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Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending January 30th, 2006

Turkish authorities are doing further tests to determine whether a girl of 12 is the fourth victim of bird flu. Fatma Ozcan died in hospital in the eastern city of Van on Sunday. Although preliminary tests for bird flu were negative, doctors want confirmation. Fatma's brother, who is in hospital, became the 19th person to be confirmed with the H5N1 virus. All came after contact with infected birds.

More than 70 people, most in Asia, have died since the outbreak began in 2003. The disease reached Turkey in recent months. Many parts of the country have now been affected.

Fatma Ozcan died at 1350 (1150 GMT), authorities in the Van hospital said. She became ill 10 days ago after slaughtering a sick chicken. Her five-year-old brother, Mohammed, also became infected. A doctor treating him told the BBC he is not on a respirator, and his condition is stable.

The two children are from Dogubeyazit, the remote, rural town where three siblings have already died of bird flu. Doctors believe Fatma's initial negative test may have been due to a poor quality sample, says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul.

At least 20 other patients are still being treated for suspected bird flu in Van.

A mass cull of poultry is underway in almost one third of all provinces to try to stop the virus spreading any further. A national awareness campaign has also been launched to warn people of the danger...

An annual census of wolves at Yellowstone National Park has found a precipitous drop in the population. But park biologists, who suspect a deadly disease, canine parvovirus, say they will let nature take its course.

"Parvo can be vaccinated for and can be treated, but we wouldn't do it because we couldn't catch every animal," Daniel Stahler, a park wolf biologist, said. "And this allows them to build up a natural resistance."

The census found 22 pups, compared with 69 last year. The total count of wolves dropped to 118 from 171, the lowest since 2000. Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone 11 years ago.

"It was somewhat devastating to have such poor pup survival," Mr. Stahler said. "But research shows that young pups can bounce back from it quite successfully."

Scientists will take blood samples from surviving pups in the next several weeks to test for the presence of antibodies to confirm exposure to canine parvovirus, which causes death by severe diarrhea and dehydration.

That pups have suffered the brunt of the decline seems to suggest the culprit is parvo, said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service here. Nursing pups receive immunity from their mother's milk, but the immunity drops when nursing stops...

The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed.

A whopping 91 percent of virus samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this flu season proved resistant to rimantadine and amantadine, a huge increase since last year, when only 11 percent were.

The discovery adds to worries about how to fight bird flu should it start spreading among people. Health officials had hoped to conserve use of two newer antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, because they show activity against bird flu, unlike the older drugs.

Now, because of the resistance issue, the newer drugs are being recommended for ordinary flu, increasing the chances that resistance will develop more rapidly to them, too, as they become more commonly used.

The newer drugs work against Type A and B influenza strains; the older ones work only against Type A, but cost less and are available in generic form.

CDC officials took the unusual step of calling a Saturday news conference to announce that the predominant strain this season - the type A H3N2 influenza strain - was resistant to the older drugs.

"Clinicians should not use rimantadine and amantadine ... because the drugs will not be effective," said CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

She said the lab tests, which CDC scientists had been analyzing since Friday, surprised health officials and the health agency rushed to get the word out...

Five new human cases of bird flu have been confirmed in several Turkish provinces, pushing the number of people infected up to 14, officials say. The cases, identified as being of the deadly H5N1 strain, mean the virus is now present in the east, north and centre of the country.

At least two Turkish children have died, and correspondents say fear is spreading rapidly across the country. Health experts say there is no sign the virus is passing from human to human.

The two siblings confirmed to have died of bird flu in the eastern town of Dogubeyazit, in the province of Van, had close contact with poultry.

Tests are still being carried out on their 11-year-old sister, who also died, to see if she was also infected with H5N1. Their brother, the sole surviving sibling of the family, was released from hospital on Monday. Tests indicated six-year-old Ali Hasan Kocyigit did not have the virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed only two cases of H5N1 through its own laboratory tests in the UK, but says it considers the Turkish results reliable.

"We're certainly considering these 14 as cases and are treating them as such," the WHO's Christine McNab told the BBC News website...

Britain could see a dramatic increase in food poisoning cases and waterborne disease as the warmer, wetter weather linked to climate change takes hold. Hotter summers could lead to more salmonella cases as people opt for more barbecues but leave food out of the fridge, Professor Paul Hunter warned. Heavy rain may also lead to more cases of diarrhoea-inducing cryptosporidium.

The University of East Anglia expert said Britain may also see some malaria cases - but is likely to cope.

There's an interesting area around climate that's how is it going to impact on human behaviour - people have more barbecues when it's hot This is because unlike most areas of the world badly affected by the disease, Britain has a public health system which could tackle any outbreaks, he said.

Professor Hunter said: "It's fairly accepted that most of the changes are going to be around hotter summers and more frequency heavy rainfall. "We already know that food poisoning is related to temperature. This is because if you leave food outside the fridge at warm temperatures germs grow."

If people did not change their behaviour, and continued to leave food out at the hotter "ambient temperatures", food poisoning was likely to cases were likely to increase, he said. "There's an interesting area around climate that's how is it going to impact on human behaviour - people have more barbecues when it's hot." Poorly cooked meat on home barbecues has long been associated with food poisoning.

Professor Hunter also warned that heavy downpours could lead to an increase in outbreaks of the water-borne bug cryptosporidium which causes diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach cramps.

This was especially likely in the "periphery of water supply", such as in farms and holiday cottages, where water facilities were not supplied from the main network," he said. "There's still an unbelievably high proportion of people that drink private water supplies...

Health officials in Europe said they were on "high alert" Friday as a third child in eastern Turkey was confirmed to have bird flu and more than two dozen people suspected of having the disease were in a local hospital, an unusual cluster of human cases that raises the possibility that the H5N1 bird virus has become more contagious to human beings.

The officials have watched with concern over the last four months as the virus's path has moved steadily from East Asia to the edge of Europe, first in birds and now, in humans. An international reference lab in England confirmed for the first time Friday that at least three children in the Turkish cluster had the H5N1 virus, and further testing was under way. "I'm not sure we've seen a cluster like this in terms of numbers and certainly it's a concern," said Maria Cheng, spokeswoman in the Division of Epidemic Preparedness at the World Health Organization. "Is the virus being transmitted more easily from birds to humans, or even from humans to humans? We need to put all the pieces together before we can come to conclusions."

For the moment, international health authorities believe that the Turkish victims - the first victims outside of East Asia - most likely became ill after close contact with sick or dead chickens, infected with H5N1. Reports in the Turkish press said that two siblings who died, Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, 14, and his sister Fatma, 15, had been playing catch with the heads of dead chickens. While the H5N1 virus does not now readily infect humans or pass between them, scientists are worried that it might acquire that ability through naturally occurring processes, setting off a worldwide flu epidemic.

Still, the WHO and the European Commission were alarmed enough to dispatch teams of scientists to eastern Turkey..

Residents of the eastern Turkish town hit by a fatal outbreak of bird flu in humans have besieged a local hospital seeking treatment for symptoms. Three children from Dogubeyazit have died this week, at least two of them from the virulent H5N1 strain.

Despite no evidence that the disease has begun to spread between humans, locals have sought treatment at a poorly-equipped hospital in the town. Turkey will speed up a poultry cull this weekend to contain the virus.

The World Health Organisation has attempted to play down fears of the disease, as Turkish officials sought to defend themselves from accusations they were slow to act. A WHO spokeswoman in Geneva said the bird flu outbreak had been contained in one Turkish province and there was "no need for excessive panic". Twenty people remain in hospital in Van, a larger city in eastern Turkey, under treatment for suspected bird flu.

Tests carried out in a UK laboratory confirmed that Mehmet Ali and Fatma died from the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 70 in south-east Asia and China.

The children's family kept poultry at their home in Dogubeyazit, close to the Iranian border in Van province.

All four children developed symptoms including a high fever, coughing and bleeding in the throat. Doctors said they had been playing with the heads of chickens who had died of bird flu...