bird flu

The failure to have sequences from Indonesia made available to the world's scientific community continues to be a scandal. Whose doorstep to lay the blame? There would seem to be three possibilities: WHO, the scientists who do the sequencing, and the Government of Indonesia. An official from the government has already said they would consider a request for release favorably if one were made, but WHO admits they have yet to make one. Meanwhile, sequences often appear in GenBank upon publication of a paper. The available evidence, therefore, suggests WHO is guilty of not pressing the…

It seems the dam has broken in Thailand as far as talking about possible bird flu. For nine months the Thais have been saying their aggressive culling strategy has been working to keep H5N1 at bay. We and others have wondered if the virus was just flying beneath the Thai radar, despite official denials. Even this month, as reports were increasing of poultry deaths and suspect human cases agriculture officials were saying, "no problem." Then the virus was confirmed to be in chickens and shortly thereafter the first confirmed death since last December was acknowledged, a 17 year old Thai boy…

The human bird flu vaccine news from pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline sounds good and it probably is. Probably. There is a lot we don't know yet as the results have not been published in the open medical literature. Here's what GSK is claiming. First, they claim to have produced a vaccine that raises antibodies in 80% of the test subjects (400 Belgians) with a very small amount of viral material (antigen), 3.8 micrograms given twice (7.6 micrograms, total). Previous attempts to make vaccines against H5N1 have required much more antigen. Because our ability to produce viral antigen in eggs is very…

Avian influenza is capable of infecting mammals other than humans. Like domestic cats. Cats are companion animals ("pets") in Europe and North America and live as closely with humans as birds do in Indonesia, southeast asia and China, perhaps even more closely. They are thus potential bridge vectors from birds to humans, contracting the disease by eating birds and then nestling with people. So far there have been a number of reports of naturally acquired infections probably from birds to cats and from cat to cat but not yet from cats to humans. The possibility that cats might be involved in…

The return of H5N1 to Thailand we were pretty sure was underway has now been confirmed. Our real question is whether it is new or just poking its head above water after having been there all along without being "detected." We put that in scare quotes because we suspect the surveillance system in Thailand isn't very sensitive, so its alleged absence over the last year is suspect. Poultry deaths have been reported to outsiders for about a month, but the authorities have been denying H5N1 was involved. Thailand is blaming imports from neighboring countries and has instituted an import ban.…

If you want a summary of all that is wrong with Indonesian bird flu policy, here it is: The huge territory and people's ignorance had hampered Indonesian health authorities' efforts to eliminate bird flu, Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Friday. Since the government launched massive efforts to combat the spread of the virus a few years ago, many chicken and bird traders and owners have been reluctant to kill their belongings which were found infected with the H5N1 virus, due to the lack of knowledge about the danger of virus and the consideration that about ten U.S. cents…

That pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche would have trouble meeting the orders it received for its antiviral Tamiflu was well known and not a surprise. Roche's manufacturing method is said to be laborious, dangerous in spots and have a long production cycle (NB: shorter and cheaper methods have since been discovered but it isn't clear anyone is using them to make Tamiflu at this point; see our post here). So it has surprised and upset many to see the drugmaker marketing Tamiflu to businesses, essentially inviting them to move to the head of the line. With only a fraction of the doses needed…

China is reporting more bird flu in chickens, this time in the northwest province of Xinjiang (India News). It is Thailand, however, that is attracting attention because of the alleged lull in reported cases from there along with praise the country has received for its seeming success in curbing the disease in birds. Some of us have been cautious in our judgment, however, and now others within Thailand are voicing skepticism that the picture is so rosy. Amid mounting reports of irregular poultry deaths in many areas, leading virologist Professor Prasert Thongcharoen expressed strong doubts…

Indonesia has come under strong criticism because its agriculture department has been unable to cope with the avian influenza epidemic in its backyard and commercial poultry. Among other things, Indonesia doesn't have an effective mandatory surveillance program for the infection in birds. Guess who else doesn't have one? The U.S. Agriculture Department's failure to develop a "comprehensive" program to monitor for bird flu could leave the country unprepared if an outbreak happens, a bipartisan group of senators said on Friday. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, six lawmakers…

It sounds trivial but it isn't. What to do about pets in the event of a disaster. We saw in the Katrina evacuation how failure to take separation anxiety of pet owners into account created a major public safety problem. People were unwilling to leave their dogs, cats and other pets behind and if told they couldn't take them, they refused to leave. This problem has been known by sociologists and others studying disasters for decades but disaster planners don't bother to consult the literature, it seems. Now, with the problem highlighted on CNN for a week straight, there is finally legal…

CDC has disgorged $225 million to state and local health departments for bird fluhttp://www.dhhs.gov/news/press/2006pres/20060711.html. That's some good news, made better by the fact that these phase II allocations seem usable for a wider range of public health needs than bioterrorism or bird flu, narrowly conceived. The money goes to help states pay for activities above and beyond what they normally provide, said Joe Posid of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which distributes the money. "They'll use the CDC funds for more macro or public health purposes such as…

An interesting Commentary on the problem of releasing the flu sequences has been posted on the blog Anthropologique by its proprietor, J. F. Brinkworth. I disagree with it, but he makes some pertinent points. Brinkworth believes WHO is not at fault for failure to release the Indonesian sequences and he provides some information of which I, and probably most others, are not aware: Indonesia has very, very stringent nucleic sequence I.P. laws. All genetic material recovered there is their property. Their Convention of Biological Dviersity Law No.5 (1994) and Cultural Practices Law No. 12 (1992…

Indonesia has now done in one year what it took Vietnam three years to "accomplish": rack up 42 deaths from bird flu . Indonesia and Vietnam are now tied for the most number of deaths from the disease, although Indonesia did it with fewer cases, a reflection of the fact the case fatality ratio in Indonesia is 78% (42/54), while in Vietnam it is 45% (42/93). The latest case is a 44 year old male who died on July 12 after being hospitalized with fever and respiratory difficulties of two days duration. He lived in a Jakarta suburb and was "reported to have had contact with birds." Whether this…

The frozen chicken from China story has a follow-up. You may remember that a warehouse full of the chicken was found in Detroit although import is banned to the US because it came from an area where there is bird flu. An unstated amount of the meat was already in commerce in restaurants and retail stores. If you live in Detroit, you probably haven't received a recall notice, however: Health officials have begun contacting restaurants and markets supplied by a Troy warehouse suspected of importing Chinese poultry, but there was no plan Thursday for alerting the retail customers of Asia Food…

Indonesia has sacked its animal health official in charge of bird flu (BBC). The Government of Indonesia has said his departure was a result of a routine rotation of personnel. Right. And George Bush is really one of the Andrew Sisters. This is clearly a lie and is stupid on two counts. The first is that no one with more than two neurons would believe it. The second, because if it were true it would be even stupider. Why would you take an experienced and competent person and routinely rotate them out of their job? At any rate, we know Sjamsul Bahri's departure is not likely to make that much…

Declan Butler, senior correspondent at Nature, has a particularly infuriating news article today, infuriating because of the attitude it reveals from WHO, CDC and the Indonesian government about releasing information about influenza they alone are privy to. The main points of the article revealing more details of the genetic sequences of the large Indonesian cluster of eight related people in Karo, Sumatra in Indonesia have been known for at least a month, although never publicly released before Butler's article. Presumably he obtained the information from the same sources we and others did.…

If you are worried you'd have to go all the way to China to eat chicken from a bird flu endemic area, worry not. You can just go to Detroit. The U.S. Department of Agriculture worked with the Michigan Department of Agriculture on a raid at a Troy warehouse. Investigators found chicken, goose and pork products from areas in China affected by bird flu, Local 4 reported. USDA investigators seized more than 1,600 pounds of illegally imported poultry and pork products, the station reported. Most of the products were mislabeled and put in boxes that read frozen tilapia, according to the report. "…

The national bird flu plan is quite explicit in its promises to local public health. There aren't any. The plan is, "you're on your own." Fair enough. A pandemic happens everywhere so there's no "outside" to send help from. But how well prepared is local public health? Bush has given them the power and supposedly provided them with money to handle bioterrorism attacks. That should have been some help. It wasn't. Unfortunately what the left hand giveth, the Right Hand taketh away. From Cape Cod, Massachusetts: But budget cuts over the past few years, coupled with a lack of staff, have left…

In the first six months of 2006 the number of countries detecting infected birds has doubled. Case fatality remains extraordinarily high. And limited human to human transmission, with at least one moderately large cluster is becoming more evident. WHO continues to say most human infections come from poultry, although the evidence for this is not conclusive. Many cases have scant or no history. The feared easy person to person transmission has yet to occur, but the virus is not standing still. It continues to change genetically and move into wider and more varied niches. Sixty countries are…

Several countries have elected to vaccinate poultry as a bird flu control measure. Vietnam and China both have such programs. The Vietnamese program is credited with their good record on bird flu this year. But poultry vaccination has some down sides: The potential impact on human health of poorly implemented bird inoculations and experimental poultry vaccines needs to be carefully considered, according to a report prepared by the influenza team at the European Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control in Stockholm. A drop in the number of human cases in countries where fowl are vaccinated…