A ten-year-old Egyptian girl down with bird flu

Via Reuters

A ten-year-old Egyptian girl has tested positive for bird flu, becoming the 25th human case from that country.

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14640528.htm

Great Chinese fill-out-the-form defence against the Bird Flu!

Came across this really interesting blog from Jared Beard, an expat living in Hong Kong, who has to frequently travel to the mainland China.

It tells of the Great Chinese Bbureaucratic Defence against the Bird Flu.

Apparently, foreigners entering China have to complete a form declaring that they do not have the Bird Flu!

Only foreigners have to do this.

Chinese citizens do not need to declare their Bird Flu status.

This is so funny in so many ways.

So here is China, which is said to be not only the original source of the current H5N1 virus, but also one of the major Bird Flu hot spots in the world, pretending that it is the “foreigners” who are likely to introduce the Bird Flu in to China!

Well as Jared Beard points out, at the very least the form filling provides jobs for two collectors and stackers of forms :).

Here is the blog post from Jared   http://www.geoexpat.com/forum/lok-ma-chau-t18142.html

Supari Proves to be a Tough Nut! Will not share Bird Flu samples!!

Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari Is refusing to share the H5N1 virus samples, before there is a “material transfer agreement with the WHO”.

She said that Indonesian Government is worried that large drug companies will use the Indonesian H5N1 strain samples, sent by WHO affiliated laboratories to confirm human infections, to make vaccines that will ultimately be unaffordable for developing nations.

Last month senior WHO officials travelled to Jakarta to meet with Supari on the issue. At the time the health minister agreed that on an interim basis Indonesia would share sample viruses so that the WHO’s reference laboratories could track how the H5N1 virus is changing.

Here is more:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia will not share bird flu samples with the World Health Organization without a legally binding agreement promising the virus won’t be used to develop an expensive commercial vaccine, the health minister said Tuesday. Siti Fadilah Supari, digging her heels in following a weekslong standoff with the global body, said a letter of guarantee from WHO’s director general Margaret Chan late last month was not good enough. “We will not share the virus before there is a Material Transfer Agreement,” she told reporters, adding that she hoped one would be drafted during a bird flu meeting in Jakarta in late March between Asia Pacific health leaders and WHO. Several countries are developing vaccines to protect against H5N1, the bird flu virus strain blamed for 167 human deaths worldwide – more than a third of them in Indonesia.

Cats, Tigers and the Bird Flu

Bird Flu, is not only for the birds.

The H5N1 virus has been found in pigs, cats, dogs, rodents and even tigers.

Over 83 tigers have recently died or have been destroyed at a Thai zoo in an outbreak of bird flu.The tigers had started dying of Bird Flu, at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in central Chonburi province in Thailand after eating raw chicken carcasses.

Wild Animal Protection and Conservation Centre head Preecha Rattaporn said 83 dead tigers, including at least 18 killed by lethal injection, were confirmed bird flu victims.

The most dangerous cross infection of the H5N1 virus may be that of cats however.

Jason Gale and Karima Anjani writing for Bloomberg, have a good article on an old fear that we have all had about the spread of the H5N1 virus.

C.A.Nidom, a scientist at Airlangga University in Surabaya, found H5N1 in 98 of 500 cats living near poultry markets in high-risk areas on the island of Java and in Lampung province on southern Sumatra island.

Looking back it is obvious that dead birds are a regular part of cats and if the dead birsd the  cat eats died of H5N1 then the cat is very likely to be infected with the virus.

“Cats eat birds and therefore can become infected by this virus and help it to mutate and adapt” to mammals, said Andrew Jeremijenko, who headed an influenza surveillance project for the Naval American Medical Research Unit in Indonesia until last March. “Maybe there is a role that cats are playing and we don’t understand it yet.”

Avian-flu experts have long viewed pigs as the mammals in which a pandemic virus may emerge because the farm animals can catch versions of flu that infect birds and humans. As a host for both types of the flu, pigs are one of several species in which the viruses combine and mutate, acquiring properties that make each year’s seasonal flu different from the year before.

Pandemic Concern

Erasmus University may assist in helping determine how cats become infected, what damage the virus causes to their organs, whether it spreads among the felines and it has undergone any genetic changes, said Ron Fouchier, a virologist at Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Erasmus.

“We have yet to understand the epidemiology of the virus, how it crosses from different species,” says Weaver. “If we miss the key component that these cats perhaps disseminate the disease, then we’re not catching up with the game.”

The H5N1 virus shares many characteristics with the Spanish flu that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919. Researchers say the virus started in birds, until genetic changes allowed it to spread quickly in people. Cats may be a concern not just because they prey on birds, but because in some parts of the world they share food and beds with people.

Cat Warning  “One thing we do not want is for this virus to become endemic in cats,” Fouchier said Feb. 27 in a telephone interview. “As long as these are dead-end infections — a cat eats a chicken and then dies — it’s not so much of a problem.”

Here is the full article by Jason Gale and Karima Anjani

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aPZdWp9ru3ps&refer=healthcare

Obama & the Bird-Flu-Investment “smell Test”!

Following my previous post on this sad situation, here is a good article from Richard Bradley in New York:

http://richardbradley.net/2007/03/is-obama-honest.html

Senator Obama and the Bird-Flu Drug Company?

Oh on Senator Obama!

Not you too!!

We were all hoping that you would be totally beyond even the slightest chance of getting involved in any unethical goings on.

It is not only that you must be beyond reproach but also that you are perceived by all to be so.

The investment in two speculative and relatively obscure companies, (including a Bird Flu drug developer) whose major investors included some of your biggest political donors, is at the very best, very very silly.

If you are going to be the next President then you really can not be silly.

And this on top of the last year scandal when you acknowledged that it had been a mistake to be involved with the dodgy developer with regards to the purchase of your home!!!

Here is an article with more:

Reporting for the NY Times MIKE McINTIRE and CHRISTOPHER DREW tell us that Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.

The most recent financial disclosure form for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also shows that he bought more than $50,000 in stock in a satellite communications business whose principal backers include four friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.

The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.

Mr. Obama has made ethics a signature issue, and his quest for the presidency has benefited from the perception that he is unlike politicians who blend public and private interests.There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.

Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees. Among those donors was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of an F.B.I. inquiry into public corruption in Albany, who had also contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sought to undermine John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004.

Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed about the stock deals, has already had to contend with a controversy that arose out of his reliance on a major campaign contributor in Chicago to help him in a personal financial transaction. In that earlier case, he acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to involve the contributor, a developer who has since been indicted in an unrelated political scandal, in deals related to the Obamas’ purchase of a home.

Second death from Bird Flu In Laos.

Almost immediately after the first human death from the Bird Flu virus in Laos, a second fatality has just been announced!

“The patient passed away at approximately 14:30 today,” the WHO said in statement issued jointly with the Laos health ministry.
 See full news item here:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/261954/1/.html

Make a fortune with Bird Flu!

In the footsteps of the the terrorism futures market introduced by Pentagon briefly a while back, there is now a Flu-tures Market!

For the Avian Influenza Prediction Market See below:

http://fluprediction.uiowa.edu/fluhome/AvianFlu_prospectus.html

Of Bird Flu, Vietnam and the 1st of March!

Bui Ba Bong, the deputy minister of agriculture and rural development for the Government of  Vietnam has announced, that as of tomorrow, First of March, farmers are permitted to resume hatching and raising water fowl nationwide, including ducks, geese and swans.

The ban on the above activities was placed in Vietnam almost three years ago, after the bird flu epidemic was discovered in Vietnam’s poultry in early 2004.

The ban has been lifted, even though some officials have warned the local authorities in northern regions of Vietnam, to stay on full alert as the area is experiencing cold, wet weather – favorable conditions for bird flu to re-emerge.

What I would really like to know though, is the following.

Did the date selected for the resumption of hatching and raising water fowl by the Government of Vietnam, have any thing to do with the fact that the 1st of March is also the beginning of the Bird Migration season?

See this From Dow Jones Newswires:

“the Nordic countries will raise the risk level regarding bird flu outbreaks to medium as of March 1, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said Wednesday.  The raised risk level is due to the start of the migration season, which last year brought with it infected birds to the region.”

Could it be that Bird Flu experts in Vietnam did not know the significance of this date?

Are there any conspiracy theorists who would like to tell us what this could be all about?

Disclaimer- The above post is only half serious and could well include an attempt at a bit of humor- well a kind of humor any way.

Nordic Countries to raise Bird Flu risk level from 1st of March!

Now they are saying that all of the recent Bird Flu activity was just a sample and not the real thing!

It seems that the Bird Flu Migration season is yet to start next month when the risk of Bird Flu goes higher!!

Malin Rising, writing for the Dow Jones Newswires, says that all of the Nordic countries will raise the risk level regarding bird flu outbreaks to medium as of March 1, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said Wednesday. 

The raised risk level is due to the start of the migration season, which last year brought with it infected birds to the region.  

Among other things, the change means poultry and other birds kept outdoors need to be kept under cover and can’t be fed with water from lakes or streams.

Full article Via the Cattlenetwork, at www.birdflubreakingnews.com 

H5N1 virus in all the countries around them, but no Bird-Flu in Iran!

No case of bird flu has been detected in the city of Amol in northern Mazandaran province, said Minister of Health Kamran Baqeri Lankarani on Monday, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a local meeting, Lankarani denied recent reports the deadly bird flu H5N1 virus had invaded the city.

“No human or bird casualty from the bird flu virus has been reported in the city,” Lankarani stressed.

Although neighboring countries of Iran such as Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq were hit by the H5N1 virus, “Iran remains free of bird flu,” Lankarani said.

He expressed appreciation for efforts of Iranian officials, particularly those of the country’s veterinary organization, to prevent an outbreak of the virus in the country.

Citing such efforts, he said special medical teams have been stationed in border areas and local border markets following announced outbreaks in neighboring countries have been closed.

He said that public information programs to inform people of means to avoid infection and spread of the virus have been conducted.