ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending March 25th, 2006

THE lethal strain of bird flu poses a greater challenge to the world than any infectious disease, including AIDS, and has cost 300 million farmers over $10 billion in its spread through poultry around the world, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

Scientists also are increasingly worried that the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily passed between humans, triggering a global pandemic. It already is unprecedented as an animal illness in its rapid expansion.

Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, said the WHO's Dr Margaret Chan, citing UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates of the toll on farmers.

"Concern has mounted progressively, and events in recent weeks justify that concern," Dr Chan, who is leading WHO's efforts against bird flu, told a meeting in Geneva on global efforts to prepare for the possibility of the flu mutating into a form easily transmitted among humans.

In Austria, state authorities said Monday that three cats have tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in the country's first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal other than a bird.

The cats had been living at an animal shelter where the disease already was detected in chickens, authorities said.

In Poland, a third wild swan has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, a lab announced. The swan was found dead Saturday in Torun, about 120 miles north-west of Warsaw - the same place where the first two cases were detected.

Dr Chan told over 30 experts in Geneva that the agency's top priority was to keep the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu from mutating...

Over the past few months, many of Lebanon's small poultry farmers have been forced to close down.

Demand for chicken and eggs has slumped and prices have more than halved - even though no cases of bird flu have been reported in the country. Exports to the Gulf ground to a halt and local shoppers stayed away.

All without a single case of bird flu being confirmed in the country - the problems began when Turkey reported its first case of the virus.

"We've had to pay the price of bird flu without having it," says Samir Freiji, of Freiji Agri Business.

He blames the media: "Every day you watch it on TV. Every cat that dies in China is reported. Every falcon that dies in Saudi Arabia is reported. A chicken dies in Germany, it's reported.

"So really, they are continuously reminding people of the problem."

Bekaa valley is home to many of the country's egg producers and poultry farmers. Many farms have simply shut down But scattered around the valley these days you'll find farms that were once full of poultry, and now lie empty.

Small farmers have been particularly hard hit...

Azerbaijan has reported three human deaths from bird flu. The cases, which have yet to be confirmed by the World Health Organization, would be the first such fatalities in the country.

Deputy Health Minister Abbas Velibeyov said the victims - who died earlier this month - had come from the same area, south of the capital, Baku. The deadly H5N1 strain of the virus was discovered in migratory bird flocks last month.

Reports say the three victims were members of the same family who had kept poultry at home. Azerbaijan said it made its diagnoses using WHO-approved equipment which had been imported from Egypt. Azerbaijan borders Turkey which has recorded four human deaths from bird flu.

If confirmed, the three Azeri deaths would take the WHO total for recorded human fatalities from bird flu to 101...

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was detected for the first time in poultry in Myanmar and Cameroon, officials in the two nations said, in the latest sign of the disease's expanding range in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Experts over the weekend confirmed cases in hundreds of dead chickens at a farm outside of Myanmar's second largest city, Mandalay, Than Tun, director of the country's livestock breeding and veterinary department, said Monday.

Myanmar borders Thailand and China, which together have reported 24 human deaths from the disease.

Cameroon's government announced its first avian case on Sunday, becoming the fourth African country to be struck by the deadly bird flu virus.

The fatal virus was first discovered in Africa on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria in February. It has since been reported in Niger and Egypt.

Experts have expressed concern that bird flu was likely to be spreading undetected in Africa, which is ill-prepared to deal with the virus and lacks laboratories to detect it.

Cameroon's government said the tests that confirmed the H5N1 strain were carried out in a laboratory in Paris.

Minister of Livestock Aboubakary Sarki told reporters the infected duck was among 10 birds that died in Maroua from Feb. 12-26. He said the government had already slaughtered birds in the area as a precaution, but did not say how many.

Sarki said the government had banned the sale of chicken ..

With new versions of bird flu emerging, U.S. health officials announced Monday that scientists must stir up a different vaccine recipe to try to protect people.

That's not unexpected because flu viruses - whether in birds or people - are constantly changing.

Federal health officials are merely trying "to keep right on the virus's tail and keep our vaccines as up to date as much as we can," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert.

But despite its mutations, the continent-hopping bird flu virus seems content slaying wild birds and farm chickens, causing an estimated $10 billion in global agricultural losses.

It still doesn't easily infect people. That's good news, right?

Not necessarily, said Schaffner, who suggested three possible scenarios.

The virus could continue to spread in its current forms, mostly sparing humans. It could mutate into a more harmless version, which isn't even dangerous to birds. Or it could become a deadly human flu that spreads easily around the globe with the potential to kill millions, he said.

"We cannot let our guard down, because a series of genetic changes could happen at any time that could allow this virus to pick up the capacity to move from person to person," Schaffner said...

Three cats have tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in Austria's first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal other than a bird, state authorities said Monday.

The sick cats were among 170 living at an animal shelter where the disease was detected in chickens last month, authorities said.

The World Health Organization called bird flu a greater global challenge than any previous infectious disease, costing global agriculture more than $10 billion and affecting the livelihoods of 300 million farmers.

Poland reported its first outbreak of the disease, saying Monday that laboratory tests confirmed that two wild swans had died of the lethal strain.

Dr. Margaret Chan, who is spearheading WHO's efforts against bird flu, told disease experts meeting in Geneva to discuss bird flu preparations that the organization's top priority was to keep the deadly strain from mutating into a form easily passed between humans. That could trigger a global pandemic.

Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 new countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, she said.

"We truly feel that this present threat and any other threat like it is likely to stretch our global systems to the point of collapse," said Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic alert and response.

WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said experts hope to isolate outbreaks and establish agreements allowing international health authorities to respond quickly, testing viruses and putting in place measures to contain the disease.

In Austria, all the cats from the affected shelter have been moved to a location where they will remain under observation. The shelter has been closed, Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat told reporters in Vienna.

"We have decided to put all the cats in quarantine...

As new outbreaks of bird flu have peppered Europe and Africa in the last few weeks, experts are realizing that they do not fully understand how migrating birds disseminate the H5N1 virus, leaving the continents vulnerable to unexpected outbreaks.

Just after new scientific research clarified the role of wild birds in spreading H5N1 out of its original territory in southern China, the virus promptly moved into dozens of locations in Europe and Africa, following no apparent pattern and underlining how little scientists actually know.

In fact, current knowledge of how H5N1 is spreading in Europe and Africa is so rudimentary that experts say there is absolutely no way of predicting where it will strike next - although they are now certain that it will, again and again.

"We know next to nothing about this virus; we have only anecdotal information about where it exists and what birds it infects," said Vittorio Guberti, head veterinarian at the Italian National Institute for Wildlife, who has devoted his career to studying influenza in wild birds. "We don't even know where to focus. We have to sit and wait for the big epidemic to occur, and in the meantime there will probably be small outbreaks all the time."

Scientists do not know, for example, which species are the major carriers of H5N1. While they suspect that there may be a few areas at the fringes of Europe that are perpetually infected with H5N1, they are not sure exactly where. And while they are convinced that the virus can be carried on trucks, shoes and in fertilizer, they are not sure how important that route is.

Until this year, Europe's small fraternity of wild bird researchers, like Guberti, was severely underfinanced, its warnings about bird flu unheeded. Now they are racing to fill in gaps in knowledge and answer crucial questions. "Think about this," Guberti said in his cluttered laboratory here. In March, "two million ducks from Nigeria, where there is a big problem, will arrive in Italy. And we don't know a thing about them." Outbreaks in Nigeria have occurred in commercial poultry, but there is no information about whether the disease is in wild birds. Samples from African birds have been shipped to the official United Nations laboratory in Padua, Italy, for analysis, but they are "waiting on a shelf" because the lab is overwhelmed by samples from Europe now ...