ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending August 20th, 2005

Significant numbers of chickens on sale in UK shops are contaminated with superbugs, a scientific survey commissioned by BBC One's Real Story suggests.

Of the British-grown chickens analysed, over half were contaminated with multi-drug resistant E.coli which is immune to the effects of three or more antibiotics.

More than a third of the 147 samples, which included overseas and UK produced chicken, had E.coli germs resistant to the important antibiotic Trimethoprim which is used to treat bladder infections.

The Health Protection Agency scientists testing the meat also found 12 chickens had antibiotic resistant Campylobacter.

And VRE, or Vancomycin Resistant Enteroccci, were in 1 in 25 of the samples, although more tests would be needed to confirm the exact type of the bug found. No organic chickens were used - 64 were from the UK and 83 from abroad.

The survey's results could partly explain a rise in the number of women whose bladder infections did not respond to standard treatments, a medical expert told the programme...

A bird flu outbreak extended its reach in Russian Siberia and spread to Mongolia on Wednesday, and neighboring Kazakhstan confirmed a fowl virus found in the Central Asian state could kill humans.

Officials said no people had been infected so far, but the highly potent H5N1 strain has killed over 50 people in Asia since 2003. Outbreaks in the ex-Soviet bloc raised fears the virus could infect humans and trigger a global epidemic.

In Siberia's Novosibirsk region, officials found the virus in another village, Novorozino, taking the total number of infected areas there to 14, Interfax news agency reported.

"Domestic birds in that village will be ... killed," Interfax quoted a regional administration official as saying. About 35,000 birds have been killed in the Novosibirsk region to prevent the deadly virus from spreading further.

The total number of bird deaths since the epidemic hit Siberia in mid-July rose to 8,347 on Wednesday, the Emergencies Ministry said. The number on Tuesday was just over 5,580.

"There have been no cases of people getting ill," the ministry said in a note.

In Kazakhstan, which shares a long border with Siberia, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed that the virus found in birds was the deadly H5N1 strain...

Rapid quarantines, travel restrictions and plenty of medicine quickly distributed could prevent millions of deaths in a bird flu outbreak in Southeast Asia, public health scientists said in a pair of studies examining the threat.

Such an emergency plan would have to be enacted within two days and the spread of the virus limited to a few dozen cases - a challenge for an area where communications are often rudimentary and entire economies and transportation networks could be disrupted.

"Containment is challenging," said Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in London and lead author of one of the two studies examining avian flu control measures. "We just can't cherry-pick the more easily implemented solutions."

Once the virus spreads to mobile, urban nations like the United States or Great Britain, "chances of stamping out the pandemic are poor," he said in a news conference Wednesday.

Health officials who did not participate in the studies said governments and agencies are actively planning for a bird flu outbreak. Several wealthier nations are stockpiling millions of doses of antiviral drugs like oseltamivir, which is known commercially as Tamiflu. But many poor countries likely to be initially affected cannot afford the medicine without international aid.

Before a stockpile can be used effectively, disease surveillance and early reporting ...

Vietnamese authorities are vaccinating three million birds in a southern province, officials said, as nationwide efforts got underway to contain bird flu which has killed 41 people in the country.

The trial vaccination started Saturday in Tien Giang province in the heart of the fertile Mekong Delta, where large-scale poultry farming abounds.

"On the first day, some 5,000 chickens that were at least eight days old were vaccinated against the H5N2 virus and some 2,000 ducks that were at least 15 days old were vaccinated against the H5N1 virus," said Cao Van Hoa, deputy director of the provincial agriculture service.

Some 90,000 birds in one commune of the province will be vaccinated in the first week of the campaign, he told AFP.

However, "we have only received 2.3 million doses (of the three million needed in the initial effort) of the vaccine so far," he said.

Two more communes in Tien Giang will also be covered in the massive campaign ultimately accounting for some 80 percent of the province's poultry. A northern province, Nam Dinh, will begin its trial vaccinations on Thursday.

"On the first day, some 5,000 chickens that were at least eight days old were vaccinated against the H5N2 virus and some 2,000 ducks that were at least 15 days old were vaccinated against the H5N1 virus," said Cao Van Hoa, deputy director of the provincial agriculture service...

Flu viruses can swap many genes rapidly to make new resistant strains, US researchers have found. Scientists previously believed that gene swapping progressed gradually from season to season. The National Institutes of Health team found instead, influenza A exchanged several genes at once, causing sudden and major changes to the virus. The findings in PLOS Biology suggest strains could vary widely each season, making it potentially harder to treat.

They also increase concerns about bird flu mutating to spread readily between humans. Each year, experts must predict which strains will be most common and design new vaccines to fight them.

Dr David Lipman and colleagues looked at strains of influenza A that had circulated between 1999 and 2004 in New York. This research confirms the genetic diversity of influenza viruses and underscores potential for reassortment These strains had given rise to the so-called Fujian strain H3N2 that caused a troublesome outbreak in the 2003-2004 flu season because the vaccine made that winter was a poor match for the virus.

Dr Lipman's team found wide variations in the 156 strains that they analysed. Some of the strains had at least four gene swaps that had occurred in a short time period. "The genetic diversity of influenza A virus is therefore not as restricted as previously suggested," said the researchers...

Investigators have determined that a strain of bird flu virus infecting fowl in Russia is the type that can infect humans, the Agriculture Ministry said Friday. The virus caused the deaths of hundreds of birds in a section of Siberia this month, but no human infections have been reported. In a brief statement, the ministry identified the virus as avian flu type A H5N1.

"That raises the need for undertaking quarantine measures of the widest scope," the statement said. Ministry officials could not immediately be reached for elaboration. Strains of bird flu have been hitting flocks throughout Asia and some fatal human cases have been reported there.

Since 2003, bird flu has killed at least 57 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, which reported its first three human deaths this month. The outbreak in Russia's Novosibirsk region apparently started about two weeks ago when large numbers of chicken, geese, ducks and turkeys began dying. Officials say that all dead or infected birds were incinerated. But it is unclear whether that would effectively stop the virus from spreading.

Earlier this week, Russia's chief government epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said the virus' appearance in Russia could be due to migrating birds that rest on the Siberian region's lakes. A recent report released by the journal Science said the finding of the H5N1 infection in migrant birds at Qinghai Lake in western China "indicates that this virus has the potential to be a global threat."..