Roche withholds Tamiflu in U.S. to stop hoarding

27 Oct 2005 15:24:24 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Adds further countries, details, production requests)

By Tom Armitage

ZURICH, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Drug maker Roche Holding AG <ROG.VX> has temporarily suspended deliveries of its Tamiflu antiviral drug in the United States to prevent a run on stocks by consumers and firms fearing a pandemic caused by bird flu.

Roche said it had halted deliveries of the drug to pharmacists in the United States and Canada until the start of the flu season over concerns that consumers and large firms could deplete stocks by hoarding the drug at home.

Governments around the world are stockpiling the antiviral drug in preparation for a feared outbreak of flu, particularly the deadly avian flu virus H5N1. Tamiflu is a prescription drug approved for use as a treatment for seasonal flu, although it does not cure it.

"Roche U.S. said they would temporarily suspend deliveries of Tamiflu in the United States until there is an increased incidence of seasonal flu," said a spokeswoman for Roche in Basel on Thursday.

"We do not want people buying it and keeping it at home."

more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27174645.htm

EU team develops human vaccine for bird flu strain

27 Oct 2005 15:50:38 GMT

Source: Reuters

Background  FACTBOX: Bird flu threatens to become global pandemic

MORE

BRUSSELS, Oct 27 (Reuters) - European influenza experts have developed the first human vaccine for a virulent strain of bird flu that may be able to jump from poultry to humans, the EU's executive Commission said on Thursday.

This virus strain, known as H7N1, is classified as highly pathogenic and caused lethal flu outbreaks among Italian poultry in 1999. But the risk of it emerging as a pandemic strain is lower than H5N1, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia.

more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27198500.htm

Thanks for doing the update, with all those embedded links too :)

 Bird flu journey

Watch the spread of the killer virus around the world

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/world/05/bird_flu_map/html/1.stm

Turkey fluDocument Actions  What happens when an old man finds a dead turkey in a small Greek island village? The start of pan- European panic.

His wife told him that these things happen, but the television had bombarded them with reports of bird flu in neighbouring Turkey and nearby Romania the night before. Experts had been explaining how dreadful it would be for a bird flu epidemic to hit Europe, so the old man ignored his wife and warned Europe.

The local authorities reported the event to the state authorities, who reported it to the government. A local reporter, hoping for a Pulitzer Prize, filed the story for the local channel casually hinting at the possibility of bird flu. In 24-hours, the European media, electronic and printed, were talking about nothing else other than bird flu knocking on Europe's door. EU health and agriculture ministers held meetings, more reports and interviews came injecting the word `flu' into everybody's small talk.

People flocked to their local drugstore asking for flu medicine, forgetting to add the word `bird'. Helpful pharmacists thought that they were looking for an influenza vaccine, a usual occurrence for October. In two days, 40,000 boxes of medicine moved from the drugstores to people's houses in Greece.

The media continued their dramatic reports, increasingly exaggerating the threat making more people ask for the vaccine that had already started disappearing from the drugstores. When the government discovered what was going on it was too late. Nearly every house had the vaccine, except the ones who really needed it, such as the elderly and sick. Poultry companies lost nearly 20% in the stock market and the supermarkets started throwing away the meat that nobody wanted to buy.

Five days after, the European Commission and the official European laboratories in London announced that there was no bird flu in the dead turkey, which made many people breath normally again, except the poor old man in the little Greek village. He has to listen to his wife's nagging all night every night, "I told you so!!!"

By Thanos K.

http://www.6d.fi/starters/page.2005-10-27.5127383687

to start pushing the flu scare again at the height of the Fitzmas season.

Even the most dire scenarios I've heard from people with actual medical credentials say "not this year".

Anybody seen Julie Gerberding lately?

Newshour on October 12, 2005, "When and if a flu pandemic virus emerges, we will need to make vaccine to that virus so it's really not possible to stock pile a vaccine in large quantities in advance," Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the NewsHour.

PBS Newshour

----

Canadian generic-drug firm plans to copy Tamiflu

By Leonard Zehr

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Biotechnology Reporter

Apotex Inc., Canada's biggest maker of generic drugs, has begun preliminary work on a synthetic copy of Tamiflu in case the country faces an avian influenza pandemic.

"We'll know in six to eight weeks whether we have a viable project," company president Jack Kay said.

"Then it's going to take us anywhere from eight to 12 months before we have a product to submit" to health regulators in Ottawa.

Tamiflu is patent protected by Roche Canada, which has halted sales of the hotly sought-after antiviral drug to manage dwindling supplies. The drug, which cannot prevent flu infection but reduces its severity after a person falls ill, is on back order at many pharmacies, prompting people to buy it through the Internet.

More Globe and Mail

This was the story I posted yesterday::

Breaking Patent: Avian Flu: Yes

Should the makers of Tamiflu be forced to share their knowledge?

The public's need for protection outweighs the pharmaceutical company's right to produce the drug,

By Ana Lukatela

Globe and Mail

Taiwan announced that it would begin manufacturing Tamiflu under compulsory licensing and other countries are also contemplating manufacturing it under those patent breaking terms.

The bad guy is H5N1. Then there are about dozen other bird flus, I think. Candy, you have mixed H5N1 to all other types of bird flu in your introduction.

There is tremendous amount of other bird flus in Europe and I hope that they make the birds immune to H5N1.

What comes to experts reporting to BBC that H5N1 will spread next to Africa, the experts have been obviously reading lately Gandalf :-)  Experts should be annoyed by the fact that H5N1 has been unable to spread to Australia.

H5N1 is probably a bioweapon of few bird species, which can spread it to kill the competitors. That's why it doesn't spread easily.

Then the favorite recycled piece of crap repeated in media:

Every new outbreak also increases the chance that the H5N1 virus could mutate to spread easily between humans and trigger a pandemic.

No it doesn't. There is only risk in Asia where people practically live with their domestic animals. And the spread of H5N1 burns out the contamination vector from the nature!

WRAPUP 2-UN presses China for more details on bird flu scare

28 Oct 2005 17:14:06 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Recasts, adds European commissioner, Russian outbreaks)

By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) pressed China on Friday to provide information on a 12-year-old girl who Chinese officials say died of pneumonia, but who was initially suspected of contracting deadly bird flu.

"After SARS they know they should really provide timely information about what is going on," WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing in Geneva.

China was accused in 2002 of covering up the extent of an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the south of the country, contributing to its eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world, 800 of whom died.

WHO officials say the H5N1 strain of bird flu is far more lethal than SARS. While SARS had a mortality rate of around 15 percent, H5N1, which has now spread from Asia to Europe, kills up to a third of people it infects.

Since last week China has revealed three outbreaks of the H5N1 virus that killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese.

But another WHO spokeswoman, Maria Cheng, said Chinese officials had as yet provided no information on the death of the 12-year-old girl on Oct. 17 in southern Hunan province, the site of China's latest bird flu outbreak.

The girl's 9-year-old brother is reported to be in a stable condition in hospital, also with pneumonia.

Some Chinese media reports have said the girl's body was cremated and it was unclear what samples were taken, Cheng said.

"We need more clarification because both apparently had been exposed to sick chickens," Cheng said.

A Chinese Health Ministry official, Chen Xianyi, told reporters the girl and her brother had contracted pneumonia. "There have been no cases of human infection of H5N1," he said.

China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak first surfaced in Asia in late 2003. Since then, 62 people have died in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia and the virus has spread to Europe's eastern border.

Farmers in China, as in many parts of Asia, live alongside their poultry and other livestock, increasing the chances of the disease spreading to humans, experts say. It also raises the chance of the virus mutating into a form that could spread easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die.

CALMING PANIC IN EUROPE

Thailand said three French tourists suspected of catching bird flu during a visit to a bird park there had tested negative for H5N1.

Most human bird flu infections are due to handling birds sick with the virus or contact with their droppings. Cooked meat is not a source of infection.

more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28752467.htm

Two people die in Vietnam after showing bird flu symptoms

By DPA

Oct 29, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Hanoi - Two people in central Vietnam died this week after showing symptoms of bird flu, but no samples to test for the virus were taken, and there was no sign of bird flu near their homes, local health officials said Saturday.

A 26 year-old man died on Wednesday and a 14-year-old girl died last Sunday in the Vietnam-Cuba hospital in Dong Hoi town in Quang Binh province.

Both had coughs, fevers, and x-rays showed extensive lung damage. The man and the girl died shortly after being hospitalized, and doctors did not have time to take samples, said Tu Si Khuong, the head of the hospital's emergency ward.

'We asked the provincial people's committee and health department to send officials to the two localities to check the families,' Khuong said.

No evidence of bird flu was found in both people's communities and family, the doctor said from the province 600 kilometres south of Hanoi.

'People from the two families, including those who ate duck last week with the dead man, are now in good health,' said Mai Xuan Su, deputy head of the provincial preventive medicine centre, who visited the homes and families of both the deceased.

bit more

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/printer_1058316.php

BIRD TESTS CLEAR ACROSS THE TOP:

Testing on migratory birds across northern Australia suggests they are not carrying the deadly bird flu virus sweeping across Asia.

Researchers in the Kimberley town of Kununurra have spent the past fortnight taking blood samples and swabs from shorebirds, waders and native magpie geese.

The routine screening is undertaken each year from Cape York to Broome.

However, over the past three years the tests have been expanded to detect the H5N1 strain found in Asia and parts of Europe.

Recent results have indicated local strains of the virus have been detected in the birds, but there are no positive carriers of the deadly bird flu.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1494640.htm

BIRD FLU SUMMIT

The Australian city of Brisbane is hosting a bird flu summit focussing on how to manage a potential pandemic.

Delegates from 21 Asia-Pacific states will hear from disaster management specialists and health experts.

They will be aiming to agree on co-ordination to prevent outbreaks among humans from skipping across borders in the region.

Vietnam used the summit to appeal for $50m (£28m) in international aid to help tackle the spread of bird flu.

Deputy Health Minister Bui Ba Bong said Vietnam needed the money to build a stockpile of drugs to combat the virus.

More than 40 people have died of bird flu in Vietnam, and the government has admitted that it only has enough retro-viral drugs to treat less than 1% of the population.

Tens of millions of birds have been destroyed since the virus was first detected in 2003.

Border closure

Australia meanwhile is planning to vaccinate nearly all of its 20 million citizens.

The government says, however, it may be many months before a treatment is ready.

Researchers are hoping to have tests on a new treatment, being trialled in Adelaide and Melbourne, to be finished by early next year.

Emergency plans are being prepared which could include the closure of Australia's borders to prevent a bird flu outbreak spreading across international borders.

"Only in the most extreme circumstances, the most dire circumstances, would we be reduced to closing our borders," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Nine Network television.

The government has told Australians to be prepared for a bird flu pandemic both at home and overseas, the BBC's Phil Mercer reports from Sydney.

Our correspondent says they are being urged to have their own supply of anti-viral drugs and to prepare an evacuation plan in the event of an outbreak

So far, the H5N1 strain of the virus has killed more than 60 people in south-east Asia since 2003, most of them in Vietnam.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4391504.stm

MIXED MESSAGES:

AM - Monday, 31 October , 2005  08:04:00

Reporter: Karen Barlow

TONY EASTLEY: International health experts are still split over whether the world is facing a flu pandemic.

In Brisbane today they and other experts will discuss the possibilities and probabilities that bird flu might mutate into a deadly and virulent human strain.

Karen Barlow reports on the two-day meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

KAREN BARLOW: One of the largest summits of its kind, the Brisbane APEC meeting is aiming to physically prepare for a pandemic, and according to the Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, on Channel Ten, mentally prepare.

TONY ABBOTT: The last thing we want in the world today, the last thing I want as the Australian Health Minister is to leave people psychologically unprepared for something which is not a certainty, not even a probability, in the next couple of years but it is a distinct possibility.

KAREN BARLOW: Australian virologist, Dr Alan Hampson, says as long as there's ongoing infection in the bird community, the risk is there for humans.

But he says a current deadly H5N1 strain may not be the big one.

ALAN HAMPSON: We can't be sure that a pandemic won't arise from some other source. I think most people believe that a pandemic will eventuate at some stage. As Tony Abbott says, it may be next week, it may be next month, it may be next year or in the next decade. We really can't be sure of that.

KAREN BARLOW: But do you believe we have a bit of time up our sleeves?

ALAN HAMPSON: It's hard to know how much time we have. For all we know, somewhere in the back blocks of South East Asia there may be some transmission of this virus going on.

KAREN BARLOW: Dr Hampson says improved surveillance backed by better regional co-operation will help identify where the first human to human cases occur, so it can been stopped before it hits our shores.

That's a view backed by the chief executive of the aid agency, Care Australia.

Dr Robert Glasser.

ROBERT GLASSER: Firstly, there needs to be an effort to public education campaigns in developing countries that have endemic avian flu. Secondly, surveillance networks so that we can be aware of an outbreak as quickly as possible. Thirdly, a rapid response capacity so that once we're aware of an outbreak it can be... the people affected can be isolated and provided with antivirals to prevent a pandemic from spreading more widely.

KAREN BARLOW: The AMA's National President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, says levels of hysteria over bird flu are rising.

MUKESH HAIKERWAL: What we've got to step away from is increasing levels of public concern and anxiety, til they all feel that they're part of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, rather than part of a normal functioning society.

We don't want people to believe that we've got this ornothological Armageddon happening. We want people to be sure that what can be done is being done, and that they have a, you know, a confidence in the systems that are out there to minimise the impact of any potential pandemic influenza.

TONY EASTLEY: Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, President of the AMA, ending Karen Barlow's report. ..

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1494126.htm

Canada finds wild ducks with flu; H5N1 unlikely

31 Oct 2005 19:58:07 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Adds quotes, background)

By David Ljunggren and Gilbert Le Gras

OTTAWA, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Canada has discovered a strain of H5 avian flu in 33 wild migratory ducks but it is unlikely to be the killer H5N1 strain which has spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, a top health official said on Monday.

Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said a recent survey of 4,800 healthy wild birds had found the H5 virus in 28 ducks in the eastern province of Quebec and five in the central province of Manitoba.

"These findings do not indicate that we are dealing with a virus strain capable of causing significant illness," Clark told a news conference. "The evidence we have observed strongly indicates that these healthy birds were not infected with the same virus that is currently present in Asia."

The H5N1 strain was transmitted to Europe by migratory birds and some experts say it is likely to spread the same way to the rest of the world.

At least 62 people have died from bird flu in an outbreak which started in Asia late in 2003. Experts fear the H5N1 virus strain will mutate just enough to allow it to pass easily from person to person, potentially causing a catastrophic pandemic as humans lack immunity to it.

The final tests on the Canadian bird samples will be ready in about a week. There are nine known N strains of the H5 virus.

Questioned on why he was announcing the discovery of a nonlethal strain of bird flu, Clark said, "I can't categorically state that what we're dealing with here isn't H5N1. It's highly unlikely."

Jim Rogers, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said low-pathogen avian influenza was endemic in the wild bird population.

"Birds have a flu season just like humans do every year. Now if it were high-pathogen, that would be a different story," he said.

Clark said poultry and wild birds in Canada could safely be consumed if normal sanitary precautions were taken in their handling and cooking.

more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N31678395.htm

Avian flu viruses vary greatly in threat, impact

Canadian Press

When U.S. President George W. Bush recently and repeatedly voiced concern over the threat of an influenza pandemic, an issue that has been fuelling high anxiety among public health authorities and flu experts for quite some time spilled all over the popular press.

And with last month's discovery of birds infected with the worrisome H5N1 avian influenza virus in Romania and Turkey, and an unrelated discovery of several Canadian birds with an H5 strain that has yet to be identified, it seems the term "bird flu'' is on everyone's lips.

The heightened attention carries with it a lot of confusion. So The Canadian Press asked some experts on avian and human influenza for help explaining what these viruses are -- and are not.

The name game

First things first: It's catchy and it's easy to say, but influenza experts don't like and don't generally use the term "bird flu.'' At their origins, all influenza viruses probably came from certain species of wild waterfowl, so the term is too vague to be useful.

Recent developments in Colombia illustrate the problem.

An avian flu strain found there, an H9, bears no relation to the one plaguing Southeast Asia. It's a far milder strain that will cause economic problems for affected poultry farmers, but probably poses next-to-no risk to people at this point.

A rose is not a rose

Influenza A viruses are divided into categories or subtypes based on two genes they carry on their surface. To date, scientists have found 16 hemagluttinins and nine neuraminidases, the H and the N in a flu virus's name.

In theory there may be 144 different combinations, all of which could be called a "bird flu.'' But some Hs and Ns have never been found together, leading experts to hypothesize some combinations cannot be formed.

Most of the known combinations have shown no talent at infecting people.

"The vast, vast majority of these (avian) viruses wouldn't do anything in humans,'' says Michael Perdue, an avian influenza expert with the World Health Organization.

According to an article Perdue and co-author Dr. David Swayne published in Avian Diseases in July, human infections have been documented with only H5N1, a few H7s -- H7N2, H7N2 and H7N7 -- and H9N2 avian flu viruses.

H7N3 was behind the large poultry outbreak in British Columbia in 2004. Two people were infected, but they suffered only conjunctivitis and mild flu-like symptoms. One person died in an extensive H7N7 outbreak in the Netherlands in 2003, but the majority of the nearly 90 documented human cases there suffered mild symptoms too.

The Asian version of H5N1 is far and away the worst known avian flu virus when it triggers human infections. The official WHO count suggests there have been 137 human cases since 1997, when it first jumped into humans. Of those known cases, 67 have died.

Public understanding of the vast differences between the various subtypes is low, suggests Swayne, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Ga.

"When they say: `I'm scared this bird flu's going to kill me.' Well, it's like: `Wait a minute. Here's a low path, economic issue of avian influenza in a chicken flock. It really has no risk for humans or very minimal risk for humans and it's not the same as the Asian H5N1.'''

High path, low path

The term "low path'' Swayne uses describes another important distinction between avian flu viruses. Most are what is known as low pathogenicity _ low path for short. When they jump into domestic poultry, they don't even kill chickens. Typically egg production drops off.

Only the H5 and H7 subtypes produce viruses that are high pathogenicity or "high path,'' explains Dr. Richard Slemons, an avian influenza expert at Ohio State University.

High path viruses wipe out poultry flocks. The Asian H5N1 everyone is so worried about is a high path virus.

But not all H5s and H7s are high path. Mexico has had a lingering low path H5N2 outbreak among poultry flocks for more than a decade.

Not all H5N1s are created equal

Even within a subtype, there is a lot of variation among viruses. There is no cookie cutter that punches out identical H5N1s.

"What's happened is we've taken this term, this term H5N1, and we have equated it to being for all viruses that have that terminology as being the same as the Asian virus. And it's not,'' Swayne says.

He likens it to looking through a phone directory and assuming that all the Joneses listed are related.

So when H5N1 viruses have been found in Russia, Turkey and Romania, scientists needed to perform genetic analysis on them to see how closely matched they are to the Asian viruses.

Unfortunately, they have been found to be closely related to that lethal virus. But they might not have been. For instance, Slemons found a low path H5N1 in a mallard in Ohio in 1986. It would not have posed a fraction of the threat to human health that the Asian H5N1 does.

Economics vs. Public Health

In fact, most avian flu viruses are a much great economic than human health risk.

These viruses don't cross into people very often. In their paper in Avian Diseases, Perdue and Swayne documented only 234 cases dating back to 1959 where people were shown to have been infected by avian viruses. (That figure was as of June 28; there have been additional H5N1 cases in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam since then.)

"The question might be: Out of all the billions of people that have been exposed, why so few have been infected?'' Slemons noted.

Science doesn't have the answer to that question at present.

But things are more clear cut on the economic side of the equation. Outbreaks can be costly and difficult to halt. At one point, farmers in British Columbia estimated it would cost $340 million to rebuild their battered industry after their H7N3 outbreak.

And if the outbreak is caused by a high path strain, poultry exports of an affected nation can find international doors slam shut on their products.

Where the threat lies

Still, the threat remains that an avian virus could mutate and start spreading easily from person to person. Because human immune systems have no antibodies to those viruses, that would trigger a pandemic. Just how bad a pandemic it would be would depend on how virulent the resulting virus was.

So the situation with H5N1 is a source of ongoing and significant concern. And while no one likes to see the strain increase its geographic reach, experts believe the threat remains greatest in Asia, where high concentrations of people, birds and virus could fuel the emergence of mutations that facilitate human-to-human spread.

"The casino for genetic roulette will still be in Asia,'' predicts Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Policy and Research at the University of Minnesota.

"It's not that it couldn't appear there,'' he says, referring to Europe. "But probability favours the drive towards the ... mutations resulting in a human-transmitted agent in Asia.''

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051031/avian_flu_051031/20051031?hub=Health

All articles posted under fair use rules in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and are strictly for the educational and informative purposes of our readers.

abc is willing to help Bush over his hurdle with "the sky is falling" type headlines......

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Flu/story?id=1269805

Drug combo could stretch Tamiflu supplies-doctors

01 Nov 2005 17:51:16 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Scarce supplies of Tamiflu, which is being stockpiled by governments in case of an influenza pandemic, could be stretched by giving it with another drug, doctors said on Tuesday.

Governments have been advised to stock up on Tamiflu, a prescribed drug for seasonal flu, because it will be a first line of defence if the H5N1 bird flu circulating in Asia and reported in other areas mutates into a human pandemic strain.

Joe Howton, a medical director at the Adventist Medical Center in Portland, Oregon believes probenecid, a treatment for gout which is used with some antibiotics to boost effectiveness, could have a similar impact with Tamiflu.

No one knows how effective the drug will be against a pandemic strain but it is considered the best option until a vaccine can be developed.

Howton was browsing through safety data published by the drug's Swiss manufacturer Roche <ROG.VX> when he noticed that giving Tamiflu with probenecid doubles the number of hours its active ingredient is in the blood.

Probenecid works by preventing the drugs from being removed from the body by the kidneys.

"It dawned on me that the data potentially represented a tremendous therapeutic benefit," he told the science journal Nature.

If he is right, half a dose of Tamiflu with probenecid would be as effective as a full dose without it.

LACK OF APPROVAL

But Roche, which published the data on probenecid in 2002, said it could not advocate combined treatment because of the lack of clinical data and regulatory approval.

"Given where we are, with the potential for a pandemic, the clearest vision we can have is to dramatically increase the availability of this drug and make all information available," said David Reddy, Roche's influenza pandemic task force leader.

"We're working with external groups to determine the activity of Tamiflu against H5N1 isolates as they emerge and on other relevant clinical studies," he added.

bit more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L01589545.htm

Kimchi, National Korean Dish, on Front Line of China Trade Spat

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Next to two-foot high piles of freshly made fermented lettuce and cabbage, a Korean sign proclaims the front line of North Asia's latest trade war.

<snip>

Researchers at Seoul National University claimed in March this year that letting chili, garlic, cabbage and pickled shrimp sauce ferment for four weeks in traditional ceramic pots buried in the ground may help prevent bird flu.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=aJpm.RQAsflM&refer=asia

and ask not about feeling like a turkey,

ahhh but then again I can be bad

as it's almost Halloween over your way

or am I thinking of Thanksgiving...

about it cropping up in lame ducks.

poster's comment:  I heard this speech and story yesterday afternoon, along with analysis that largely praised the initiative, which is a Good Thing.  What pisses me off is that the trend continues of Bush using a crisis to sprinkle goodies amongst his business partners, in this instance barring liability suits against vaccine makers.

Maggie Fox & Caren Borhan | Washington | November 1

Reuters - President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday for $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare the United States for a possible pandemic of avian influenza.

The total includes requests of $1.2 billion to make 20 million more doses of the current vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, $2.8 billion to accelerate new flu-vaccine technology and $1 billion to stockpile more antiviral drugs.

"To respond to a pandemic we must have emergency plans in place in all 50 states, in every local community. We must ensure that all levels of government are ready to act to contain an outbreak," Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health.

it comes from dealing with the flubbies, it is really only the virulent strain of H5N1 that is of concern for humans. My post was just an update of whats going on where, I've given the links to who,cdc,fao... before, but should add them again. While everyone pisses and moans about the shotage of tamiflu< which may or may not work> the emphasis is taken away with solving the problem on the front lines in Asia. If it is going to mutate it will happen there first.

I like the European line:

...it is a bird flu, thats why we send out vets and not medical doctors.

Canada sees no sign of Asian strain of avian flu

19 Nov 2005 23:28:21 GMT

OTTAWA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Test results on wild migratory ducks across Canada showed no link to the deadly Asian strain of the bird flu virus that has spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, an top health official said on Saturday.

"The good news is there is no Asian strain in any of the wildlife," Canadian Food Inspection Agency chief veterinary officer Brian Evans told Reuters.

Health officials around the world have been on the watch for the Asian strain of the H5N1 virus that experts fear may mutate just enough to allow it to be easily transmitted among humans. There are nine known N strains of the H5 virus.

A study of 4,800 healthy wild birds found a nonlethal, American variety of H5N1 virus in two wild ducks in the western province of Manitoba, Evans said.

The study also detected versions of the H5N3 virus in Quebec birds and the H5N9 and H5N2 strains in British Columbia birds, he added. None is seen as a public health threat.

The survey was the largest of its kind across Canada after a major bird flu outbreak in early 2004 in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver.

"Canadians can rest assured we have not detected the Asian strain of avian influenza of animal or human health concern," Evans said.

more

Canada sees no sign of Asian strain of avian flu

19 Nov 2005 23:28:21 GMT

MORE

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19175416.htm