Summary from Indonesia Outbreak as at 23 October 2006
| Cases Discussed | Jun-06 | Jul-06 | Aug-06 | Sep-06 | Oct-06 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Died, no tests | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 15 |
| Died, tested positive | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 15 |
| Other tested positive | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Suspected symptoms | 4 | 2 | 46 | 38 | 26 | 116 |
| Tested negative | 0 | 6 | 26 | 19 | 7 | 58 |
| Totals | 10 | 14 | 81 | 64 | 40 | 209 |
(Please see the thread Volunteers Needed as Lookouts Worldwide if you want to help)
(From WHO as at 16 Oct - latest update) Total human cases worldwide 256, deaths 151 (2006 – 109 with 73 deaths)
(If you want the links to open in a new window, hold down the shift key and then click on the link)
Angola
Cameroon
Canada
England
France
India
Indonesia
Israel
Malawi
Mongolia
Taiwan
United States of America
Vietnam
General
Link to news thread for 23 October (link News Reports for October 23 )
(Usual disclaimer about may not have captured everything. Feel free to add your own where omissions have occurred.)
Please note that I copy the links directly from the thread so if they don’t work you may need to re-visit the Thread.
I like the lookout post links Annie, great work.
You do rock, Annie. Thanks for keeping up on the latest stories.
Thanks good peoples - every little bit that each of us does helps others so I am happy to do my meagre bit …
(USA - Indiana) Schools teaching flu pandemic prevention
By OSEYE T. BOYD (link http://tinyurl.com/ymhc39)
MUNCIE — A flu pandemic hasn’t arrived, but when one does, Delaware County superintendents want parents and children to be prepared. To that end, superintendents have partnered with the Delaware County Emergency Management Agency and Delaware County Health Department to alert families of potential dangers. Families with children in each school district in Delaware County will receive a letter during parent-teacher conferences or through a newsletter or mailing, Delaware Community Schools Asst. Supt. Steve Hall said.
“We feel like one of our responsibilities as schools is to educate, and we want our families to be aware that there are some things that they can do to prepare in terms of helping eliminate the spread of germs,” Hall said. “Then if there would be a true pandemic, we would want to limit the contact our families would have. Our thought was that early education — letting people be aware of the potential hazards and what our plans might be — would help reduce the spread of the virus, or any virus for that matter.”
<snip>
With so much media attention given to the possibility of a flu pandemic, school officials are often asked if they are aware and how they will respond if a major outbreak occurs, Muncie Community Schools Supt. Marlin Creasy said. The letter alerts parents “preliminary steps” schools are taking now, Creasy said.
Education and communication about potential hazards and prevention is key, said Bill Gosnell, Delaware County Emergency Director. “We’re very limited at what tools are at our disposal to help cope with human-to-human bird flu,” Gosnell said. “I don’t know if bird flu will be a non-event, but the more education we have, the better off we’ll be. Every resident should have an emergency disaster plan and an emergency disaster kit. I am going to make sure to the best of my ability that I educate this community with the facts and education they need to effectively deal with bird flu or any other pandemic that comes along.”
Schools are also making changes inside the buildings to keep illnesses from spreading, Mount Pleasant Township Community Schools Supt. Mary Ann Irwin said. Students are taught proper handwashing techniques. Hand sanitizer is readily available and different cleaning products being used to kill germs in bathrooms. “The reality is, whether it’s regular flu or pandemic bird flu or whatever, we need to be aware that there are some things that we need to prepare for,” she said.
East Africa Tanzania
TANZANIA: Zanzibar destroys more eggs to keep bird flu at bay
STONE TOWN, 24 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - Authorities in Zanzibar have incinerated another consignment of chicken eggs smuggled from mainland Tanzania, in the hope of keeping their islands free of avian flu.
<snip>
The consignment was seized after the importers disappeared, apparently fearing arrest, Gharib said on Tuesday. Gharib said the Zanzibari business community had continued to import poultry products despite a ban on them introduced in 2005.
According to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO), the H5N1 avian influenza virus can be found inside eggs, and on the surface of eggs laid by infected birds. …
ttp://tinyurl.com/yxaoo5
Alaska, USA
BIRD FLU ‘CANARIES’ IN ALASKA Tuesday, October 24, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com
<snip>
He cites a Los Angeles Times story from the weekend, pointing at an isolated native tribe in Alaska who might become the canaries in the coal mine if this disease does begin to spread from birds to humans.
The article investigates the Yup’iks, whose actions are being noticed by lower-48 health officials, even up to their receiving regular medical checkups from physicians flying in from government public health departments. The reason for this: the tribe’s main food source is wild birds, who might be considered more likely to be carrying the H5N1 virus, in their migrations from Asia. The story quotes a federal wildlife biologist Brain McCaffery as saying, “If it’s going to show up in wild birds, Alaska is the most likely place where it’s going to happen.”
Strieber notes that the nearby Yukon National Wildlife Refuge draws “millions of wild birds,” who land there to rest before turning back to their winter flights to Australia and Asia. And while they are resting, the local tribesmen kill them and eat them for food, which could lead to the spread of the virus.
Staff Reports - Free-Market News Network
COMMENT - The article from Tanzania says that properly cooked food might not spread the virus. In this article we’re watching this Indian tribe because they eat wild birds…. Is it any wonder that people do not believe the WHO with so much conflicting information being disseminated out there?
Corrected link for 10:38
USA
NSWMA issues report on managing bird flu carcass waste
Oct. 24 — New guidance is available to solid waste industry about how to deal with carcasses created by avian influenza.
The National Solid Wastes Management Association has published a white paper entitled “Avian Influenza: The Hunt and Peck for Answers.”
“The paper was prepared to provide information about avian influenza for purposes of waste management, including some basic information about the disease, what scientists know about how it spreads, and currently available waste management options,” said Bruce Parker, president and CEO of NSWMA.
COMMENT - I’m looking for the white paper now….
Here’s a link for the disposal of domestic birds infected by avian influenza - an overview of considerations and options
This is dated August 11. I’m still searching for the October file, but I’ve got to run, so I’ll pick this up later.
bird cases- Nigeria
The country has so far recorded 123 cases of Avian influenza (AI) in 43 local government areas (LGAs) spread across 14 states and the FCT since its outbreak in February, according to a report…
Kaduna State had the second highest number of 15 cases recorded in Igabi, Kaduna North, Kaduna South, Chikun and Sabon Gari council areas, while Bauchi recorded 13 cases in Toro, Tafawa Balewa and Bauchi Metropolis LGAs to place third…..
….Kaduna State had the second highest number of 15 cases recorded in Igabi, Kaduna North, Kaduna South, Chikun and Sabon Gari council areas, while Bauchi recorded 13 cases in Toro, Tafawa Balewa and Bauchi Metropolis LGAs to place third. ….Lagos State came fourth with 12 cases reported in the Ojo, Agege, Ikorodu, Alimosho, Badagry, Eti-Osa, Amuwo-Odofin and Ifako-ljaiye council areas.
Placing fifth, Taraba recorded 11 cases in both Ibi and Wukari council areas, while Katsina State had nine cases from Malumfashi, Kankara, Daura and Katsina Municipal LGAs to rank sixth.
Kano State reported eight cases in four LGAs of Kumbotso, Janguza, Gezawa and Kano Municipal, followed by Nasarawa State with six cases from the Akwanga, Kokona and Lafia council areas.
NEWS - RUSSIA - Russia tests bird flu vaccine - From Novosti - http://tinyurl.com/y9row3
The tests involved 240 healthy volunteers … tests had produced encouraging results … since a possible bird flu pandemic is likely to kill an estimated one-third of the world’s population. … Due to efforts …. no new bird flu outbreaks have been registered to date. But this does not mean that the disease has been eradicated.\\\
… Wavering global interest in bird flu is directly linked with the manifestations of this disease.
At present 360 million flu vaccines are produced annually. What makes the situation grave is that the whole of mankind, or over six billion people, would have to be vaccinated under the worst scenario.
Many scientists believe that the H5N1 virus cannot cause a major epidemic in the near future. “I see no reason to agree with assertions that bird flu will wipe out mankind,” said Vladimir Ivanitsky, PhD, a lecturer at Moscow State University. He said the bird flu virus had been known for a long time, birds had always contracted this disease, which sometimes affected humans. “Nothing has changed in the nature of the virus and birds,” he said.\\\
Vitaly Zverev said migrating birds would once again spread the active H5N1 virus all over the world the following spring. … Scientists believe the extremely mutagenous bird flu virus is bound to change within the next few years, and new viruses are a major threat.
The new vaccine is vital because its initial strain can be modified and used against a new strain, say, of the H7N2 virus. … Experts said it would take Russia seven to eight weeks to obtain the first several million vaccines after singling out the initial strain. In short, this country will receive enough anti-flu vaccines in 45 to 60 days.
Ssshugar - the article above in Novosti is a recycled one from 11 October 2006 - so perhaps it’s a dup. Sorry.
NEWS
Minn. experts: Healthiest should get flu vaccine first
[snip]
On the web here
COMMENT
If “young and healthy” HCWs will be the first to get the vaccine, leaving “little or no vaccine” for others, what vaccine will they be administering? Oh, and Gov’t officials first? Of course.
DennisC - at 12:31. February? What year? This year???
Commonground – at 13:19 I am assuming this is the total since Feb this year. The article’s second line lists: Tuesday, Oct 24, 2006
it seems to be a companion article for today along with: 700,000 birds culled since outbreak of Avian flu – WHO “Around 700,000 birds have been culled to date in Nigeria since the outbreak of Avian flu in February this year, according to a WHO official”
and recall they had problems Feb this year: “ECOWAS takes emergency measures to fight bird flu • Sunday, Feb 26, 2006 … ….emergency meeting of ECOW AS held in Dakar …The H5Nl bird flu virus has been reported in northern Nigeria and dead birds found in Mauritania and Senegal
Hi DennisC - I hope you didn’t feel I was specifically asking you. Sometimes that happens when we comment on an article. I found in the WHO Library a PDF Document on Nigeria and H5N1. It is the latest one available in their library. And it’s from March. Here’s the link:
Commonground – at 13:54 no problem at this end. I could not open your link (it is “timed out”). Do you have the title of the doc? I should be able to get it that way.
The thing is that we get so little out of Africa these days. I found it interesting that they still seem to be battling H5N1 there. The newspaper search from “The Tide” seems to be a fair source for info on Nigeria. You can search for “bird flu” and get several hits.
Hi DennisC, Go back to the link where it says timed out. Hit OK button. Then on the next screen, put Nigeria H5N1 in the search. That’s all. Then in the next window, click on the first one (I think) that just says Nigeria (with like 530 links?). In the next window, it is the article # A88215 and it says Avian Influenza, Nigeria. Hope that helps?
Screening for flu or Sars at UK airports to try to stop a pandemic taking hold in Britain will not work, warns an article in this week’s British Medical Journal.
Many people could be incubating the infection when tested but not show positive results because flight times are not long enough to allow flu or Sars to develop to the point of detection. The Health Protection Agency found that 0–3% of passengers from Europe would be picked up by tests if they were incubating Sars, and at most 21% from east Asia. Among those incubating flu, only about 10% would be detected at the airport gate.
DennisC, here’s more info:
It’s the Weekly Epidemiological Record
March 3, 2006
No. 9, 2006, 81, 81–88
www.who.int/wer
Commonground – at 15:38 thanks
Pandemic Flu Patients Should Stay Home, U.S. Officials May Say
By John Lauerman Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) — Health officials may propose a plan to prevent the spread of pandemic flu in the U.S. that includes treating sick patients at home, rather than in hospitals.
The home therapy option is based on computer models showing that limiting personal contact may slow growth of a pandemic. Advisers to the U.S. Institute of Medicine are meeting tomorrow in Washington to determine if scientific estimates are strong enough to make health policy decisions affecting the lives millions of Americans in a deadly flu outbreak. [snip]
A study by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque predicted that closing schools and keeping children at home during even a mild pandemic would cut the proportion of the population infected by more than 90 percent.
`The public is intelligent and will behave in a way that it perceives to be in its own best interests, he said. `You can shape that perception with information.
Now, they’re telling us?
Flu shots safe, suggested for babies, toddlers Federal study of 45,000 youngsters found few serious side effects of vaccine
INTERACTIVE http://tinyurl.com/yz4ohw
Don’t forget the killer diseases, experts urge
HONG KONG (Reuters) - While every human death from bird flu commands widespread attention, some experts are urging the world not to forget killer diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, which claim millions of lives each year.
More effort must be put into preventing these diseases, and vaccines — once they are ready — must be made available to the poorest nations, which suffer most from these illnesses.
[snip]
BIRD FLU A DISTRACTION?
Tony Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Chinese University in Hong Kong, fears that bird flu — which has killed at least 144 people worldwide since late 2003 — is taking too much attention away from other very pressing diseases.
Many health experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus might mutate and pass easily among people, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions worldwide.
“Things like SARS, avian flu are high-profile and get a lot of media attention but in terms of global deaths, it is a small percentage. The reason why we are afraid of bird flu is because it affects us personally in the rich world,” Nelson said.
“If you are a policymaker in a rich country, you don’t really worry about rotavirus because it is viewed as relatively mild,” he said, referring to the leading cause of diarrhea in infants and young children, killing 500,000 of them a year.
[snip]
Comment Ottawan 17:16.
Pandemic Flu Patients Should Stay Home.
Isn’t that just so convenient…takes existing ‘spin’ to a whole new level.
Tom -
Convenient, and more than a little chilling. I get the sense that the “spin” industry is really gearing up with this.
October 24, 2006 / http://tinyurl.com/ynfwcd
Study finds flu vaccine safe for toddlers
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Seasonal flu vaccinations are safe for children 6 to 23 months of age, the largest study of the question to date reported on Tuesday.
“This is really good news for both doctors and parents who want to protect young children from influenza and complications of this nasty illness,” said Dr. Simon Hambidge of Kaiser Permanente Colorado, chief author of the report.
<snip>
Comment: Have we seen this story before? Please follow the link to a very extensive chart detailing each and every H5N1 victim (very impressive effort for MSM).
A Closer Look at Bird Flu’s Victims
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE / Oct. 16, 2006
Researchers will never know precisely how all the more than 150 people who have died of H5N1 avian influenza acquired the disease. But the details of their investigations offer glimpses into the lives of the victims — who have been largely young, in close contact with poultry, and mostly from Southeast Asia. While the fatality count has slowly ticked higher, the victims’ stories — or what little we know of them — have sometimes been overshadowed by broader concerns about food safety, bird migratory patterns and feared mutations that could make the virus easily transmissible between people, potentially sparking a global pandemic.
Here is a look at the victims, based on updates on avian flu from the WHO. Click on the highlighted column headers to re-sort by country or age.
This list is a regularly updated work in progress. Write to Matt Phillips at matt.phillips@wsj.com
DennisC – at 12:31 bird cases- Nigeria Is this “cases” in people or in ckickens?
Libby in Atlanta – at 22:26
It doesn’t say if it was people or chickens, but I a fairly sure it is chickens. Read the companion pieces in the paper. They are sampling and culling chickens. If it was people, then the news system would be going crazy by now.
I am not great at reading sequences, but it seems that the Nigeria sequences are not the “bad” Q lake strain like was in Egypt. But I should leave such conjecture to others.
Pixie 22:15. Thanks but I wouldn’t give MSM or regulators a whole lot of credit here…
…because we have a lot more to learn from the survivors lives then unfortunately from the dead.
Why has there been no examinations followed by publication of long term studies concerning chronic health conditions after the fact?
This reminds me of SARS. It’s like survivors of these emerging exotic diseases fall in to the ‘rabbit hole’ never to be seen again.
An awful lot of this going on lately.” 36 W&M students show flu symptoms” Thirty-six students at the college of William and Mary have sought treatment since Sat. for flulike symptoms that include nausea, fever and an elevated white cell count. ------And This” School Illness health Alert” More than a dozen students at a Chesterfield school are sick. Officials are taking drastic measures to keep the illness from spreading. The infection is called shigellosis. It has symptoms such as diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.With 19 cases of it connected to Betty Weaver Elementary School----If anyone thinks this is important please post the links(don’t know how) www.timesdispatch.com and www.wric.com
Shigella is one of those nasty water born diseases that you have a good filter for when TSHTF. And, most flues don`t usually have a high white count, that`s probably some sort of bacteria, which does
Further to white cell blood count - bacteria sends it high, virus keeps (sends) it low - basic rule of thumb apparently.
I am about to start the News Summary for today, then I will start a new thread, so you might like to hold your posting for about 20 minutes or so ..
Cheers and thanks