Picture yourself in a tiny village in a developing country, say in Southeast Asia. One of your chickens die. Before you know it, government troops are getting off the back of lorries and swarming into your compound – slaughtering the rest of your chickens.

This may in fact be happening more often than you might think.
“For every human being infected, there is at least 1 million animals infected—and that is probably an underestimate,” Dr. Ilaria Capua, the head of virology at Italy’s Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, said Tuesday morning. “The veterinary community . . . have never before faced a challenge this big.”

I was recently in Hong Kong and was amazed at how much they take the threat of bird flu seriously. Even at the airport there are special areas to clean oneself, not to mention at public parks where wash-hand basins were installed. But on mainland China, it is much more difficult to adopt widespread measures such as in an encapsulated environment such as Hong Kong. In Indonesia, it is much more difficult even to monitor the situation.

And of course who wants to loose their livelihood. There is not much incentive for a poor farmer to report a dead bird since compensation will not necessarily be enough to buy another animal. And while it is often difficult to grasp, but poor people are badly hit with the economics of both the culling of animals and from trade bans causing the selling of birds to be limited. “Basic outbreak-control measures of culling infected birds and closing live-bird markets pose immediate threats to the income and nutrition of individual families,” according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy.

“This disease represents a food security issue,” Capua said. “It is destroying the livelihood of rural communities.”

On one side there is quite a bit of surprise that this would come in the month of June since birds are not migrating right now. On the other side, since bird flu broke out on a turkey farm in neighboring Czech Republic last week it is feasible that the cases are related. The Czech border is only 120 Km (75 miles) from Nuremberg where the swans were found dead.

As usual Germany sprang into action and cordoned off a 4 km area. All pets must be kept close at hand and Germany’s national laboratory for avian flu testing is busy on the scene to test and control all animals in the area. The German TV was quick to mention that there is no immediate danger to humans although deaths have been reported in Egypt and Indonesia confirmed its 100th case, in a 27- year-old man from Riau just in the last few weeks.

The last known case of Bird Flu in Germany was August 1, 2006 when a black Australian swan was found dead at the Dresden Zoo in eastern Germany. It appeared to be an isolated case.

Germany continues to be vigilant and open about its findings of H5N1 cases and it is expected that this case will be controllable. More news headlines are here &rarr:

Their study of 36 genomes of the virus collected from wild birds in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMA), and Vietnam confirms not only that the virus has very recently spread west from Asia, but that two of the new western strains have already independently combined, or “reassorted,” to create a new strain.

You can read the full report from the link below – it makes for interesting reading…

Bird Flu Genome Study Shows New Strains, Western Spread
Infection Control Today – Phoenix,AZ,USA
The green, pink and yellow arrows depict the three strains of avian flu that have emerged independently in the West. The orange arrows show the likely …

While media interest wanes somewhat on the issue of H5N1 Avian or Bird Influenza, the last month was actually a busy month. It was also a very sad month for the families who lost lives due to the virus. And for many people, the economic toll of having to cull – a nice way to say kill – their livelihood was a huge burden.

In several countries chickens, ducks and other birds were rounded up and culled as the flu virus spread through farms and went on to infect several people. In China, Laos and Egypt for example families were struck down as the human cases climbed.

Kuwait has hit hard although to date no human victims have been found. In England the largest chicken farm in Europe was closed down for a while. And while fingers are being pointed at one another and questions asked as to who is responsible, the reality is that the world just isn’t prepared yet should the virus take a turn for the worst and infect one person, and then the next and the next …

On the good side there were several companies who have reported encouraging research news on vaccines and vaccinations but of course many of the new drugs are unproven. The UN continues to urge countries to be better prepared and give them their dues; they have been training and explaining the problem to governments across the globe.

The month began with Myanmar (former Burma) reporting fresh outbreaks of bird flu. The Middle East began culling chickens with the Crown Prince of Kuwait doing a count to see if enough Tamiflu was stockpiled. China and Vietnam also reported new cases of Avian Influenza in both birds and people.

The equivalent of US$ 450 million for the Egypt H5N1 campaign was announced and Dutch farmers in the Netherlands were ordered to keep their poultry indoors. Australia had a bit of a scare when they found some of their scientists were perhaps exposed to bird flu while at the same time a women died in Laos. South Korea also tested positive again.

As more people became infected in Indonesia and Afghanistan, pharmaceutical companies began more testing of drugs with different mechanisms from the current class of drugs approved. DNA samples from a dead aristocrat from the early 1900′s “Spanish Flu” are still being held out as hopeful aid to understanding the risks. The USA and UN officials agreed to coordinate Avian Flu efforts as did Indonesia and China. Meetings were also held in various parts of the world to discuss cause and effects of a relentless H5N1 month.

So what will this month bring? Hopefully more cooperation and certainly vigilance is necessary. But for those who have lost family or friends and been forced to cull a vital part of the local income, most people will simply hope this next month isn’t as bad as the last. We’ll see.

However, behind all those headlines (all of which you can read in our “Current Headlines” section) there were also so interesting stories about vaccines being developed.

Just days ago, GlaxoSmithKline reported that tests of the company’s bird flu vaccine candidate indicate the treatment works for other versions of the virus as well. This would work as a type of primer to help the bodies immune system adjust according to GSK’s England office.

Also being reported is that scientists in Perth, Australia have had promising results from their hard work (although a few scientists had to be quarantined for fear they had been breathing the virus).

Of course vaccine trials are always going on with various companies involved. However, it is good to see that behind the bad news headlines of H5N1 spreading, some good news is emerging as well.

According to researches, hands are the most common mode of disease transmission, and one of the common ways people catch the flu is by rubbing their noses after their hands have been contaminated with the flu virus.

So most people wash their hands before eating, right? Wrong, surveys suggest at the most sixty percent of people take the time to do this simple yet effective step, and of course not everyone has access to either soap or clean water.

Still, the influenza virus and the H5N1 Avian flu variation can remain on surfaces for several hours and get into the body through hand contact to the mouth, nose or eyes. For those who can, hand washing and personal hygiene are a simple but very effective help to stop the spread of what is turning out to be a very deadly disease.

In Vietnam where a current outbreak of Bird Flu has authorities nervous, experts are campaigning for hand washing. “Frequent hand washing with soap may help us reduce the risk of bird flu,” one such advert says. Proper hand washing takes us only 15-20 seconds. Because a bar of soap costs relatively little, it’s a small amount for prevention preferable to spending a larger amount on doctors.

More details of this and other personal hygiene tips are on our site, www.xodigo.com/epidemics/prevention/, but the bottom line is, washing your hands with soap frequently helps prevent bird flu transmission.

THAILAND

Thailand has suffered its first outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in six months, an Agriculture Ministry official said yesterday after a rash of outbreaks. In the north, more than 100 ducks were found dead from H5N1 on Jan. 10; further south, the disease killed several wild birds in December. A major poultry exporter, Thailand is a hot zone for the virus.

INDONESIA

The government of Jakarta is banning residents from breeding poultry in residential areas starting February 1. In a bid to stem a surge in human deaths from the H5N1 virus (bird flu), the Indonesian government will slaughter hundreds of thousands of backyard chickens. An Indonesian hospital was overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms as the disease spread further in Vietnam and Thailand and Japan. Officials say they have prepared more hospitals to deal with bird flu cases. Four more people have died since Jan. 10, and several patients remain hospitalized. The 18-year-old son of one victim tested positive for H5N1 as well, raising fears of human-to-human transmission. Dozens of cats have also tested positive to the H5N1 virus.

VIETNAM

Seven of Vietnam’s 64 provinces have reported poultry outbreaks this year, and more than 30,000 birds have been culled. A boy in the northern province of Phichit is suspected of having contracted avian influenza had direct contact with a sick chicken before falling ill.

AFRICA

In Egypt three family members died in late December of H5N1, probably contracted from infected poultry in the household. On Jan. 12 Nigeria announced a cull of some 20,000 birds after two farms reported outbreaks.

“This is no time to relax or think we’ve dodged a bullet at all,” spokesman Dick Thompson said, speaking from WHO headquarters in Geneva. “We believe that the threat is every bit as real now as it was two or three years ago.”

Unlike conventional flu vaccines, which are developed by growing the influenza virus in hens’ eggs and then administered as a weakened or killed form of the virus, DNA-based vaccines contain only portions of the influenza virus’ genetic material. Once inside the body, the DNA instructs human cells to make proteins that act as a vaccine against the virus.

VRC Director Gary Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., together with a team of scientists from the VRC recognized the potential for employing new vaccine technology against influenza, a disease for which effective vaccines have long been made, but for which the reliability of supply and manufacturing capacity has been problematic. Dr. Nabel and his colleagues previously have shown the DNA vaccine approach to be effective against influenza viruses in animal models, including highly pathogenic viruses such as the H5N1 strain and the H1N1 virus that caused the deadly 1918 pandemic. The DNA vaccine used in this study is similar to other investigational vaccines evaluated by the VRC that hold promise for controlling other viruses, such as HIV, Ebola, SARS and West Nile.

“An effective H5N1 influenza vaccine would provide a potentially life-saving advance against a global health threat,” notes NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.”More broadly, development of this DNA vaccine technology has the potential to improve our production capacity for vaccines to prevent seasonal influenza and other diseases.”

“This influenza vaccine trial is further evidence of the ability of the NIAID Vaccine Research Center to rapidly translate basic research into potential products,” he adds.”Our accelerated effort to understand and find new solutions to pandemic influenza is part of the NIAID commitment to respond to new emerging infectious disease threats and to improve public health preparedness.”

Highly pathogenic avian influenza A viruses, specifically H5N1, have emerged in the past decade, causing widespread sickness and death in domestic and wild bird populations. As of December 27, 2006, 261 laboratory-confirmed human cases of H5N1 had been reported to the World Health Organization, resulting in death of more than half of infected individuals. While human cases remain relatively rare and are largely the result of direct virus transmission from infected birds, a few cases of human-to-human transmission have been reported. The severity of disease and the potential for human-to-human spread has provided a major incentive to accelerate developing a human vaccine for avian influenza.

With the spread of avian influenza virus, new strains have emerged, including clade II viruses in Indonesia and elsewhere that have drifted genetically from the initial strains detected in Southeast Asia. With this study, the investigators hope to learn whether new technologies, such as DNA vaccines, can provide protection against such viruses.

“This vaccine is aimed at newer strains of the H5N1 virus that currently pose a threat in Indonesia and represents an example of our ability to respond to shifting viruses with modern technology,” says Dr. Nabel.

The study will enroll 45 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 60. Fifteen will receive placebo injections and 30 will receive three injections of the investigational vaccine over 2 months and will be followed for 1 year. Volunteers will not be exposed to influenza virus.

The vaccine contains no infectious material, and the virus was not present during any stage of the manufacturing process, notes Julie E. Martin, D.O., principal investigator of the study. “It is impossible for the vaccine to cause infection,” she adds, “because it employs new technology known to safely stimulate broad immune responses.” NIAID researchers will measure immune responses to the vaccine, assess its safety, and compare its potency to more traditional vaccine approaches.

Individuals interested in enrolling in the trial may visit http://www.clinicaltrials.gov or call the VRC toll-free at-LIFE (5433).

The candidate vaccine, synthesized using a modified version of the hemagglutinin (H) gene from the H5N1 influenza virus, was manufactured at the VRC Vaccine Pilot Plant. This is the first VRC candidate vaccine manufactured at the VRC Vaccine Pilot Plant. The candidate vaccine went from the research bench into clinical trials in less than 6 months.

The patients had all been in contact with sick ducks, WHO said. Egypt has struggled to control H5N1 outbreaks in poultry, first reported in February, leading to at least 18 human cases, including 10 deaths.

First a 30-year-old woman died from the disease on 24 December. Then a 15-year-old girl, the niece of the women, died on Monday 25 December. Another member of the family, the woman’s nephew who was also diagnosed with bird flu, is in stable condition.

All three victims lived in the same house, along with 27 other relatives, said Egyptian authorities. The backyard of the house had a large number of ducks. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the family members became ill after slaughtering the ducks in an attempt to stem the spread of bird flu in the area. Tests revealed that at least three of the ducks were infected with the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus strain.

This latest outbreak is a shock to the country and especially to those who rely very much on ducks and poultry to exist. Culling has the effect of destroying the livelyhood of many families.

Vietnam has also detected a bird flu outbreak that killed 450 ducks in Long My district in Hau Giang province, the third province to report infections in December, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s department for animal health said in a report posted on its Web site.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population is conducting further investigations and has initiated public health measures. The other family members remain healthy and have been placed under close observation.

And, experts say a fresh outbreak of avian influenza in Nigeria is more widespread than thought.

Meanwhile, the University of Maryland School of Medicine will begin testing its cell-based bird flu vaccine in January in preparation for a possible flu pandemic in the near future although it is still too early to build up stockpiles of bird flu vaccine in preparation for a human flu pandemic, flu experts say.

French authorities say they cannot rule out bird flu after 4,000 chickens died on a French farm on Saturday, 16 December 2006 and scientists are out in force in effort to identify deadly strain believed to be Avian Influenza in Delaware, USA.

Sure, CBS can publish columns from Michael Fumento and other ostriches who want to bury their heads in the sand and claim the extra money spent on health care has not strengthened the global system for the future, and true, alarmists are equally to blame trying to make a buck on this or at least get their moment of fame. What we really need is a wise balance and to pull together to help all the world. Every time I go to Sudan and see how little is done and how hard it is to help, I wonder why we aren’t further advanced in our 21st Century.