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.”

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 …

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.”

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.

Most guidelines (national) – and conventional wisdom – give priority to health-care workers, the youngest, the frail and the elderly.

But in the USA, Minnesota to be exact, they are re-writing the rules. A panel including government officials, doctors and ethicists concluded that inoculations should be given first to key workers like police and nurses, then to those who respond best to treatment – healthy 15-to40-year olds, not infants or seniors.

Time Magazine quotes, “A worst-case scenario poses the hardest questions,” says panelist Karen Gervais, a health-care ethicist. This strategy “is intended to protect the most people in the most vital ways.” But the panel also decided that society’s weakest could and should be helped in other ways, such as quarantine.

- By Clayton Neuman, Time, 11.06 (See more about the morals and ethics on this issue on our Ethics Issues During a Pandemic article.)

The outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza began in Asia in 2003 and spread rapidly in early 2006.

But the experts meeting in Mali also say the deadly H5N1 virus is just one of a plethora of diseases threatening animals and people around the world as global warming, intensive farming, increased travel and trade help dangerous microbes breed and spread.

“Avian flu is just one of many diseases that are impacting the continent (of Africa). The experts are telling us that other diseases are going to emerge or re-emerge,” said Francois Le Gall, the World Bank’s lead livestock specialist for Africa.

“Almost every year there is a new disease appearing, and 75 percent of these emerging or re-emerging diseases are coming from animals; 80 percent of those have zoonotic (animal diseases that humans can also catch — included Rift Valley fever, rabies and anthrax).potential,” he said in an interview.

“These could come together to create what the experts are calling ‘the perfect microbial storm’,” he said.

“All the measures we are using now are going to be useful to control all these emerging or re-emerging diseases — like veterinary services, public health services,” he said.

“Remember that with globalisation, and unprecedented movements of merchandise, of people, there is a continuous transfer of pathogens,” Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health, told Reuters.

“This is made worse by climate change. Many disease vectors have colonised new territories,” Vallat said. “Microbes can cross the world in a few hours.”

What singles out bird flu is the potential of the virus to mutate into a human form of influenza capable of passing from person to person, not just from infected animals.

International health experts were winding up a three-day meeting in Mali, the fourth global bird flu summit since late last year, aimed at plotting strategies to halt the spread of the disease and seeking donor funds for this campaign.

* Since the H5N1 Avian virus re-emerged in Asia in 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed in around 50 countries and territories, according to data from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Originally Reported by Reuters Alistair Thomson

At the beginning of flu season, these types of observations from the World Health Organization (WHO) are not exactly comforting. The reality is that we will have a flu pandemic this year! That is because we have one every year. Flu spreads around the globe at a remarkably fast pace. And, people die from it each and every year.

The concerns raised by WHO are perfectly legitimate. And alarming. That is why we need to keep up-to-date and prepared. Check our Current Alerts link above to see some of the latest survey results of how American’s are likely to react to a Bird Flu Pandemic. Think through what your response would be likely to be. Plan ahead, flu season is just beginning.