infected by HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. In most cases, infection does not produce symptoms, but it can trigger neurological problems, and even leukaemia. Lead researcher Dr Nathan Wolfe said: "The emergence of HIV from primate origins has cost millions of lives.

"The discoveries of HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 show that, far from being rare events, retroviruses are actively crossing into human populations...

lobal health officials have set out new guidelines governing research on smallpox because of fears that the deadly virus could leak from laboratories or get into terrorist hands. National health authorities meeting at the UN's World Health Assembly have approved moves to tightly control research.

UN officials say this includes a ban on scientists building the virus from scratch using rapidly developing lab technology...

China has ordered nationwide emergency measures to try to stop the spread of bird flu after discovering that wild geese had been killed by the virus. Agriculture officials say the migratory birds may have brought a more virulent flu strain into China from South East Asia, Xinhua official news agency said. Tests confirmed that the geese found dead in Qinghai province had been infected with the H5N1 virus.

The virus has killed at least 53 people in South East Asia since late 2003.

China has had confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 in birds before, but no-one has yet died from avian flu on the mainland. In Hong Kong, six people died after being infected when the strain spread from wildfowl to chickens to humans in 1997.

Health experts continue to warn that any mutation of bird flu could lead to a world pandemic. An expert from the national bird flu reference laboratory, Cui Shangjin, told Xinhua that "people need not be too worried" as the controls introduced should be effective....

The WHO is to announce new research showing that the pattern of avian flu in northern Vietnam is consistent with human-to-human infection. BBC News has obtained an advance copy of the study, which urges governments to bolster public health measures. The new methods will be needed to protect against a new influenza pandemic, the WHO paper says.

It is thought that at least 92 people have caught the avian influenza virus from handling poultry since late 2003. But in a handful of cases, there is the suspicion that the virus has mutated and spread from person to person. Scientists fear this new infection could form the basis of a new world-wide flu pandemic.

In the first detailed assessment of this possibility, a WHO team says that the infection pattern in northern Vietnam may indicate that the infection is passing from one person to another.

When the infection spreads from poultry, it usually infects a small number of shoppers or meat handlers and is quickly eradicated.

Instead, in northern Vietnam, researchers say they have discovered a higher number of infection clusters, the period of infection is longer and the age range of those infected is much wider. The scientists have also found that the virus in northern Vietnam is genetically more different to a bird virus than other strains...