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An avian flu pandemic could kill millions
Barack Obama and Richard Lugar The New York Times
WASHINGTON When we think of major threats, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat is lurking, one from nature, not humans - an avian flu pandemic. An outbreak could cause millions of deaths and threaten the security of governments around the world.
This year, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the possibility of avian flu spreading from Southeast Asia (its likely place of origin) "a very ominous situation for the globe." A killer flu could spread around the world in days, crippling economies. From a public health standpoint, Gerberding said, an avian flu outbreak is "the most important threat that we are facing."
International health experts say that two of the three conditions for an avian flu pandemic in Southeast Asia have already been met. First, a new strain of the virus, called A(H5N1), has emerged, and humans have little or no immunity to it. Second, this strain can jump between species. The only remaining obstacle is that A(H5N1) has not yet mutated into a form that is easily transmitted from human to human.
However, there have been some alarming developments. In recent months, the virus has been detected in mammals that have never previously been infected, including tigers, leopards and domestic cats. This suggests that the virus is mutating and could eventually emerge in a form that is readily transmittable among humans, leading to a full-blown pandemic. In fact, according to government officials, a few cases of human-to-human spread of A(H5N1) have already occurred.
The precedent that experts fear is the 1918 flu pandemic, which began in the American Midwest and swept the planet in the era before air travel, killing 20 million to 40 million people.
At the moment, effective responses to an avian flu pandemic are limited and would come far too late for many people in Southeast Asia; so far more than 60 percent of those diagnosed with avian flu have died. There is no proven vaccine for the A(H5N1) strain and it could take months to produce a fully effective one. Some antiviral treatments may help flu sufferers, but they are not widely available and must be administered within 24 hours after the onset of symptoms.
It is essential for the international community, led by the United States, to take decisive action to prevent a pandemic.
So what should we do? Recently, the World Health Organization called for more money and attention to be devoted to effective preventive action, appealing for $100 million.
The U.S. Congress responded promptly. A bipartisan group of senators obtained $25 million for prevention efforts (a quarter of the request, the traditional contribution of the United States), allowing U.S. agencies to improve their ability to act.
In addition, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved legislation directing President George W. Bush to form a senior-level task force to put in place an international strategy to deal with the avian flu. We urge the Bush administration to form this task force immediately, without waiting for legislation to be passed.
But these are only modest first steps. International health experts believe that Southeast Asia will be an epicenter of influenza for decades. We recommend that the Bush administration work with Congress, public health officials, the pharmaceutical industry, foreign governments and international organizations to create a permanent framework for curtailing the spread of future infectious diseases.
Among the parts of that framework could be these:
Increasing international disease surveillance, response capacity and public education and coordination, especially in Southeast Asia.
Stockpiling enough antiviral doses to cover high-risk populations and essential workers.
Accelerating research into avian flu vaccines and antiviral drugs.
Establishing incentives to encourage nations to report flu outbreaks quickly and fully.
In an age when you can board planes in Bangkok or Hong Kong and arrive in Chicago, Indianapolis or New York in hours, everyone must face the reality that these exotic killer diseases are not isolated health problems half a world away, but direct and immediate threats to security and prosperity.
June 11, 2005
New Asian Flu Outbreaks in China Raise Fears of a Mutant Virus
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Two reported new outbreaks of avian flu among birds in western China have raised fears that the virus is being spread widely by migrating birds and mutating rapidly.
The regional director for the World Health Organization, Dr. Shigeru Omi, told reporters in Beijing yesterday that the two recent outbreaks in remote areas in which hundreds of birds died were worrisome because they involved migratory waterfowl and domestic geese, birds that until now had been fairly resistant to the disease.
More than 13,000 geese were destroyed in Tacheng, in the Xinjiang autonomous region, after about 500 died of H5N1 avian flu, China's Agriculture Ministry reported.
Poultry markets were closed and roadblocks set up in the area, the official Xinhua news agency said.
In late May, the government reported that hundreds of bar-headed geese, gulls, ducks and cormorants had been found dead on an island in a salt lake in the Qinghai region that lies on an important migratory route.
Previously, the H5N1 flu had been lethal to domestic chicken flocks, but veterinary officials had believed that geese and wild birds carried the disease without dying of it.
"The best thing I can say is to keep our vigilance high," Reuters quoted Dr. Omi as saying.
For the last two weeks, rumors circulated on some Web sites tracking infectious diseases that more than 120 people, including six tourists, had died of avian flu in Qinghai, and that hundreds had been quarantined.
However, they all proved traceable to a site run by antigovernment dissidents, which said it could not verify information members had posted anonymously. Pictures on the site purporting to show hundreds of dead birds were grainy, and allegations that the site's "reporters" had been arrested were unconfirmed.
"We're now more skeptical of the sourcing than we were," said Bruce Klinger, an analyst for the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm that drew attention to the reports and then contacted American diplomats in China in an effort to confirm them.
A government spokesman said there had been no human deaths there, and The Associated Press reported that the health minister had given the W.H.O. officials permission to visit the sites of the reported bird deaths.
As of Wednesday, according to the W.H.O., there were 54 known deaths from avian flu in the world, all in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.
World Not Set To Deal With Flu
Strategy for Pandemic Needed, Experts Say
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 31, 2005; A01
Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.
Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.
If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent.
Theoretically, antiviral drugs could slow an outbreak and buy time. The problem is only one licensed drug, oseltamivir, appears to work against bird flu. At the moment, there is not enough stockpiled for widespread use. Nor is there a plan to deploy the small amount that exists in ways that would have the best chance of slowing the disease.
The public, conditioned to believe in the power of modern medicine, has heard little of how poorly prepared the world is to confront a flu pandemic, which is an epidemic that strikes several continents simultaneously and infects a substantial portion of the population.
Since the current wave of avian flu began sweeping through poultry in Southeast Asia more than 18 months ago, international and U.S. health authorities have been warning of the danger and trying to mobilize. Research on vaccines has accelerated, efforts to build up drug supplies are underway, and discussions take place regularly on developing a coordinated global response.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will spend $419 million in pandemic planning this year. The National Institutes of Health's influenza research budget has quintupled in the past five years.
"The secretary or the chief of staff -- we have a discussion about flu almost every day," said Bruce Gellin, head of HHS's National Vaccine Program Office. This week, a committee is scheduled to deliver to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt an updated plan for confronting a pandemic.
Despite these efforts, the world's lack of readiness to meet the threat is huge, experts say...
Russia bird flu could spread to EU - vet official
By Aleksandras Budrys2 hours, 1 minute ago
A strain of bird flu dangerous to humans could spread to parts of the European Union from Siberia, a senior Russian veterinary official warned on Monday.
Chances were "very high" the strain found in the Novosibirsk region could spread to other parts of Siberia, the official from the Russian Veterinary and Phytosanitary Inspection Service told Reuters.
"There is also a possibility that bird flu could spread to the European Union as (infected) wild birds from China may have been in contact in Russia with birds that will fly on to the Netherlands, France and elsewhere," the official said.
"North America is not safe either, as some birds from Russia fly there, too," said the official who did not wish to be named.
The official said it had been confirmed on Friday that birds in the Novosibirsk region were infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is dangerous to humans, and not with H5N2, as had previously been believed.
Bird flu is split in strains such as H5 and H7, which in turn have nine different subtypes. H5N1 subtype is highly pathogenic and can be passed from birds to humans, although there have been no known cases of human to human transmission.
More than 50 people have died in Asia from H5N1 since late 2003, raising fears it could mutate and form the basis of a global epidemic...
Russia says bird flu may spread to Europe
By Maria Golovnina 4 minutes ago
Russia, which is scrambling to contain a bird flu outbreak in Siberia, warned the world on Monday that migrating birds may export the deadly virus to Europe and the Middle East in coming months.
The outbreak, previously confined to five remote areas of Siberia, appeared to be moving westward on Monday after the virus hit a major industrial region -- Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountains which sever Asia from Europe.
And officials said the virus, which can kill humans, was likely to spread further.
"Apart from Russia's south, migrating birds may spread the virus to nearby countries (Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Mediterranean countries) because bird migration routes from Siberia also go through those regions in autumn," said Russia's top state epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko.
Russia has been battling bird flu since mid-July. On Monday, officials condoned off roads near infected villages and killed hundreds of birds to contain the epidemic which has also hit neighboring Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
It was unclear whether the virus found in Chelyabinsk was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003.
Carried by flocks of wild birds migrating from Siberia to warmer regions, the virus has been steadily moving westward through Siberia's Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai.
Addressing regional health officials in a letter, Onishchenko said the disease could also hit Russia's major agricultural regions of Krasnodar, Stavropol and Rostov.
"The most likely cause of infection in the Siberian and Ural federal regions is the migration of birds from Southeast Asia and their contacts with domestic birds," stated the letter posted on the Web site of the state's consumer rights watchdog.
While listing a number of recommendations aimed at preventing humans from getting infected, he said bird migration in spring 2006 could further spread the virus in European Russia and bring more fowl viruses to Siberia from Southeast Asia.
FROM ASIA TO EUROPE
Although no people have so far been infected in Russia and Kazakhstan, there are fears the disease could spread to humans on the Eurasian landmass, possibly unleashing a global influenza pandemic.
Chelyabinsk, separated from European Russia by the Ural mountains and technically still in Siberia, is the westernmost region to have been struck so far.
It lies about 1,000 km (600 miles) both from Moscow and the region where the first flu outbreak was reported.
"All ill and infected birds are being slaughtered there," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
Media reported that roads leading to the infected village of Oktyabrskoye in Chelyabinsk had been cordoned off to prevent the virus from spreading further.
In other affected regions, police boosted road checks, and 400 domestic birds were culled in Chelyabinsk alone to block the virus that has killed more than 10,000 birds countrywide.
There was no word on Monday on the situation in Kazakhstan and Mongolia where bird flu has also been registered along their sprawling borders with Russian Siberia.
Six Indonesians dead from bird flu
Government orders medicine stockpile; Australia pledges support
Monday, September 26, 2005; Posted: 3:26 a.m. EDT (07:26 GMT)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia's death toll from bird flu has risen to six and the government has ordered more than a half-million tablets of anti-viral medicine to fight the disease, the Health Ministry announced Monday.
Six people have died and 10 others have been confirmed with the virus -- though some of them have not shown any of its usual flu-like symptoms, said I Nyoman Kandun, director general of Communicable Disease Control at the Health Ministry.
He said that 34 people have been hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu, or H5N1 virus, across the country.
The virus killed more than 44,000 birds in an outbreak first detected on December 17, the OIE said, citing a report from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. The rest of the 663,500 birds on the farm were slaughtered, it said in the report. It did not specify the type of birds that were infected.
Veterinary workers give a lethal injection to chickens at a farm affected by bird flu in Russia
It is the first outbreak of the H5N2 strain in Russia this year, but the country has been facing regular outbreaks of H5N8 since early December last year, with the last one reported to the OIE detected late November.
Bird flu has led to the deaths or culling of more than 2.6 million birds on farms between December last year and November this year, a report posted on the OIE website showed. Neither the H5N2 or H5N8 strains has been found in humans. The virulence of highly pathogenic bird flu viruses has prompted countries to bar poultry imports from infected countries in earlier outbreaks.
Russia Reports Virulent H5N2 Bird Flu at 660,000-bird Farm
Republicans say vaccines cause autism.I've been following this too, not a good scenario, sure hope some of the vaccines they are working on pan out!
