Flu
Experts call for creating US bird flu czar
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The United States needs a top official, backed by authority and cash, to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic, experts said on Wednesday.
But the United States, and most other countries, are so badly behind in preparing for disease outbreaks in general that it will take years to catch up, they told a briefing of Congressional staffers.
EU finds no bird flu in Romania
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Bird flu has not been detected in Romania, European Union veterinary experts said on Wednesday, confirming that the highly contagious disease has not yet reached Europe.
“The disease situation amongst poultry and wild birds ... the available epidemiological data and the laboratory results at present do not confirm the presence of avian influenza,” the European Commission said in a statement after a meeting of EU member state vets.
EU hopeful no bird flu in Romania, testing Turkey
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The European Commission is hopeful there is no outbreak of highly contagious avian influenza in Romania, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
“All the virological tests carried out to date in Romania have failed to identify the presence of the avian influenza virus,” Commission spokesman Philip Tod told reporters.
Indonesia seeks Vietnam advice on fighting bird flu
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Indonesia will study how Vietnam managed to contain an outbreak of bird flu in humans, Jakarta’s health minister said on Tuesday as the number of positive cases of the deadly virus in the country rose to five.
“They have limited resources like us but they were able to properly halt avian influenza,” Siti Fadillah Supari told Reuters after meeting her Vietnamese counterpart, Tran Thi Trung Chien.
U.S. urges urgent preparations for flu pandemic
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Governments have to work harder and faster to prepare for an inevitable bird flu pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Monday as he began a tour of Southeast Asian nations hit by the virus.
“Three times in this century we have experienced pandemic influenza and they will come again. We must be ready,” Leavitt told Thai and U.S. health officials in Bangkok.
Web sales of bird flu drug spark counterfeit fears
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Swiss drug maker Roche urged consumers on Friday not to buy its flu drug Tamiflu over the Internet to avoid the risk of purchasing potentially counterfeit pills as they build stockpiles in case of a bird flu pandemic.
With experts predicting that millions could die if the bird flu strain H5N1 mutates into a human flu virus, some consumers appear to be building up their own reserves of the drug, doubling up on governments’ efforts to prepare for a pandemic.
Why Spanish flu was so lethal
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By American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Spanish flu virus is more closely related to avian flu viruses than other human flu viruses. In order to learn which components of the virus would be the best targets for such therapies, Terrence Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his colleagues revisited the 1918 Spanish flu virus.
Their results may also provide a benchmark for measuring the potential virulence of future flu strains as they emerge.
India is in state of pre-preparedness for bird flu
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By Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India, The Government of India is seized of the WHO Report on Bird flu, warning India and other South Asian countries of infection to humans, which could take a heavy toll. Reacting to the WHO report, the Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss said, the Centre is aware of the situation and has already been taking pre-cautionary measures to check the spread of the disease. He said that despite the WHO warning, which does not speak of immediate danger of infection, there should be no cause for alarm. So far, there has been no human to human transmission of the virus and as long as it remains restricted to bird to human transmission, we are safe, he said.
Flu Research Clarifies Secrets of Past Pandemics
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As President Bush considers committing the armed forces to help fight a flu pandemic, researchers have reported major strides in understanding why past pandemics happened, how a new one could happen, and what might be done about it.
In a Rose Garden news conference, Bush suggested that the military could be used to enforce quarantines in the event of an avian flu pandemic.
Spanish Flu pandemic arose from bird flu virus
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The influenza virus that caused the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic was probably a highly virulent, entirely bird-flu type that adapted to humans, scientists have shown.
The periodic occurrence of flu pandemics has raised concerns that a new pandemic may be in the offing, possibly with a strain as aggressive as the one that caused 50 million deaths in 1918.
Flu shot clinics seek ill, elderly
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As the flu season officially begins, health officials are asking residents to wait a few weeks for their shots so that those in high-risk categories can get inoculated first.
The Ann Arbor-based Michigan Visiting Nurses will offer flu vaccination clinics beginning Monday in Washtenaw and Livingston counties. Health departments in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties have received some vaccine and more is on the way, but the departments won’t be operating clinics until at least mid-October.
WHO backs away from 150 million flu deaths
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The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that 2-7.4 million deaths was a reasonable working forecast for a global influenza pandemic - distancing itself from a top U.N. official’s figure of up to 150 million.
Dr. David Nabarro, named on Thursday as the U.N. coordinator for global readiness against an outbreak, had said that the world response would determine whether a flu virus ends up killing 5 million or as many as 150 million.
China sets blueprint for fighting flu pandemic
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China announced colour-coded emergency measures on Wednesday to avert or handle an influenza pandemic amid fears that a deadly strain of bird flu could mutate and infect millions of people around the world.
Millions of Chinese catch flu every winter, while avian influenza, including the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed 65 people in Asia, is believed endemic among the country’s bird population.
Singapore scientists invent quick bird flu test
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Scientists in Singapore said on Tuesday they have developed a test kit that can detect bird flu infections in poultry within four hours - a tool that could help health officials control the spread of the deadly virus.
In the absence of a vaccine, early identification of the virus is especially important, and current tests used by laboratories take two to three days and sometimes up to a week.
Top bird flu scientist warns against antiviral abuse
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A top scientist warned on Thursday against misusing oseltamivir, the antiviral drug that governments are stockpiling to fight a possible human pandemic caused by the H5N1 bird flu, saying that could lead to resistance.
The warning from microbiologist Yi Guan, from the University of Hong Kong, comes after The Lancet medical journal published two research papers that showed resistance to anti-flu drugs had risen by 12 percent worldwide in the past decade.
