Taiwan “Doctors failing to report dengue fever face fines” is the headline in the Taipei Times
<snip> Individual doctors will face fines of between NT$90,000 (US$ 2,734) and NT$450,000 while hospitals face fines of up to NT$1,500,000.
<snip>According to Chou, patients sometimes ask doctors to keep their status hidden to avoid the hassle of being tracked and having sanitation teams come to spray their homes.<snip> “Some patients are only diagnosed with dengue fever after four or five visits to the doctor. This is holding back our efforts to stem the disease’s spread this year,” Chou said. Since the start of summer, a total of 530 dengue fever cases have been reported in the country, with 366 cases in Kaohsiung City, 151 cases in Kaohsiung County, nine cases in Pingtung County, two in Tainan County, and one each in Taipei City and Keelung City, according to CDC tallies.
Meanwhile, 10 cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever have been reported, two of which resulted in deaths.
Both fatalities occurred in Kaohsiung City, including a 76-year-old man who died on Wednesday. <snip>
comment The article doesn’t say if the other 8 have recovered or are still sick.
Sorry, here’s the link. taipei times
Jane --- Is this going to be one of the Worldwide Lookouts threads? If so, I’m going to add it to the Forum Index…
Thanks
Taiwan editorial dated Oct. 3-new law prohibiting wet markets is being flouted.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/10/03/2003330257
Concluding paragraph: The new rules, if they are followed, will not help prevent bird flu, but they will succeed in divorcing the nation’s shoppers still further from the reality of where their food comes from and killing off yet another traditional way of life.
Yes, Bronco Bill, it’s for section 18, at least it’s for part of section 18. Anyone want to look at China or Mongolia? Forum/HongKong? I found 2 papers listed for North Korea-one wouldn’t load and the other will never expose any problems, imho. But I’ll keep checking.
Jane – at 19:13 --- Done. Added to Forum Index at http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Opinion.ForumTopics#world
South Korea: An opinion piece on prioritizing vaccine recipients, using the arguments of Ezekiel Emanuel of NIH, who favors saving the most “life years” by vaccinating those from 13 to 40 years old, and vaccinating those who go out into society first and those who stay home last. Discussing priorities before the fact would be best. (No mention of essential workers.) This is also an explanation of how pandemics start, and a recap of Emanuel’s argument in a Wall Street Journal article from earlier (I don’t remember when).
This is not exactly news, but it’s the only flu-related story today for Japan, S. Korea and Taiwan. No news is good news?
Bronco Bill - could you possibly add Lookout Post for to the title of this thread? That would make it consistent with the other Worldwide Lookout threads and also make it much easier to find with a search.
Thanks in advance!
http://tinyurl.com/yxn9wf Here is Vietnam on finishing up bird vaccinations.With vaccine from China, yes?
Would the Chinese use Fujian or the earlier version? Or, is the vax out of date or not?
US citizens in HK told to stockpile for bird flu outbreak
Hong Kong (dpa) - US citizens in Hong Kong have been advised to build a three-month stockpile of food, medicine and water in their homes in case of a bird flu pandemic, a news report said Tuesday.
An advisory has been sent out to all 60,000 registered US citizens in the former British colony urging them to prepare the stockpiles ahead of the coming winter flu season.
It suggests stockpiling 4.5 litres of water per person per day and to prepare water purification equipment in case of complete infrastructure breakdown, the South China Morning Post reported.
The advisory also suggests they stock up on non-perishable foods, soap, alcohol-based hand wash, medicines, vitamins, flashlights and a portable radio, the newspaper said.
Six people died and 12 others were infected in the first modern outbreak of bird flu to jump the species barrier and attack humans in Hong Kong in 1997.
Since then, however, the city of 6.8 million has built up sophisticated safeguards against the virus and avoided further human cases despite a spate of regional outbreaks.
Hong Kong has carried out mass culls of birds and ducks when cases have been detected among poultry and birds imported from mainland China are screened for the virus.
Scientists believe bird flu may cause deaths on a global scale greater than the Spanish Flu of 1918 which killed up to 40 million if the virus mutates to jump from human to human.
Taiwan The Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday that no effort had been spared in working to tackle the outbreak of dengue fever in southern Taiwan since the beginning of this summer.<snip>
<snip>Legislator Hou noted that 10 of Kaohsiung City’s 11 districts have been affected by dengue fever, calling it a worrisome situation and saying that relevant authorities should apologize for their inability to control the outbreak more efficiently.<snip>
Officials responded that they haven’t taken any time off since the outbreak started.
<snip>Furthermore, the Ministry of National Defense had also dispatched a chemical corps to the affected region to assist in disinfection work aimed at wiping out virus-carrying mosquitoes, the health minister added.
Taiwan/dengue link
South Korea Mixed Feelings as Crows Return to Ulsan
The crows are back in Ulsan. Crows are becoming the city’s trademark migratory bird, arriving from Central Asia and Siberia in the late fall for the seventh year running now. Some 60,000 of them came to the city last year, making it the largest site in Korea for crows to spend the winter for several years. The city says some 10,000 crows have already arrived and another 50,000–60,000 will get here by next month.<snip>
<snip> The city has taken measures to prevent infectious diseases the birds may be carrying and started sampling their excrement in Ulju county on Wednesday. The city says it is extremely rare that humans come down with bird flu, and no bird flu has been found in crow excrement for the last two years. http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200611/200611090027.html
Japan
“Developers flush after developing waterless water closet” The toilet uses sawdust instead of water, which needs changing only twice a year. It talks of using the end product as garden fertilizer if it’s ever approved.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/news/20061106p2g00m0dm008000c.html
comment The article translates some terms freely, not in the formal language usually found in newspapers. It’s sort of funny. :)
test - bump
Thanks, Dem!
Taiwan
“PRC spreading AIDS to island, experts say”
A recent explosion of HIV-AIDS cases in Taiwan is coming from China and is being spread by drug users, prompting the island to step up its prevention efforts, medical experts said yesterday. The HIV strain among Taiwan’s intravenous drug users was the same as that circulating in western China, particularly in an area near the Golden Triangle, said Chen Yi-ming, a professor at the Institute of Public Health at Yangming University in Taipei.<snip> In July every city and province began giving out free needles. <snip>
Japan
“Public Hospital Doctors Being Left Out in the Cold” Anesthesiologists are overworked because there aren’t enough to cover the operations of the many surgeons in Japan. Also some surgeons are incompetent and take twice as long to complete an operation as a good surgeon would.
<snip>The “collapse of medicine,” which started with anesthesiology, gradually spread to other branches of medicine such as obstetrics and pediatrics. Now, internal medicine is facing a serious crisis that could lead to collapse. When that happens, it could trigger the collapse of surgery and eventually cause chaos within the entire Japanese medical establishment.<snip>
Japan
The municipal public health care center in Otaru, Hokkaido, published a pamphlet last month about measures to prevent new types of flu and distributed copies to public facilities.
The center received numerous inquiries from other health care centers, as well as companies from around the nation.
Tatsuhito Tonooka, head of the Otaru center responsible for the pamphlet, is worried about the limited amount of information available on new strains of flu and has collated the latest information, from home and abroad, on a Web site (http://homepage3.nifty.co/sank/).
pamphlet recommends masks http://www.tinyurl.com/y8vp78
comment And he didn’t publish another pamphlet the next week with watered-down information. Good for you, Mr. Tonooka!
‘’‘South Korea” Nine-day conferrence in Seoul to discuss weather disaster preparation
<snip>Calamities caused by weather account for 90 percent of natural disasters, and are often more deadly than other accidents. To discuss better and more scientific methods to monitor and prevent such catastrophes, experts have gathered in Seoul for a nine-day extraordinary session of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).<snip>
<snip>Experts say early detection and precautionary measures have proven more cost-effective in addition to minimizing casualties. They say US$1 invested in monitoring weather-related catastrophes saves $7 to 10 spent on post-disaster relief. Though human life is far too precious to carry a monetary value, resources invested into a better network to manage disasters in advance is certainly money well spent.
planning for weather disasters
comment Now if they would only expand the planning to save precious lives in a pandemic…..
China New US bird flu report lacks evidence base
The paper contains “ungrounded statements,” Chen Hualan, director of the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory, and Shu Yuelong, director of the National Influenza Centre under the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told China Daily in an interview. The following is the transcript of the interview.<snip>
[[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2006-11/10/content_729346.htm|interview/US has no evidence
http://www.tinyurl.com/y9l7ll (the only numbers in this url are 9 and 7)
This looks like the story we’ve seen before, but here’s a transcript, according to the beginning of the article. (Have to confess I haven’t read it all.)
Check out BBC News | Health | Pig flu sparks epidemic fears http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/489385.stm Forgive me if I have posted this in the wrong place or if it has already been posted. The essence of the bbc article is that an exotic flu strain identified in Hong Kong appears to have crossed from pigs to humans. Since foreign residents have already been warned to prep for three months this article caught my eye. Thanks
lifeisgreat at 11:27
October 1999 date stamp on the article
South Korea Sixty students in two areas of So. Korea have been diagnosed with TB in the past year. (Middle school and high school students are tested regularly.) The students have been treated and are back in their regular classrooms. In the past year, in another area of So. Korea, 243 students were found to have TB, but “no mass outbreaks” were found.
comment The numbers of patients in the article didn’t add up to 60, but at least it sounds like normal, treatable, tuberculosis.
South Korea’
There were more than 35 thousand cases of tuberculosis diagnosed in South Korea in the past year. Dozens of school officials at three schools in a part of Seoul were diagnosed in July. All of the cases are responding to first-line drugs (none are the drug-resistant type of TB). The number of cases of TB had been dropping but started rising in 2000.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200611/14/200611142205042809900090409041.htmlTB in So. Korea
South Korea
South Korean officials will inspect steamed Chinese ducks eggs for cancerous substance, since the seizure of 97 kilos of eggs by Chinese officials.
<snip>”According to Xinhua, Chinese officials found that farmers had raised ducks with feed that contained Sudan-IV, an industrial dye, to make their egg yolk turn red. In China, red-yolk duck eggs are considered more nutritious and expensive.”
South Korea
S. Korea to train ASEAN officials to detect bird flu
Yonhap news- “South Korea plans to train livestock experts from Southeast Asian countries, which have reported bird flu cases since the late 1990s, to detect the potentially fatal disease, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said Wednesday.
The proposal, which includes detection kit support, will be forwarded at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus three agricultural ministers meeting in Singapore later this week…”
http://tinyurl.com/y6slzu
North Korea - Scarlet Fever
A news report says scarlet fever has been spreading in North Korea and threatens to become a full-blown epidemic, despite efforts to contain the disease. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports the disease, which broke out in a northern province last month, is rapidly spreading to other parts of the communist state, including the capital, Pyongyang. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, say they didn’t have information to confirm the media report. Yonhap reports lack of medicine coupled with poor sanitary conditions are to blame for the rapid spread of the fever, which leads to deaths among the aged and infants. Scarlet fever is a rash typically seen in children younger than 18, caused by the same bacteria that’s related to strep throat. It’s spread by contact.
Nimbus, are you a subscriber to Yonhap News? I’ve been checking their site and didn’t see that story. (Never mind, just saw that your link is to RSOE.) I check one No. Korean paper, but I don’t expect to see anything of a negative nature.
Japan Japan has organized a system to facilitate communication with foreigners in time of disaster.
<snip>The Japan Operation System of Emergency information for Foreigners (JOSEF) offers communications support programs to municipal governments and is also on hand to help foreign residents in times of emergency, according to officials.<snip>
A computerized <snip>”database, distributed to local and municipal governments nationwide in July, contains examples of information in six languages that can be used in print or broadcasting in times of natural disaster.<snip>
The organization includes a consultation arm that specializes in helping officials create disaster-related Web sites for cell phones in various languages.
<snip>It also disseminates disaster prevention tips via a monthly electronic mail newsletter and provides tailor-made advice on how to set up services such as multilingual consultation bodies, medical interpretation systems and multilingual radio programs and Web sites.<snip>
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200611140173.html
Deadly virus breaks out, claims life at hospital in Osaka Prefecture
TOYONAKA, Osaka — A 91-year-old patient died and another 79-year-old patient was left in serious condition after a norovirus outbreak occurred at a hospital here, infecting 20 people, it has been learned.
Officials at a branch of Sakamoto Hospital announced the outbreak on Thursday, saying a 91-year-old female patient had died and a 79-year-old man remained in serious condition. A group infection of the norovirus, a common cause of food poisoning, occurred at the same hospital in Toyonaka in January 2005, causing 13 people to contract the virus.
Hospital officials said 16 patients aged between 79 and 99 had contracted the virus, along with four hospital workers aged between 18 and 55. With the exception of the patient who died, all of the remaining infected victims were reportedly making a recovery
<snip>
Taiwan
Dengue fever cases-152 reported for the week, 6 of which were hemorrhagic type. The cases occurred mainly in the South part of Taiwan.
Did anyone see this report from the 13th about china and hong kong having a pandemic exercise?http://tinyurl.com/yflkrk
13 November 2006
Joint cross-border emergency exercise on infectious diseases
The Mainland, Hong Kong and Macao health authorities today (November 13) organised a joint exercise, code-named Great Wall, on emergency response for a major infectious disease. It aimed to test the emergency response and notification mechanism of the three places in handling cross-border public health emergencies.
The exercise was conducted simultaneously in the three places this morning and a total of about 40 public health professionals participated in this desktop communication exercise through channels such as telephone, facsimile, email and so on. Participating organisations in Hong Kong include the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau, Department of Health and Hospital Authority.
The exercise depicted a scenario whereby a suspected human case of avian influenza was detected in the Mainland. The Ministry of Health immediately notified the health authorities in Hong Kong and Macao of the case. As the patient had travelled to Hong Kong and Macao before the onset of illness, the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health and the Health Bureau in Macao immediately started epidemiological investigations and implemented emergency response measures. The two authorities also notified the Ministry of Health of their investigation results.
The exercise ended when the Hong Kong and Macao authorities received notification from the Mainland that the patient was recovered and discharged from hospital.
The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, also paid a visit to the CHP’s Emergency Response Centre to observe the conduct of the exercise. “ The three places signed a ‘Co-operation Agreement on Response Mechanism for Public Health Emergencies’ in Kunming in October last year to enhance collaboration in handling major infectious diseases and agreed to conduct a joint exercise,” he said.
“Exercise Great Wall further strengthens the communication and collaboration among the three places in emergency preparedness and response for public health crisis. It also highlighted the importance of timely notification and collaboration for the prevention of avian influenza and pandemic influenza.”
According to the Cooperation Agreement, should cross-border public health emergencies occur among the three or any two places, the concerned health authorities would immediately notify the others, activate the emergency response mechanism, and form a joint public health emergency response team to coordinate the response measures.
The Director of Health, Dr P Y Lam, said that the three places had convened a tele-conference this morning, and that such mode of communication could further enhance the communication and emergency response capabilities of the three places.
End/Monday, November 13, 2006
“Bushmeat” link to SARS outbreak confirmed
here is some south korean flying death news. http://tinyurl.com/uouaa They are not having » View larger photo » Read full article
S. Korea investigating possible bird flu case Khaleej Times (AFP) 23 November 2006 SEOUL - South Korea’s agriculture ministry said Thursday it is investigating a suspected bird flu case in the southern city of Iksan. It said the area where…
Click here to read more a good time there.
http
The Agriculture Ministry said yesterday that it has discovered a suspected case of bird flu at a poultry farm in Iksan, in the southwest of the country. Health inspectors are now conducting tests after about 6,000 of the 13,000 chickens at the farm died between Sunday and Wednesday, Kim Chang-seob, chief veterinary officer at the ministry said at a briefing.
Kim said the government was informed of the incident on Wednesday, raising alarm that the large number of deaths may be an indication the virus is of a virulent strain.
The discovery comes as the country is on a high bird flu alert as migratory birds, which can easily spread the life-threatening disease, fly to the Korean Peninsula for the winter, the ministry said.
“We have closed the farm and halted the movement of any poultry or eggs from the farm,” Kim said. The ministry also issued an order to temporarily close two hatcheries in the area as further investigations will be conducted. A 10-kilometer radius around the farm will be quarantined.
Kim said the ministry expects to confirm whether the poultry had been infected with bird flu on Saturday. The official said the chickens show signs of bird flu, but was careful not to speculate that it was of the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
Korea reported its first outbreak of H5N1 in December 2003. About 5.3 million chickens and ducks http://tinyurl.com/yyzoo4 more from another pwper.
The contents of this thread have now been moved to the new site.
The link is Lookout Posts - Mainland East Asia and Japan