Impact of Bird-Flu on the Map of Europe

The Impact of Bird-Flu on the Map of Europe

                                                               “Bird Flu Map”
 Thanks for the above to “Addshots”

Sources:

http://addshots.blogspot.com/2007/12/bbc-world-maps.html

www.birdflubreakingnews.com

                                                                  

160,000 Geese Gassed to death in Germany following Bird-Flu Scare.

German health officials launched the largest ever massacre of poultry following the latest outbreak of the Bird-Flu in that country.

160,000 geese were slaughtered over the weekend, after the deadly bird-flu virus was found in a poultry farm near the Bavarian city of Erlangen.

The cull was ordered after 400 geese were found dead.  

A team of eight vets and poultry workers at the farm in Wachenroth, Bavaria, started what officials called the biggest ever culling operation in Germany late on Saturday.  The birds were placed in three large containers where they were either gassed or electrocuted, officials said after the operation ended on Sunday afternoon.   

Tests by the Friedrich Loeffler Institute of Veterinary Medicine had found the lethal strain of the virus in five of the birds.

A three-kilometer exclusion zone was set up around the farm, near the city of Erlangen which is about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Munich, as officials began tracking down the cause of the infection.

Initial reports said the infected animals came from another poultry farm in the northern state of Lower Saxony, but this was later denied.

“We have not been able to pinpoint the source of outbreak,” said Bavarian Health Secretary Otmar Bernhard. Experts are expected to keep trying to determine how the virus entered the farm.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed nearly 200 people in recent years, mainly through direct contact with poultry.

Most of the victims have been in Asia.

There have been no human deaths from bird flu in Europe, where outbreaks were reported recently in several countries, including Germany and the Czech Republic.

Bird flu hit wild birds and some domestic poultry in other parts of Germany this year.

 Wild birds can infect domesticated birds with the highly pathogenic strain and it is feared that it could mutate into a strain that could be transmitted among humans.

Sources:

www.birdflubreakingnews.com

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2752566,00.html

goeurope.about.com/…/ss/pope_bavaria_7.htm

www.student.valpo.edu 

150 wild birds died of H5N1 in Germany in the past few weeks.

The Bavarian mountains, lakes and forests in the South of Germany, including the famous Black Forest, is one of the most beautiful regions of Europe.

This is also the area in Germany, where the Bird-Flu virus has been found in its domestic poultry as well as in its wild bird population.

Last week, three ducks were found dead near Speichersee, a lake to the northeast of Munich.

Two out of three ducks found dead there, were confirmed to have been carrying the H5N1 virus.

The surrounding area is being searched for any other dead birds.

It is reported that many more wild birds have been found dead of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Germany.

The Bavarian Police said that the restrictions on movement had been put in place around the Speichersee lake, east of Munich.

 

Press reports said around 14 other birds had also been found dead in the area, but it was not known if they were infected with the virus, which is potentially deadly to humans.

More than 150 wild birds have died of H5N1 in southern and eastern Germany in the past few weeks.

Domestic poultry was found to have been infected with the H5N1 virus last month in Germany.

The disease was found in a smallholding in the eastern state of Thueringen.

It was the first time this year that the highly pathogenic strain of avian flu had been found among domestic birds in Germany.

Scientists have suggested it could have jumped the border from the neighbouring Czech Republic where it has infected poultry on large turkey and chicken farms.

A number of countries have banned poultry exports from Germany, which battled a widespread bird flu epidemic in 2006. The disease spread to mammals last year, infecting three cats and a marten.

Sources:

www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=070804173337.96uzg981&cat=science

student.valpo.edu

bicyclegermany.com/tours.htm

FAF Keeping the nightmare of Bird-Flu alive – British Medical Journal

Tony Delamothe, the deputy editor of the British Medical Journal (helping doctors make better decisions) is an honorable man.

He does not, I believe, wish to create a false sense of complacency in the minds of the public and more importantly in the minds of the various Governments around the world. (it takes very little, for the authorities to find alternative uses for any funds earmarked for the prevention and/or management of any Bird-flu outbreaks!)

So it was a bit strange to see the article in the esteemed British Medical Journal, discussing the “small group of people” those who promote avian flu as something that remains an urgent concern, working assiduously at “keeping the nightmare alive”.

Here is an excerpt:

“Somewhere, I imagine, there’s a small group of people proud to be counted among the Friends of Avian Flu, or FAF for short.

I suspect they have a catchy mission statement, such as “Keeping the nightmare alive,” and lapel badges of vaguely bird-like shape.

Their challenge is to keep bird flu forever in the public eye. This should be getting harder, as influenza H5N1 is proving particularly resistant to undergoing the killer mutation that would allow efficient human to human transmission of the virus. Ten years after the strain first appeared in humans, it has killed just 191 people.”

I was going to say to Mr Delamothe that the point is that H5N1 is a Bird virus and is NOT supposed to be killing any people. Not even a single human being should be killed by a Bird virus. I was then going to show the slow but steady growth of the number of victims and the spread of the virus over the last few years from the east to the West.

I was going to remind him that it is the very public concern for the growing number of the Bird-Flu outbreaks, that has started to see better practices of managing poultry at the Poultry Factory Farms.

There was a lot more I was going to point out to Mr Delamothe.

However, with the outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in Germany and France this week, in addition to many other countries that have been afflicted with the Bird-Flu virus for some time now, there does not seem to be any need for any one to argue this point with Mr Delamothe.

I would like to ask Mr Tony Delamothe only this.

In view of the events this week, can he guaranty that avian flu is something that DOES NOT remain an urgent concern?

If not, then I wonder if he has the courage to apologise for his remarks in that article in the British Medical Journal now.

How about it Mr Delamothe?

By the way, speaking of- helping doctors make better decisions- I personally recall the roll of the BMJ and the Medical Establishment, in keeping the sales of the vastly expensive peptic ulcers medicines, going for years after Drs Marshall and Warren showed that the cause of the disease was a bacterium that lived in stomachs and that the disease could be cured with simple inexpensive antibiotics.

I remember all kinds of articles all over the place by “experts”, dismissing the notion outright that a living organism could survive in such a hostile environment as the stomach. The stomach juices are so acidic, they said, that no living organism could survive in such a hostile environment! 

Here is the full article from the British Medical Journal, which is of course, always- helping doctors make better decisions.

 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7608/0

Lethal Strain of Bird-Flu confirmed in Bavarian Water Birds

At least three water birds found dead in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg were infected with a strain of bird flu that can be lethal to humans.

A spokeswoman for Germany’s Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Consumer Protection said a total of three birds had tested positive for the worst strain of the H5N1 virus.

Veterinary experts at the Friedrich Löffler Institute 

the government’s top veterinary laboratory,on the island of Riems in the north of Germany determined that two swans and a wild duck had contracted the H5N1 bird flu strain.

Tests on the other five animals were continuing. “I expect that these are infected, as well,” said Karin Koester, spokeswoman for the office of veterinary medicine in Bavaria.

In the meantime, officials ordered that all poultry farmers in the exclusion zone keep their animals indoors. Pet owners were warned not to let their dogs or cats roam free in the affected area.

The German Authorities have passed this information on to the European Commission.

The European Commission said that a regional laboratory in Bavaria and a German national laboratory had both confirmed the presence of the strain in several dead birds.

Here is a link for the news item re the above story from Reuters:

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-06-24T194423Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-281502-1.xml&archived=False