Bali has first human
bird flu death
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters)—An Indonesian woman has died of
bird flu in Bali, the first human death from the virus on the
resort island hugely popular with foreign tourists. A
health-ministry official said on Monday the 29-year-old woman
came from west Bali. She died on Sunday in hospital after
suffering from high fever. Her five-year-old daughter also died
recently after playing with chickens, but it was unclear if the
girl died of bird flu.
Joko
Suyono of the ministry’s bird flu center said a 2-year-old girl
living close by had also developed bird flu symptoms, but was
recovering in hospital. Test results had not come back yet. News
of the woman’s death will be a blow to Bali, which is the center
of Indonesia’s tourism industry and has been trying to shake off
the impact of several deadly bomb attacks by Islamic militants
in recent years.
The
woman from a village in the district of Jembrana was suffering
from a high fever before dying of multiple organ failure, said
Ken Wirasandi, a doctor at the Sanglah hospital in the Balinese
capital Denpasar. Suyono said by telephone a second laboratory
test had confirmed the woman had the H5N1 bird flu virus. Suyono
said there had been sick chickens around the woman’s house, and
many had died suddenly in recent weeks.
“The
villagers didn’t burn the carcasses. Instead they buried them or
fed them to pigs,” Suyono added.Contact with sick fowl is the
most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus. The woman
had started showing symptoms more than a week ago, but was only
admitted to hospital six days later. She was transferred to a
bigger hospital in Denpasar on Friday, where she was treated in
the isolation unit, Suyono said. Don’t Miss
He
said initial investigations indicated last month the daughter
had become sick after playing with chickens and died a week
later. “We were unable to retrieve any tissue samples, so we
can’t confirm whether she died of bird flu,” Suyono added.
Bird
flu story source: CNN online
H5N2 bird flu virus
detected in Italian poultry
Italy
- (Promed) - An outbreak of low pathogenic avian influenza, type
H5N2, has been diagnosed on a poultry farm in Lugo, Italy. This
has been notified by the Ministry of Agrculture.
Lugo
is 25 km(15.5 miles) west of Ravenna, in Emilia Romano. The farm
included 7000 adult ducks, 3000 geese and 150 chickens. The
infection was detected within the framework of the annual,
routine sero-surveillance activities. No clinical symptoms were
seen.
The
holding was confined, and the animals will be culled. A
restriction zone of one-km(.6 mile) radius has been imposed
around the site. Last week, an infected hobby-holding was found.
Bird
flu story source: Promed
Italy minister says
Russian ban on poultry unjustified
ROME,
August 21 (RIA Novosti) - Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De
Castro said Russia’s ban on poultry imports from Italy was
ungrounded, a local business daily reported Tuesday.
The
Russian agricultural regulator introduced Monday a temporary ban
on Italian poultry imports to Russia. The ban covers Italian
imports of live poultry, eggs and all poultry products, as well
as used equipment for keeping, slaughtering and processing
poultry.
“Our
poultry control is one of the strictest in Europe, and poultry
deliveries to the domestic and foreign markets come exclusively
from healthy birds,” the Il Sole-24 ore newspaper quoted the
minister as saying.
The
daily said that although two outbreaks of the H5N2 virus, which
is harmless to humans, had been detected in Italy, the country
maintained bird flu under control.
Bird
flu story source: Novosti
Bird Flu in
Chickens, Ducks Spread to Two More Vietnam Provinces
Authorities in Vietnam confirmed Saturday that bird flu has
spread to two more provinces in the country.
That
brings the total to four of Vietnam’s 64 provinces where the
H5N1 virus has been found in recent outbreaks.
Agriculture officials say the virus killed 250 young chickens in
the southern Dong Thap province about a week ago. They report
another 150 ducks and 35 chickens were sick with the virus on
Wednesday in the northern Thai Nguyen province.
The
virus had earlier been reported in the northern provinces of
Dien Bien and Cao Bang.
Bird
flu story source: VOA
Deadly bird flu found in German poultry farm
BERLIN
(Reuters) - An outbreak of deadly bird flu has been identified
in a southern German poultry farm, a spokeswoman for Bavaria’s
environment ministry said on Saturday.
The
spokeswoman said dead ducks from the farm in Wachenroth in
Bavaria’s Erlangen-Hoechstadt area had tested positive for the
highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be lethal
for people living in close contact with birds.
All
160,000 birds in the farm would be culled, the ministry
spokeswoman said. The farm has been sealed off.
Local
authorities had earlier said the farm contained some 44,000
birds. Officials discovered the infection after more than 400
ducks at the farm died over a short period of time.
Germany identified several cases of the deadly H5N1 strain in
wild birds in Bavaria in June. A string of bird flu infections
were also registered in Germany last year.
Earlier this week, Russia banned poultry imports from Italy to
prevent the spread of bird flu after outbreaks there.
Source
of bird flu story: Reuters
Government
Watchdog Reports Bird Flu Outbreak in Krasnodar ( Russia )
A
government watchdog on Tuesday reported the third outbreak this
year of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu after 410 birds died
on a poultry farm in the Krasnodar region, but the growing
poultry sector is set to withstand the scare.
Another 414 birds were culled and strict quarantine measures
were put in place at the farm in the Black Sea region after
local laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the virus in
dead birds, the Agriculture Ministry’s Federal Service for
Veterinarian and Vegetation Sanitary Supervision said.
“It’s
serious enough to bring in strict measures, including
quarantine, to make sure it does not spread,” watchdog spokesman
Alexei Alexeyenko said. “An investigation is being carried out
to determine the source of the infection.” The highly pathogenic
H5N1 strain was responsible for the deaths of birds at the
Lebyazhye-Chepiginskoye farm, in the same region where the virus
was detected in dead domestic birds in January.
The
second outbreak this year occurred in February, when several
cases in towns around Moscow were traced to the city’s
best-known pet market. The country expects to boost poultry meat
output 16 percent this year to about 1.8 million tons, cutting
the share of imports in domestic consumption. Domestic poultry
producers last year supplied about 53 percent of the country’s
consumption.
Dmitry
Rylko, general director of the Institute for Agricultural Market
Studies, said the size of the country and its quick reaction to
bird flu cases offered commercial poultry farmers protection
against bird flu. “Such cases will be repeated from time to time
in various regions of the world, including Russia,” he said.
“In
Russia, large-scale commercial farming is quite well protected
against it due to good quarantine measures and the very low
density of the poultry population, even in the south.”
Bird flu story source: Moscow Times
Indonesia reports 85th bird flu death
JAKARTA (AFP) — A 33-year-old Indonesian man from Sumatra island
died of bird flu on Thursday, bringing the death toll in the
world’s worst-affected nation to 85 and the global toll to 200,
health officials said.
The
plantation worker died at 2:00 pm (0700 GMT), the doctor
treating him at the state general hospital in the city of
Pekanbaru, Azizman Daad, told AFP. A health ministry official
earlier confirmed that the man was infected with the deadly H5N1
virus, after two tests came back positive.
The
archipelago nation has now reported 106 cases overall, including
the 85 deaths. Daad said it was not clear whether the man had
come into contact with infected poultry, but he had bought two
live chickens at a local market.
The
patient was taken to hospital in Pekanbaru on Saturday and
transferred on Monday to the general state hospital, the
facility designated by the government to treat bird flu patients
in the region.Separately, two children and an adult on the
island of Bali were being treated as suspected carriers of the
virus, said Putu Andrika, from the bird flu team at Sanglah
general hospital in the capital Denpasar.
“They
are not in critical condition,” Andrika said. Tests were being
carried out to confirm whether they were infected, he added.
Bird flu story source: AFP
Deadly New Virus Draws Experts to
"Hot Zones"
This summer, a team of virus hunters will journey to
Australia, Malaysia, India, Sumatra and Thailand to explore
what they call "hot zones"—sites where deadly new diseases
have emerged.
In
all the locations the common enemy is the Nipah virus, or a
relative. The Nipah broke out in Malaysia in 1998. Now known
to be transmitted by a fruit bat, it first killed thousands
of pigs. Within weeks, it spread to people. The final human
death toll was more than 110.
Now the virus hunters are on the move to learn why and how
the Nipah virus strikes. Their research can help head off
not only the Nipah but also other virulent diseases that
break out suddenly to plague man and beast.
To
curtail the initial Nipah outbreak, the Malaysian government
slaughtered 1 million pigs—decimating the local swine
industry.
"We want to know what changes drove this virus to emerge in
the first place," says Peter Daszak, executive director of
the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, a research group
that focuses on emerging diseases, based at Wildlife Trust
in Palisades, New York. "What conditions allowed this virus
to jump from bats to pigs to people?"
The summer's investigations take on a new urgency because of
recent reports that the Nipah virus, and other similar ones,
may be more widespread in Southeast Asia than anybody
recognized.
A Quick Killer
The National Institute of Health has awarded $1.4 million to
the Consortium to fund further research on the Nipah virus
and the related Hendra virus, also carried by fruit bats.
Fruit bats range from Southeast Asia all the way to Africa,
raising concerns that different species may harbor more
dangerous variants of the Nipah. "There are probably related
viruses all over the area with the potential not just to
cause outbreaks in agricultural stock but also to cause
serious disease in humans," says Stephen Morse, a viral
epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York, director
of Columbia's Center for Public Health Preparedness and
author of the book "Emerging Viruses."
In
Malaysia, Nipah's host, or "reservoir," is a large fruit
bat, Pteropus vampyrus, with a body the size of a
small puppy and a 5-foot wingspan.
Hume Field, a wildlife veterinarian at the Queensland
Department of Primary Industries, in Brisbane, Australia,
who was in Malaysia in 1999 during the outbreak, helped
determine that local fruit bats carried the disease.
Field and another colleague netted more than 300 bats and
sent blood samples to labs in Australia—they tested
positive.
Half the victims will die if flu virus mutates: Expert
Published on:
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
|
|
PETALING JAYA: The scenario if the deadly H5N1 virus mutates
into a strain that can be transmitted from person to person is
that half those infected could die. "This is because we don't
have natural immunity to fight back," said Asia Pacific Society
for Medical Virology president Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Lam Sai
Kit (pic).
He
said as many as 20 per cent of the world's population could
contract the flu. Many would not survive. "One has to look at
the facts. There have been more than 100 cases and over half of
them have died.
"When
there is human-to-human infection, the scenario could be pretty
horrible even if the virus does not change in virulence.
Hopefully, the mortality rate will be lower. "There is no
telling when this will happen. We have to take advantage of this
window of opportunity and be prepared," said Dr Lam, who headed
the team that discovered the Nipah virus.
The
World Health Organisation warned last month that bird flu could
mutate into a form that could be passed between humans, and that
the world was on the brink of a pandemic. Dr Lam believes that
"self-discipline and self-quarantine" must be practised to
reduce exposure in the event of such a crisis.
He
said the authorities should provide guidelines for home nursing
and prevention among family members, and advise the people when
to take a patient to hospital to avoid taxing health facilities.
By
then, health services would be overwhelmed and no country would
be able to provide enough hospital beds, he said. At the same
time, he said, essential services such as electricity, water,
transport and food supply, should be maintained.
In the
meantime, surveillance for respiratory diseases must be stepped
up, and any increase of flu-like cases must be investigated, he
said.
OUTBREAK NEWS: NIPAH VIRUS
Nipah
virus is a newly recognized zoonotic virus. The virus was
discovered in 1999. It has caused disease both in animals and in
humans, through contact with infectious animals. The virus is
named after the location where it was first detected in
Malaysia. Nipah is closely related to another newly recognized
zoonotic virus (1994), called Hendra virus, named after the town
where it first appeared in Australia. Both Nipah and Hendra are
members of the virus family Paramyxoviridae. Although
members of this group of viruses have only caused a few focal
outbreaks, the biologic property of these viruses to infect a
wide range of hosts and to produce a disease causing significant
mortality in humans has made this emerging viral infection a
public heath concern.
Natural host
It is
currently believed that certain species of fruit bats are the
natural hosts of both Nipah and Hendra viruses. They are
distributed across an area encompassing northern, eastern and
south-eastern areas of Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and some of the Pacific Islands. The bats appear to
be susceptible to infection with these viruses, but do not
themselves become ill. It is not known how the virus is
transmitted from bats to animals.
Transmission
The
mode of transmission from animal to animal, and from animal to
human is uncertain, but appears to require close contact with
contaminated tissue or body fluids from infected animals. Nipah
antibodies have been detected in pigs, other domestic and wild
animals. The role of species other than pigs in transmitting
infection to other animals has not yet been determined.
It is
unlikely that Nipah virus is easily transmitted to man although
previous outbreak reports suggest that Nipah virus is
transmitted from animals to humans more readily than Hendra
virus. Despite frequent contact between fruit bats and humans
there is no serological evidence of human infection among bat
carers. Pigs were the apparent source of infection among most
human cases in the Malaysian outbreak of Nipah, but other
sources, such as infected dogs and cats, cannot be excluded.
Human-to-human transmission of Nipah virus has not been
reported.
Clinical features
The
incubation period is between 4 and 18 days. In many cases, the
infection is mild or inapparent (sub-clinical). In symptomatic
cases, the onset is usually with influenza like symptoms, with
high fever and muscle pains (myalgia). The disease may progress
to inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) with drowsiness,
disorientation, convulsions and coma. Fifty percent of
clinically apparent cases die.
Treatment
No
drug therapies have yet been proven to be effective in treating
Nipah infection. Treatment relies on providing intensive
supportive care. There is some evidence that early treatment
with the antiviral drug, ribavirin, can reduce both the duration
of feverish illness and the severity of disease. However, the
efficacy of this treatment in curing disease or improving
survival is still uncertain.
Protection of health care professionals
The
risk of transmission of Nipah virus from sick animals to humans
is thought to be low, and transmission from person-to- person
has not yet been documented, even in the context of a large
outbreak. Therefore, the risk of transmission of Nipah virus to
health care workers is thought to be low. However, transmission
without percutaneous exposure (through a break in the skin
barrier) is theoretically possible, as respiratory secretions
contain the virus. This is why it has been categorized as a
biohazardous agent that should be managed in a high-level
biosecurity laboratory. It is recommended that close contact
with body fluids and infected tissues be avoided if Nipah
infection is suspected.
Outbreaks of Nipah and Hendra viruses
From
September 1998 to April 1999, there was a large outbreak of
encephalitis in Malaysia. During the investigation of this
outbreak, Nipah virus, a previously unrecognized virus, was
identified as the causal agent. A total of 265 people were
infected, of whom 105 died. Ninety-three percent of cases had
occupational exposure to pigs. An associated outbreak among
abattoir workers in Singapore during March 1999 led to 11 cases,
with one death. These workers had been handling pigs that had
been imported from the outbreak areas in Malaysia.
There
have been three recognized outbreaks of Hendra virus in
Australia in 1994 and 1999. Three human cases, leading to two
deaths, were recorded in the 1994 and 1995 outbreaks. In 1995 a
horse was infected, with associated human cases. The precise
mode of virus transmission to the three Australian patients is
not fully understood. All three individuals appear to have
acquired their infection as a result of close contact with
horses which were ill and later died. |
