Geneva | Dec 9

Reuters - Indonesia has confirmed two new cases of human bird flu, the first officially reported since September in the country which remains the hardest-hit by the deadly virus, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

A nine-year-old girl in Riau province developed symptoms on Nov. 7 after poultry apparently died at her home, the WHO said in a statement. She was hospitalised five days later and discharged on Nov. 22 after recovering.

A two-year-old girl from East Jakarta died on Nov. 29 after developing symptoms on Nov. 18, it said. "Investigations into the source of her infection suggest exposure at a live bird market."

Washington | Dec 3

Reuters - Avian flu viruses make mallard ducks thinner than other ducks, a finding that implies they do not spread the germs over long distances, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Their tests of thousands of ducks migrating through Sweden showed the viruses do affect the birds, contrary to conventional wisdom that the pathogens have no effect on them.

And, to their surprise, they found the birds only "shed", or release, virus for a few days, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

"Mallard ducks are a main reservoir for low-pathogenic avian influenza virus in nature, yet surprisingly little is known about how infection affects these birds," Jonas Waldenstrom of Sweden's Kalmar University, Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and colleagues wrote.

A reservoir is a species that hosts a virus without becoming ill, and thus serves to spread it. Avian flu viruses have most often been found in migratory waterfowl, especially mallard ducks.

Oct 2

AFP -

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new test that can rapidly diagnose and identify human influenza infections and human bird flu, the agency announced.

The test, developed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be available to CDC-qualified laboratories this year, the FDA said in a statement Tuesday.

It uses molecular analysis of viral genetic material taken from secretions in a patient's nose and throat to detect and identify commonly circulating human influenza viruses as well as H5N1 viruses and other strains.

The Human Influenza Virus Real-Time RT-PCR Detection and Characterization Panel isolates and amplifies the viral genetic material and labels it with fluorescent molecules, the FDA statement said.

The material is then analyzed by a diagnostic instrument, the Applied Biosystems 7500 Fast Dx, also approved by the FDA Tuesday for use simultaneously with the Flu Panel.

Results can be obtained in just four hours and the system can test multiple samples at once, the FDA said.

Jakarta | Sept 25

Reuters - Indonesia has halted the activities of a U.S. naval medical lab in Jakarta following a dispute over the terms of a contract, the health minister said on Thursday.

The U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2 has been key to efforts to track bird flu in Indonesia, the country with the most human deaths from the H5N1 virus.

But a memorandum of understanding allowing the lab to operate in Jakarta expired two years ago and was not renewed as a dispute arose over Indonesia's sharing of samples of H5N1 with the rest of the world.

"They are not allowed to do any activities anymore," Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari told Reuters by phone. "The term is suspension, but there are no activities at all now."

Earlier in April, she said the lab was not very beneficial to Indonesia because it refused to share all its findings with the host country.

Sept 16

BBC - The body of an aristocrat who died nearly 90 years ago has been exhumed in the hope that it will help scientists combat a future flu pandemic.

Yorkshire landowner Sir Mark Sykes died in France in 1919 from Spanish flu.

Sir Mark was buried in a lead coffin which scientists hope may have helped preserve the virus.

They believe his remains will help piece together the DNA of Spanish flu, which could have a similar genetic structure to modern bird flu.

This knowledge, added to major breakthroughs by American scientists last year, could help prevent a modern pandemic through the development of new drugs

Hong Kong | July 16

Reuters -
Indonesian officials say they have refused to share bird flu virus samples with the World Health Organisation because scientists and laboratories repeatedly violated U.N. guidelines on sample sharing.

In an article published in the latest issue of The Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore, Indonesian scientists and officials, including Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari, said the current system of sample sharing was unfair and perpetuated the "inequities of the global system".

They said the last straw came when Indonesian officials learnt at the end of 2006 that an Australian company was developing a vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus using a strain of the virus from Indonesia.

The officials said it was a clear violation of World Health Organization (WHO) rules that a pharmaceutical company would even have access to viruses that were shared with WHO-affiliated laboratories.

Hong Kong | June 11

Reuters - Hong Kong ordered a mass cull of all poultry on Wednesday in a bid to stop the spread of the H5N1 virus between birds in hundreds of markets scattered across the territory.

Officials last week found the bird flu virus at a poultry stall in one of the city's many so-called wet markets and ordered the culling of 2,700 birds over the week.

Government officials said on Wednesday the virus had since spread among the island's poultry population and mass cullings were now necessary as a precaution.

Other officials estimated there were 3,500 live birds at roughly 470 stores, stalls or markets across Hong Kong as of Tuesday evening.

Olivia Rondonuwu & Ed Davies | Jakarta | May 7

Reuters - Indonesia is trying to defend the interests of poorer nations by refusing to share bird flu samples with the West and is locked in a cultural misunderstanding over the issue, Jakarta's health minister said on Wednesday.

Siti Fadillah Supari also said in an interview that a U.S. naval medical lab based in Indonesia for research into tropical diseases was barely benefiting its host country and was not being transparent in its operations.

"Poor countries sent the virus to the WHO (World Health Organisation) on behalf of humanity. But it was commercialised by the WHO," Supari said in her offices in central Jakarta.

Officials in Indonesia, the country with the highest number of human bird flu victims, have said they want to ensure equal access to any vaccines that are made against bird flu.

But U.S. Health Secretary Michael Leavitt said last month after visiting Jakarta that Indonesia also wanted payments.

Category: Bird flu • Birds • Surveillance • biology
Posted on: March 28, 2008 6:07 AM, by revere
Effect Measure

Hard on the heels of my semi-facetious prediction that bird flu would return to Germany because Germany had declared itself bird flu free, the Swiss announced an infected wild duck on the shores of Lake Sempach. Since this duck didn't have a passport on him I am sure he never strayed over the nearby border with Germany. We don't know what kind of duck this was [see update, below], a question that is of surprising interest in light of a new paper.

Will Dunham | Washington | March 26

Reuters - Ducks, people and rice paddies are the primary forces driving outbreaks of avian influenza in Thailand and Vietnam, and the number of chickens is less pivotal, scientists said on Wednesday.

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization experts and others looked at three waves of H5N1 bird flu in Thailand and Vietnam in 2004 and 2005. The virus has killed 236 people in 12 countries since 2003.

They used computer modeling to study how various factors were involved in the spread of the virus, including the numbers of ducks, geese and chickens, human population size, rice cultivation and local geography.

Even though Thailand and Vietnam addressed the outbreaks in different ways, the researchers found that the numbers of ducks and people, and the extent of rice cultivation were the most important contributing factors underpinning the outbreaks.

Washington | March 18

Reuters -

Southern China may have been the source for much of the spread of the H5N1 avian flu virus, researchers suggested on Tuesday.

A genetic analysis of the virus shows that strains that showed up in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia in 2002 and 2003 closely resemble a strain from poultry markets in China's Yunnan Province, the flu experts found.

Two viruses found in poultry in China's Hunan province in 2002 and 2003 were most closely related to viruses from Indonesia, they reported in the Journal of Virology.

"These results suggest a direct transmission link for H5N1 viruses between Yunnan and Vietnam and also between Hunan and Indonesia during 2002 and 2003," wrote the researchers, who included Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong and Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

"Poultry trade may be responsible for virus introduction to Vietnam, while the transmission route from Hunan to Indonesia remains unclear," they wrote.

** FACTBOX-WHO figures for bird flu cases in humans
** Vietnam military to test bird flu vaccine on humans
** Bird flu in Indonesia could mutate into human form: UN agency

Mark Forbe | Jakarta | February 21

SMH - THE United States has rejected the Indonesian Health Minister's claims that it is using bird flu samples to produce biological weapons and World Health Organisation officials have condemned allegations of conspiring to profit from bird flu vaccines. The Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is understood to have ordered the minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, to recall copies of her book on avian influenza, which alleges the US and the WHO are conspiring against developing countries by seizing control of bird flu samples.

WHO officials said they were dismayed by some of the claims and urged Dr Supari to do more to control bird flu's spread and end her refusal to share virus samples - which is hampering attempts to find a cure.

At a news conference yesterday Dr Yudhoyono said Indonesia was willing to resume sharing bird flu virus samples if a fair and equitable agreement was reached.

Kate Spinner | Sarasota | Dec 28

Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Duck hunters, including those prowling the Everglades this winter, are helping scientists nationwide guard against a bird flu pandemic.

Before taking home their ducks, hunters in much of Florida offer them to wildlife inspectors so the birds can be checked for influenza.

The research is intended to help understand how bird flu spreads, so that dangerous flu strains can be swiftly found and eradicated.

"The main objective is early detection or prevention," said Thomas DeLiberto, national wildlife disease coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's a way to get a heads-up on a potential problem."

Scientists are focusing on ducks because the birds can harbor and spread influenza viruses without showing any signs of illness.

Riyadh | Nov 21

AFP - Saudi Arabia's agriculture ministry said on Wednesday that more than 3.5 million birds have been culled or are in the process of being destroyed following an outbreak of bird flu.

"More than 3.5 million birds have been or are being culled since the first infection (with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu) was detected" on November 12, said a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The ministry said new cases of bird flu had been detected in farms west and south of Riyadh.

Effect Measure

Posted on: November 11, 2007 4:15 PM, by revere

Time to return to a theme we have sounded on numerous occasions in the past three years. In a recent post we called for a renewed investment in our public health and social service infrastructure as the best strategy. The object is to harden local communities and make them more resilient to all kinds of shocks, not just a pandemic. We should have added, however, that this means local preparation can't be too local: only looking after ourselves and our families. Of course families should prepare, to the best of their ability, and having some reasonable stockpile will stand them in good stead whether it is a pandemic, a flood, a hurricane or a blizzard. But the more important point is that making a community more resilient requires structures that allow us to help each other, not just protect ourselves.

London | October 7

UPI - A new strain of the bird flu virus spreading around the world is more infectious to humans, a study lead by a U.S. researcher has found.

Led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the new study found the H5N1 virus has apparently mutated into a new strain that increases the risk of a human pandemic due to its increased level of communicability, The Independent said Saturday.

Kawaoka said the new strain does not represent a fully pandemic strain of the virus, but warned the mutated virus has been found in both Europe and Africa.

"The viruses circulating in Europe and Africa all have this mutation," the doctor said. "So they are the ones that are closer to human-like flu."

Maggie Fox | Washington | September 27

Reuters - The H5N1 bird flu virus can pass through a pregnant woman's placenta to infect the fetus, researchers reported on Thursday.

They also found evidence of what doctors had long suspected -- that the virus not only affects the lungs, but passes throughout the body into the gastrointestinal tract, the brain, liver and blood cells.

"The work helps us to understand H5N1's high fatality rate, as well as serving as model for global collaboration in the field of emerging infectious diseases," said Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York, who directed the study.

Lipkin and a team at Peking University in Beijing studied tissue taken from two people killed by H5N1 in China -- a 24-year-old pregnant woman and a 35-year-old man.

Tan Ee Lyn | Hong Kong | September 23

Reuters - Researchers in Singapore have created a handheld device that can detect the H5N1 bird flu virus from throat swab samples in under 30 minutes, raising hopes it will lead to rapid detection and containment of the virus.

Conventional laboratory tests take around 4 hours, and require machines to first isolate and amplify the virus before it is tested.

Writing in the latest issue of Nature Medicine, the scientists said the new device would allow decentralised testing of the H5N1 virus, especially in countries that lack basic public health resources.

H5N1, a disease found mostly in birds, is endemic in many parts of Asia and experts have warned for years that it could spark a pandemic, killing millions of people, if it learns to jump from person to person.

Washington | August 28

Reuters - A mathematical analysis has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza spread from person to person in Indonesia in April, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

They said they had developed a tool to run quick tests on disease outbreaks to see if dangerous epidemics or pandemics may be developing.

Health officials around the world agree that a pandemic of influenza is overdue, and they are most worried by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza that has been spreading through flocks from Asia to Africa.

It rarely passes to humans, but since 2003 it has infected 322 people and killed 195 of them.

August 15

WHO - The present advice is applicable for the current situation with sporadic A(H5N1) virus human infection. As more data become available or if the disease patterns change, this advice will be modified as appropriate

Kathy Marks | August 14

The Independent - The death of a young woman from bird flu on the Indonesian island of Bali has raised fears among British holidaymakers, giving visitors another reason to stay away and dealing another blow to the tourism industry.

Bali has suffered two terrorist attacks in recent years, with more than 200 people killed in nightclub bombings in 2002. The tourism industry was starting to recover when two restaurants were blown up in 2005. Twenty people died, including five foreigners.

Now Bali has recorded its first bird-flu death, with a 29-year-old woman dying in hospital in the capital, Denpasar, on Sunday. Doctors are trying to establish whether her two-year-old daughter, who died recently after playing with chickens, also had the virus.

August 1

Nature - Avian flu: situation update

This month we give top billing to research and development in vaccine technology. Better understanding of how the immune system responds to different vaccine formulations, including a variety of new adjuvants, are paving the way for the creation of vaccines with more defined action and fewer side effects. Meanwhile the approval in Europe of cell-culture based influenza vaccines promises to speed up the manufacture of sufficient quantities of vaccine to meet future demand - particularly in the event of a pandemic.

These developments are not a moment too soon in the face of the continuing threat posed by H5N1 avian flu, which has caused new human cases in Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt, and has been reported in wild birds in France and Germany. The total number of human H5N1 cases world wide is now 318, with 192 deaths, as of 11 July 2007, according to the WHO.

Hamberg | July 9

Reuters - German authorities culled about 1,200 farm and pet birds over the weekend after a pet goose tested positive for the lethal strain of bird flu, a government spokesman said on Monday.

The slaughtering programme had now been completed in an exclusion zone around Wickersdorf in Thueringen in east Germany, a Thueringen state government spokesman said.

A pet goose in a home for mentally handicapped people had tested positive for the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu and all farm and pet birds in a three-km exclusion zone were culled as a precautionary measure over the weekend, he said.

Kuala Lumpur | June 6

AFP - An isolated new outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected among poultry in a village on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital, officials said Wednesday.

Kamarudin Mohammed Isa, head of the disease control section at the Department of Veterinary Services, said the virus was confirmed late Tuesday night in chickens in the Sungei Buluh area of Selangor state.

"We will cull birds within a one kilometre (0.6 mile) radius from the index cases," he said, noting that authorities expected to start killing about 2,000 chickens in the village and surrounding area later Wednesday.

The veterinary department was alerted Sunday by the owner of the infected chickens after about 60 of his birds died, said Kamarudin.

Surveillance teams are being sent to surrounding areas to check for more virus outbreaks but none so far has been detected, he said.

Alison Young | Atlanta | April 27

AJC - Facing a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff, nearly half of the overseas jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are vacant despite an urgent need to guard against foreign health threats. Many of the jobs will remain unfilled for another year, according to an internal CDC memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"This is a critical time for global health," wrote Dr. Stephen Blount, director of the CDC's Coordinating Office for Global Health, in an April 13 memo to CDC Director Julie Gerberding. The potential of an influenza pandemic, the current HIV/AIDS pandemic and the threat of a bioterrorist attack from abroad "fuels the urgency to make overseas assignments in a timely manner," he wrote.

Only 166 of the CDC's 304 overseas positions in 53 countries are filled, according to the memo. At least 85 positions likely will remain unfilled until 2008, Blount said. Among the causes he cited: Delays at a federal human resource center in Atlanta and an additional bureaucratic layer that requires CDC foreign postings be approved by a senior political appointee's office in Washington.

CDC job postings include openings in China and Indonesia — locations where outbreaks of the H5N1 avian influenza virus have caused significant concern.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said global health is a top priority, that the agency is doing everything it can to deploy staff and that progress is being made.