ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending February 22nd, 2006

The spread of bird flu from Asia to eastern Europe and now west Africa has increased the chance the virus will mutate and set off a pandemic, the U.N. bird flu chief said.

Dr. David Nabarro said there is no evidence yet of any change in the virus, which has killed at least 88 people since 2003.

Almost all the deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, setting off a pandemic.

"Unfortunately, we cannot tell when the mutation might happen, or where it might happen, or how unpleasant the mutant virus will turn out to be," he said in an interview. "Nevertheless, we must remain on high alert for the possibility of sustained human-to-human virus transmission and of a pandemic starting at any time."

Nabarro said the arrival of bird flu in Nigeria should be "a strong wake-up call" to all countries to ensure that their veterinary services are on alert and report any instances of birds or poultry dying, and that health services quickly identify unexpected clusters of unexpected disease that could represent the start of a pandemic.

"We have got bird flu now in southeast Asia, central Asia, eastern Europe, and west Africa," he said. "Compared with eight months ago, this is a major extension of the avian influenza epidemic."..

The deadly H5N1 bird flu strain that has killed at least 88 people around the world has been detected in Italy and Greece, according to officials.

The virus was found in swans in three Italian regions: Puglia and Calabria in southern Italy, and Sicily, Health Minister Francesco Storace told reporters on Saturday.

He did say exactly how many birds had been infected by the virus. But he said that the "most part" of 17 swans who were found dead were infected by H5N1.

"It's certain that the virus has reached Italy," The Associated Press reported Storace as saying after he briefed the Cabinet on the situation.

No human cases of infection have been reported in Italy. Greek authorities also revealed on Saturday the deadly strain of bird flu was found in northern Greece, according to television reports. On Friday, health officials in Azerbaijan say H5N1 was found in dead birds from the country's Caspian sea coast.

State-run Lider TV cited the results from a London laboratory that had tested the dead birds and the Ministry of Health is expected to make the announcement Friday.

Meanwhile, Nigerian authorities say they are mounting a major effort to battle the virus, which has been detected in two more states, and has so far killed..

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in two more Nigerian states, the Agricultural Ministry said Thursday.

The strain has been confirmed at two farms in Kano state and one in adjoining Plateau state, said Tope Ajakaiye, a ministry spokesman.

The highly pathogenic strain of avian flu, found in Nigerian chickens, is the first time the strain has been found in Africa, the World Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday.

Africa's first documented case was reported Wednesday in Nigeria's Kaduna state, bringing the total to three states. "The federal government is doing everything to contain the disease within the three centers that have been located," said Ajakaiye in a statement.

The office of President Olusegun Obasanjo also confirmed the discovery of the disease.

Alex Thiermann, special adviser to the director general of the World Organization for Animal Health -- known as OIE, the initials of its French name -- said the discovery of the disease in one part of Africa does not bode well for the rest of the continent.

"We have been saying for a while that were the disease to get to Africa, it's a continent where most countries have very weak veterinary infrastructure," he told CNN. "And we know from our experience in Eastern Europe and in Southeast Asia that the rapidity to which the disease can be fought, and how quickly we can eliminate it ... is very directly related to the quality of the veterinary ...

Facial tumours that have killed thousands of Tasmanian devils could be spread by the animals biting each other during squabbles over carcasses. The illness has been blamed for a large fall in numbers of the black, fox-sized scavengers in the past decade.

The journal Nature claims the tumours could be infectious and that the devils' well-known biting behaviour offers a plausible transmission route.

The Australian island state of Tasmania is the animals' only natural habitat.

Devil facial tumor disease (DFTDA) was first documented by a wildlife photographer in 1996. The animals have powerful jaws able to crunch through the bones of much larger animals and are known to bite each other's faces during fights and courtship behaviour.

The devils usually have a life expectancy of about five years, but it is now unusual to see an animal over the age of three. Researchers estimate the wild population has fallen from 140,000 in the 1990s to 80,000.

The lesions are grotesque and deadly to the devils A severely diseased devil is a grotesque sight: large tumours protrude from the face and neck, sometimes pushing out teeth and invading eye sockets.

As the tumours interfere with feeding, the animals become emaciated and usually die within six months of showing lesions. But while many scientists had suspected a virus, Anne-Marie Pearse, a researcher for the state of Tasmania who co-wrote the article in Nature, found abnormalities in the chromosomes of the cancer cells were the same in every tumor.

Pearse and her colleague Kate Swift discovered that, while the normal complement of chromosomes in the devil is 14, the tumours contained 13, which were grossly abnormal. These chromosomal rearrangements were identical in tumours from all 11 animals studied by the scientists.

This offers support for the idea that the disease apparently began with a single sick devil, probably in the mid-1990s...

Nearly 2,000 people in the Seychelles have been infected with an incurable mosquito-borne disease that has spread to three Indian Ocean islands prompting health alerts, officials said.

Jules Gedeon, the Seychelles director for community health, said the number of people diagnosed with "chikungunya" was steadily rising since it was first reported in November and nearly 1,000 cases had been reported in January alone.

"We are still counting, but the number is quickly approaching 1,000 for this week," Gedeon told AFP, adding the country's security forces had been drafted for a nationwide mosquito eradication drive to stall the spread.

In addition, the health ministry announced Thursday it would take legal action against people who do not take measures to control mosquito breeding on their property.

Authorities in Madagascar and the overseas French territory of Reunion, where some 45,000 new cases have been reported since mid-December, have reported outbreaks.

Last week, the French government drafted 400 extra troops to help fight the mosquitoes that have been spreading the disease across Reunion since March.

On Madagascar, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of Reunion, a health official said Thursday that two more people had shown symptoms of the disease after dozens flocked to a hospital on the eastern side of the island with similar complaints in the past two weeks.

"Two patients admitted today at Toamasina hospital they had joint pains that strongly point at chikungunya," Mosa Milasoa, an official in Madagascar's health ministry, told AFP.

"Chikungunya" is Swahili for "that which bends up" and refers to the stooped posture of those afflicted by the crippling and extremely painful disease for which there is no known vaccine or cure.

It is characterized by high fever and severe rashes, and while non-fatal in itself and most people eventually recover, it can provide opportunities for other diseases to set in...

Athens fell because a plague swept the empire. But scientists have debated what illness was responsible. A new DNA analysis of teeth from an ancient Greek burial pit indicates typhoid fever caused the epidemic.

The plague began in Ethiopia and passed through Egypt and Libya to Greece in 430-426 B.C. It changed the balance of power between Athens and Sparta, ending the Golden Age of Pericles and Athenian dominance in the ancient world.

An estimated one-third of Athenians died, including Pericles, their leader.

Knowledge of the epidemic had come largely from an account by the Greek historian Thucydides, who was taken ill with the plague but recovered. Despite Thucydides description, researchers could only narrow the possibilities down to a range that included the bubonic plague, smallpox, anthrax and measles.

The new study, led by Manolis Papagrigorakis of the University of Athens, found DNA sequences similar to those of the modern day Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the organism that causes typhoid fever. The work is detailed online by the International Journal of Infectious Diseases... P