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Avian Bird Flu
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Thursday 14th of June 2007 05:01:15 AM
Myanmar reports fresh outbreak of bird flu - Yahoo! News
Myanmar reports fresh outbreak of bird flu
Thu Jun 14, 2:20 PM ET
Military-run Myanmar has detected a fresh outbreak of bird flu among poultry north of Yangon and has slaughtered some 1,000 chickens, a livestock official said Thursday.
The deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu was found
From by Future Health Solutions - Spence Research This Blog Entry
Thursday 14th of June 2007 04:57:10 AM
Avian Flu Vaccine Stockpile Being Planned for Developing Nations
14 June 2007
Avian Flu Vaccine Stockpile Being Planned for Developing Nations
International rules in effect June 15 to promote global health security
By Cheryl Pellerin
USINFO Staff Writer
A biological technician tests samples while researching strains of the avian influenza. (© AP Images)Washington - Progress is being made in establishing
From by Future Health Solutions - Spence Research This Blog Entry
Tuesday 12th of June 2007 01:15:36 PM
WHO | Avian influenza - situation in Egypt - update 17
Avian influenza - situation in Egypt - update 17
12 June 2007
The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population has confirmed a new human case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection. The case has been confirmed by the Egyptian Central Public Health Laboratory and by the
From by Future Health Solutions - Spence Research This Blog Entry
Sunday 24th of December 2006 06:36:00 PM
Study: Poultry most likely to bring H5N1 to Americas
Maryn McKenna * Contributing Writer
Dec 5, 2006 (CIDRAP News) ? Poultry infected with H5N1 avian influenza pose the greatest risk of bringing the disease to the Americas, according to a new study by British and US researchers that challenges US efforts to detect flu in migratory birds.
Once on this continent, avian flu is likely to spread to
Sunday 24th of December 2006 06:34:00 PM
Bird flu virus 'still smoldering,' U.S. expert says
By Caleb Hellerman
CNN
A year ago, headlines were screaming about a looming disaster: the rapid spread of bird flu across two-thirds of the globe. The H5N1 strain of the virus was killing more than half its human victims. Experts were urging the government to stockpile medicine and experimental vaccines.
Dr. Robert Webster, whose vaccine the
Sunday 24th of December 2006 06:29:00 PM
Scientists to Review Fight Against Bird Flu at Mali Conference
By Phuong Tran
Dakar
05 December 2006
Representatives from more than 100 countries are preparing to attend the fourth international conference on avian influenza, Wednesday in Bamako, Mali. Scientists fear that the rapid spread of this highly contagious virus, combined with the lack of preparation in vulnerable countries, can lead
Sunday 24th of December 2006 06:27:00 PM
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December 05, 2006 08:00 AM Eastern Time
New Research Predicts U.S. Entry of H5N1 Avian Influenza
Scientists Uncover Disease Pathways and Causes
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Scientists at the Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM), Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Smithsonian Institution?s
Tuesday 28th of November 2006 09:24:00 PM
Bird Flu Outbreak Detected Again
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Another case of the highly virulent H5N1 avian influenza has been discovered at a poultry farm located about 3 kilometers from the first reported outbreak in Iksan, North Cholla Province, the Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday.
The latest discovery of avian influenza has raised fears that the virus has already spread beyond the high risk zone set by the government and the crisis will last longer than originally expected, despite the government's massive quarantine measures.
The owner of the farm requested a virus test on his farm on late Monday as 206 of 12,000 chickens in the farm died in just two days from Sunday to Monday. Another 400 chickens in the farm were reportedly found dead yesterday morning.
The National Veterinary Research & Quarantine Service, the state laboratory, announced that their analysis of samples from the farm confirmed that the chickens were infected with the highly pathogenic bird flu.
Since Sunday, quarantine officials have been destroying all poultry within a 500-meter radius of the initially infected farm, about 250 kilometers south of Seoul. Yesterday alone, they destroyed 46,000 chickens and 300 pigs.
Owing to the second outbreak of the highly pathogenic virus, it is highly likely that a special surveillance zone will be expanded, and that poultry within the 3-kilometer radius quarantine zone will be slaughtered.
Meanwhile, the death of a large number of chickens in Sosan, South Chungchong Province last week was found to be unrelated to the bird flu virus, according to the ministry.
The chicken farm operators at Sosan, just north of the site of a bird flu outbreak in Iksan, 230 kilometers south of Seoul, had requested an investigation after more than 1,000 chickens died since Nov. 20 without a clear reason.
The ministry said that according to the investigation, the deaths were highly likely to have been caused by common poultry infections.
The ministry has been on alert since Nov. 18 when avian influenza was first detected. The ministry has destroyed nearly 100,000 chickens, pigs, cats and eggs in areas near the outbreak site.
No South Koreans have ever fallen ill from bird flu.
michelle@koreatimes.co.kr
11-28-2006 17:16
Tuesday 28th of November 2006 09:10:00 PM
By Jason Gale
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Influenza viruses may be preserved in glaciers and Arctic ice for thousands of years and released into the environment when the frozen water is thawed, potentially touching off lethal pandemics, researchers said.
Global warming may speed the release of the microbes, increasing the frequency of outbreaks, according to a study in the December issue of the Journal of Virology. The study is based on tests of water and ice from three lakes in Siberia, where large populations of migratory waterfowl breed before traveling to North America, southern Asia, Europe and Africa.
The finding may help explain the constant emergence of influenza A-type viruses that cause seasonal epidemics and occasionally set off pandemics capable of killing millions of people. Disease trackers are monitoring flu viruses amid an outbreak of the H5N1 strain, known to have infected 258 people in 10 countries in the past three years, killing 153 of them.
``One expectation in relation to this phenomenon would be an increased rate of release of these microbes during times of global, or local, warming events and a decrease during cooler periods,'' said the authors, led by Gang Zhang from Ohio's Bowling Green State University.
Last year was the warmest in more than a century, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Climatologists there monitoring global annual average surface temperatures found that the four previous hottest years since the 1890s were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Pandemic Threat
The spread of H5N1 in late 2003 has put the world closer to another pandemic than at any time since 1968, when the last of the previous century's three major outbreaks occurred, according to the World Health Organization.
The H5N1 virus killed about 200 chickens at a South Korean farm, the second outbreak in three days, fueling concerns that the disease may be spreading in the country again after three years. The farm, in the southwestern city of Iksan, is about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from a property where H5N1 was confirmed Nov. 25, said Kim Yang Il, an agriculture ministry spokesman.
In Indonesia, the country with the most H5N1 fatalities, the virus killed a 35-year-old woman in a Jakarta hospital early today. The woman from Banten province was most likely infected by diseased poultry, said Joko Suyono, an official at the health ministry.
Bird Contact
Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers.
A pandemic can start when a novel influenza A-type virus, to which almost no one is naturally immune, emerges and begins spreading. Experts believe that a pandemic in 1918, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, began when an avian flu virus jumped to people from birds.
Aquatic birds, such as ducks and geese, are the primary host of all influenza viruses. The virus is shed in feces and frequently deposited in rivers and lakes.
Many species of aquatic birds flock to Siberia and other areas near the Arctic Circle for breeding during the Northern Hemisphere's summer before flying south during the fall.
As the birds visit lakes along their paths they shed viruses into the water and onto any ice present, and drink water containing viruses discharged by other birds or released from the ice by thawing, the authors said in the study.
140,000 Years
In previous studies, the authors, who include researchers from Israel's Bar-Illan University and the Russian Academy of Sciences, documented the preservation of viruses, bacteria, and fungi in glacial ice for as long as 140,000 years.
Surveillance of Arctic lakes may help disease trackers predict which flu strains will cause future outbreaks and shape long-term vaccination strategies, the researchers said.
Ice, ice-covered lakes and glaciers have ``the potential for being major sources of viruses that cause pandemics and epizootics in birds and other animals,'' they wrote.
Until refreezing takes place, viruses of both present and past strains may be contracted by the waterfowl, allowing old and new viruses to continually recombine, the study said.
``Conceivably, such ongoing perpetual mechanisms have been operating cyclically throughout the virus's evolution, enabling recurrent emergence of past genes,'' according to the authors.
The same pattern of evolution probably occurs in other diseases as well, the authors said, adding that ``this awaits thorough examination.''
It may explain why some influenza virus strains have appeared, disappeared, and then re-emerged decades later virtually unchanged, they said. A Russian H1N1 influenza virus that caused an epidemic in 1977 was almost identical to the H1N1 strain that caused an epidemic in 1950. Other strains, most notably variants of H2N2 and H3N2 and several H1 varieties, have made similar returns, the researchers said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 28, 2006 04:36 EST
Monday 27th of November 2006 09:54:00 PM
Va. hunters' game tested for avian flu
© 2006 The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. ? Waterfowl hunters in Virginia are being enlisted in the fight against avian flu.
Along eastern Virginia's waterways, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is scouting out hunters at wildlife management areas, popular hunting spots and boat ramps. There, some of them are being asked to allow a swab of their bagged game to test for the highly pathogenic version of H5N1 avian flu, according to Bob Ellis, assistant director of the department's wildlife division.
Species being sampled include tundra swan, mute swan, snow goose, Atlantic brant and mallards.
People are also encouraged to report to game officials unusual sickness or death they observe in waterfowl or shorebirds. Hunters should refrain from picking up the birds but note their location and contact game officials.
Since 2003, the H5N1 virus has killed more than 100 people and millions of birds worldwide, sparking fears that the virus could mutate into a pandemic influenza.
Officials know of no U.S. bird infected by this highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Low-pathogenic viruses common among waterfowl and shorebirds cause little illness among birds and don't threaten human health.
This summer, federal officials began monitoring Alaska and the Pacific Northwest as the likeliest entry point of infected birds from Asia. The Atlantic Flyway, which includes Virginia, stretches from Greenland to Canada and south to Florida and Puerto Rico.
American birds summering in Greenland mix with those migrating from Africa and Europe, where avian flu already exists.
In Virginia, Game and Inland Fisheries has tested about 190 mute swans and about 90 mallards, Jonathan Sleeman, a state wildlife veterinarian, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Game officials have checked on Tangier Sound, Virginia Beach, the Potomac River, the Beaverdam reservoir, Hog Island and Chickahominy River, according to Sleeman.
Tests on a couple of mallards that died suddenly in Portsmouth came back negative for the H5N1 virus, he said.
The surveillance will continue through the winter as the last of the birds migrating south come through Virginia, Sleeman said.
___
Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com
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