Open Letter Regarding Avian Flu and Prevention

[Annie]

http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/000481.html

October 14, 2005
An Open Letter to President Bush

Dear Mr. President:

Like many Americans I'm deeply concerned about the risk of Avian flu. News about our nation's preparedness has not been reassuring.

The only drug that is thought to have any impact on the disease once contracted is Tamiflu. Senator Frisk recently wrote that we have "about 2 percent of what we would need in a serious outbreak." The United States currently has only 2.3 million Tamiflu doses.

Though this drug was developed in the United States by Gilead Sciences, an exclusive license was granted to the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche to manufacture the drug. Unfortunately, Roche lacks the capacity to manufacture enough of the drug to combat a pandemic. Nations are literally waiting in line - with the United States standing behind much of the rest of the developed world.

I was glad to hear that Roche plans to open a plant in the United States to produce the drug. But that plant will not be in production until late next year. Hopefully that will be soon enough. But many experts believe that a pandemic could be only months or even weeks away.

Columnist Nick Schulz has argued that you should:

...order the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track approval of... established plants in the United States for manufacturing the ingredients of Tamiflu...

[And] encourage Roche to initiate a technology transfer to manufacturers in the US to ramp-up development.

You, Mr. President, have stated that potentially 1.9 million Americans could die. Considering this risk, Mr. Schulz doesn't go far enough.

We should start making the drug now.

Whatever the legal obstacles, we should begin. Yesterday the Indian drug company Cipla announced they are going to do exactly that. They will make the drug now and fight the civil battle with Roche later. It is the right thing for India.

It is important to our economy that America leads the world in respect for intellectual property. Therefore, efforts should be made to secure permission from Roche. But, if permission is not forthcoming, we should make the drug anyway and compensate Roche later. This is a matter of national security.

The entire world would be served by this move. If American is meeting it's own demand, Roche's manufacturing capacity could be diverted to other countries that are unable to make this drug.

I thank you for taking the Avian Flu threat seriously. Please consider taking this additional step to protect our country.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Stephen T. Gordon

 

[nosarcasm]

http://de.news.yahoo.com/051014/286/4q5pl.html

Vogelgrippe-Virus mit Resistenz gegen Medikament Tamiflu aufgetaucht

Paris (AFP) - In Vietnam ist ein Vogelgrippe-Virus vom besonders gefährlichen Typ H5N1 aufgetaucht, das gegen den üblichen Wirkstoff Tamiflu resistent ist. Wie das Wissenschaftsmagazin "Nature" am Freitag mitteilte, wurde das Virus bei einem 14-jährigen Mädchen festgestellt

Avian flu-virus with resistance toward medication Tamiflu emerged
Paris (AFP) In Vietnam the avian flu virus Type H5n1 that is extremly
dangerous has emerged that is resistent against the active ingridient
Tamiflu. The Science magazine "Nature" published that on Friday.
The Virus was detected in a 14 year old girl.

 

[no1tovote4]

This still doesn't pass from person to person. While it is likely to in the future it is unlikely it will be in the same form it is now by the time it does. This is simple scare tactics, I don't know why they are doing this.

 

[Annie]

This still doesn't pass from person to person. While it is likely to in the future it is unlikely it will be in the same form it is now by the time it does. This is simple scare tactics, I don't know why they are doing this.

I think this says what you were going for, but perhaps with the needed warning. Links at site:

http://instapundit.com/archives/026195.php

October 15, 2005

DEREK LOWE LOOKS AT ANTIVIRALS AND AVIAN FLU EXCITEMENT:

The prospect of a flu pandemic has changed things, but the problem is, it's too soon to say if people are now being more realistic or just more hysterical. In the last few weeks, though, I think things have tipped toward the latter. Avian flu, if it crossed over into some highly infectious human form, could be very bad news. But we're not seeing that happen (yet) with the current bird flu. It's worth remembering that flu viruses of this type have already crossed over into humans in recent years without taking off around the world. That doesn't mean that it can't happen, but it does mean that it's not inevitable.

So, no one knows how likely a pandemic is, when it might occur, and how it might behave. It's prudent to take a look at marginal compounds like peramivir, whose possible use against avian flu was being spoken about years ago. But it's not prudent to buy, or urge others to buy Biocryst's stock after it's already tripled in price.

It's important to prepare, since some other sort of pandemic is fairly likely even if Avian Flu never materializes as a threat. But don't panic. Yet, anyway.
posted at 09:16 AM by Glenn Reynolds

 

[Annie]

I think the media starting to focus on this has been a good thing:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051022...SuTvyIi;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

By Susan Fenton Sat Oct 22,12:20 PM ET

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China will close its borders if it finds a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu there, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Saturday, while a defiant Taiwan said it would copy a patented antiviral drug.
ADVERTISEMENT

Saving lives would be Beijing's top priority in efforts to contain a possible outbreak of bird flu, even if it meant slowing the economy, Huang Jiefu, a vice minister of health, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

The
World Bank said while prevention measures would cost a lot, the economic damage from a pandemic would be far worse.

Huang told health officials from China, Hong Kong and Macau on Friday that any suspected human case would be quarantined.

The
World Health Organization has said the deadly H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia, and it may only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.

China's sheer size and its attempts to conceal the
SARS epidemic in 2003 have prompted fears among some experts that it has had more bird flu cases than officially recorded.

Since breaking out in late 2003 in
South Korea, the deadly H5N1 strain of influenza has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.

Russian authorities said they had uncovered more cases of bird flu in the Urals and were investigating a suspected outbreak in the Altai region close to the Kazakh border.

NEW CASES

On Friday, new cases were reported in Britain, Romania and Croatia, but there was no immediate indication it was H5N1.

Croatian authorities started culling on Saturday all poultry around a fish pond where the country's first bird flu case was confirmed and police sealed off the area.

The officials said 10,000 birds in about 1,000 rural households will be killed in the next few days.

Samples were sent to Britain to determine if it was H5N1 which has been found in Romania, which shares the Danube waterway with Croatia, and in Turkey.

Bosnia banned the import of poultry from neighboring Croatia and also forbade the transport of wild fowl and poultry and the slaughter and sale of poultry in outdoor markets.

In Britain, the Agriculture Ministry said a parrot that died in quarantine had contracted bird flu. The parrot had been imported from Surinam and held with other birds from Taiwan.

Because of the British case, Germany said it would ask the
European Union next week to ban all wild bird imports.

Junior Agriculture Minister Alexander Mueller said the case showed the European Union's existing ban on imports from countries which have bird flu was not tight enough.

"One doesn't really know where it was or went before or where it was hiding," Mueller told Reuters in an interview.

TAIWAN TALKS TOUGH

Amid growing fears about the spread of the disease, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche AG has come under pressure to pump up output of its antiviral avian flu drug Tamiflu.

The company agreed on Thursday to meet four generic drug makers with a view to possible tie-ups.

But an impatient Taiwan said -- patent or not -- it was ready to start making its own version of Tamiflu.

"We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche. It means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing," Su Ih-jen, head of the clinical division at the National Health Research Institute, told Reuters.

The research institute showed media a generic version of Tamiflu produced by its laboratories, which it said was 99 percent similar to Roche's drug.

Taiwan has so far been spared a serious outbreak of H5N1 but authorities found rare birds infected with the strain in a container smuggled from China on Thursday, the island's first case since late 2003.

Experts say Tamiflu, generically known as oseltamivir, cannot be regarded as a "cure-all" for H5N1 as it must be administered in the early stages of infection -- and will in some cases not work due to anti-viral resistance.

The WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic alert, Mike Ryan, told the Financial Times on Saturday it would cost billions of dollars to prepare the world fully for a potential pandemic with large-scale production of vaccines and other measures.

World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz told world parliamentarians in Finland that prevention would still be far cheaper than cure.

He said SARS, despite being contained relatively early, cost east Asian countries 2 or 3 percent of their gross domestic product for a quarter.

"Stop and think what a larger epidemic that spreads death and disease around the world would do in damage to commerce and the international economy," he said.

 

[Annie]

Talk about a long dead thread:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060211...8iTvyIi;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Bird Flu Found in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria

By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press Writer 52 minutes ago

The deadly bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans, while the European Union confirmed the presence of the deadly strain in Bulgaria.

The announcement by Greece and Italy comes a day after the opening of the Winter Games in Turin, and marks the first time the potentially dangerous virus was detected in a EU country.

Authorities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria said there were no reports of people being infected, and Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace sought to reassure Italians that the outbreak posed no immediate threat to humans, as the virus had only affected wild birds.

"It's a relatively safe situation for human health, less so for animal health," Storace said.

Also Saturday, authorities in Nigeria said they were investigating whether a deadly bird flu strain discovered in the West African country last week had spread to humans after at least two children were reported ill.

Bird flu has killed at least 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. It has been ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 140 million birds.

Almost all the human deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, possibly sparking a human flu pandemic that could kill millions.

Experts said they were reassured by the fact that the virus has been detected in wild birds rather than on poultry farms, where it would be more likely to spread and where people would be in closer contact to infected birds.

"The risk to humans is less if the disease is in wildlife than if it is in poultry," said Juan Lubroth, a senior animal health officer at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The virus was found in five swans in the three southern Italian regions of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, Storace said. The swans had arrived from the Balkans, he said, likely pushed south by cold weather.

The European Union issued a statement saying that Italy has agreed to apply the same precautionary measures as those adopted by Greece a day earlier. They include creating a two-mile high-risk, protection zone around each outbreak area, and a surveillance zone of an additional seven kilometers.

Tests will be done on samples of domestic birds inside the protection zone, where poultry is to be separated to avoid contact with other domestic birds. Birds that are infected or suspected of being infected will be killed.

Hunting wild birds will be banned in both zones, and poultry cannot travel out of the surveillance zone, the Italian Health Ministry said.

Also Saturday, the European Union reference laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed that samples from dead swans found within a 45-mile radius from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki had tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

Authorities said health experts in the region were carrying out checks on farms and homes with poultry.

A senior Agriculture Ministry official said there was no immediate need to extend existing precautionary measures in an area near Thessaloniki, which is Greece's second-largest city.

"No new measures are required," Spyros Kyriakis said. "The 10 days within which the sick birds were contagious have passed without any reports of an outbreak among farm poultry. These birds were discovered 11 days ago, so there's no need to panic."

The EU also confirmed that wild swans in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border, had tested positive for the H5N1 strain. The Bulgarian Health Ministry tried to calm fears, saying that so far no humans had caught the virus directly from wild birds.

"The incubation period for the disease has passed, and there are no reports of people infected with the bird flu virus," the ministry said.

But in Nigeria, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said authorities were trying to determine whether the H5N1 bird flu strain discovered on a farm in the northern state of Kaduna on Wednesday — the first time it was found in Africa — had spread to humans after several people were reported ill. Authorities have since reported the same virus in two other states.

Investigations were being conducted in the commercial capital, Lagos, and in Kaduna. Lambo gave no details, but said he expected results to be released Sunday.

Elsewhere, China reported its eighth human death from the H5N1 strain, and Indonesia reported its 18th death.