Authorities in Thailand confirmed today that a 13th person, the first for over a year, had died from bird flu in the country.
Officials initially denied there was any connection with the disease, which has killed over 61 people in Asia, but today the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, said new lab results confirmed the bird flu diagnosis.
Bang-on Benphat, 48, was admitted to hospital with severe pneumonia on Sunday, about two weeks after he killed, cooked and ate his neighbour's chickens. Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes but were not tested for bird flu.
The man's seven-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, has been admitted to hospital in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection. He is also suspected of having bird flu, according to Thawat Suntrajarn, the director-general of Thailand's department of communicable disease control.
Other chickens in the victim's village in the Phanom Thuan district of Kanchanaburi province had tested positive for bird flu, he added.
"The people in this area should have known better," Mr Thawat said. "They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous."
Bird flu spreads easily among poultry and can infect humans in close contact with birds.
William Aldis, the World Health Organisation representative in Thailand, said the latest death was not an indication that the virus was becoming more common in humans or that or that a pandemic was any closer to becoming reality.
This case shows that virus is "still the same old H5N1 which can rarely affect people," he said, adding that Thailand had reduced its incidence of human infections this year.
According to WHO figures, there were 12 deaths from bird flu in Thailand between December 2003 and October 2004 but none in the past year until the latest case.
Meanwhile, the European commission banned imports today of pet birds and feathers from Russia in response a confirmed outbreak of H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The move follows EU bans on imports from Turkey, Romania and Greece.
A commission spokeswoman said the Russian ban, prompted by confirmed avian flu cases in hundreds of domestic birds in the county of Tula, near Moscow, covered the whole country except Kaliningrad, Murmansk, St Petersburg and Karelia.
She also said preliminary tests by the EU's reference laboratory on a Greek bird flu sample were negative for the potentially lethal H5N1 strain, but more tests were needed. On Monday, suspected bird flu was discovered on Aegean island of Oinouses, near the Turkish coast.
Taiwan today became the latest country to announce the discovery of bird flu. Authorities said the H5N1 virus was found among birds on a Panama-registered freighter that was stopped by the Taiwanese coast guard on October 14.
Spokesman Sung Hua-tsung said the freighter was carrying 1,037 smuggled birds - consisting of 19 species - all of which originated in China.
In China, officials have destroyed 91,100 birds around a farm in Inner Mongolia to stop a bird flu outbreak, the WHO said.
The birds were culled after 2,600 chickens and ducks were killed by the virulent H5N1 virus at a breeding facility in Tengjiaying, a village near the regional capital Hohhot, according to the government.
The latest developments came as EU health ministers met in Britain to discuss how best to prepare for a bird flu pandemic.
Bird flu has infected around 120 people worldwide since 2003, leading to 61 deaths, but epidemiologists fear the lethal H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that is highly contagious between humans, resulting in millions of deaths.
There have been deaths in four Asian countries and bird flu cases in another dozen, including Romania, Turkey and Greece.
Yesterday, the Health Protection Agency said it was coordinating an EU-wide simulation exercise to see how well organisations would cope in the event of a flu pandemic.
The Department of Health estimates that 25% of the population - 15 million people - may suffer from the flu during a pandemic.
Experts predict between 2 million and 200 million people could die globally.
(Reuters) - Bird flu has killed a 48-year-old man in Thailand, the country's first human death in a year, officials said on Thursday, as the deadly H5N1 virus that has now hit Europe reared its head again in east and southeast Asia.
Here is a short chronology tracking some major developments in the spread of Asian bird flu:
Dec 15, 2003 - South Korea confirms a highly contagious type of bird flu at a chicken farm near Seoul and begins a mass cull of poultry when the virus rapidly spreads across the country.
Jan 8, 2004 - Vietnam says bird flu found on its poultry farms.
March 16 - China declares it has stamped out the disease.
Aug 19 - Malaysia says a strain of bird flu has been found in two chickens that died near the Thai border, its first cases.
Sept 27 - Thailand says it has found a case where one human probably infected another with bird flu. It said this was an isolated incident that posed little risk to the population.
April 5, 2005 - The U.N. says the H7 strain of bird flu, previously undetected in Asia, has been found in North Korea.
Oct 8 - Turkey reports its first cases of avian flu, and Romania reports suspected avian flu.
Oct 10 - The European Commission announces a ban on imports of live birds and feathers from Turkey to the 25-nation EU.
Oct 13 - A strain of the H5 bird flu virus has been detected in samples from Romanian ducks in the Danube delta, confirming the virus has arrived in Europe.
-- The European Commission confirms the Romanian findings and immediately says it will ban Romanian imports.
-- The EU confirms Turkey has the type of bird flu dangerous to humans, the avian flu H5N1 high pathogenic virus.
Oct 17 - Greece says bird flu has been detected on the Aegean island Chios, the first case in an EU member state.
Oct 19 - A British laboratory has detected the H5N1 bird flu strain in new Danube delta samples from Romania taken from the village of Maliuc.
-- Russia tells the EU that a deadly bird flu outbreak has spread westwards to 220 km (160 miles) south of Moscow. Russia has been fighting bird flu since mid-July and has killed over 600,000 domestic fowl.
Oct 20 - Thailand reports the death of a man from bird flu raising its human toll to 13. This brings the total throughout Asia to 67, comprising 44 in Vietnam, 13 in Thailand, 6 in Indonesia and 4 in Cambodia.
-- Taiwan says it has found birds infected with the H5N1 flu in a container smuggled from China - its first case since 2003.
-- Ukraine's parliament imposes a six-month ban on poultry imports from all countries.
-- Vietnam reports its first outbreak of the H5N1 strain in poultry - in the Mekong Delta - since July.
LONDON (Reuters) - Drug industry executives are working overtime to prevent what could be a positive news story on bird flu from turning into a public relations disaster.
In contrast to previous flu pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968, the world now has an armoury of antiviral drugs to help contain an outbreak, if the H5N1 virus circulating in birds mutates and starts to spread easily between people.
Yet Switzerland's Roche Holding, which makes the best of the products, Tamiflu, finds itself on the defensive as critics demand it allow production of generic versions, in a row echoing past patent controversies over AIDS.
"Patents will not stand in the way of producing the drug for mankind," the company's chief executive, Franz Humer, insisted in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
But just how far his company will go in issuing licences to generic producers is not yet clear.
Roche says it can satisfy current levels of demand for a normal flu season and deliver on stockpiling orders it has received from governments around the world.
That is not good enough for the likes of U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, who called this week for the Swiss group to license production of Tamiflu to five U.S. drug companies within the next 30 days.
The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, says there are not nearly enough supplies of Tamiflu and other antivirals, such as GlaxoSmithKline's less popular inhaled drug Relenza.
The drugs, while not a cure, reduce the severity of influenza and may slow the spread of a pandemic, which experts fear could kill millions.
Roche and the broader pharmaceuticals industry need to get the balance right between ensuring access to potentially life-saving treatments and protecting intellectual property rights that are essential for innovation.
Under World Trade Organisation rules, governments can issue so-called compulsory licences, allowing others to produce a patented product without consent of a foreign patent owner.
Normally, there must be an attempt to negotiate a voluntary licence but in a national emergency that step can be bypassed in order to save time, though the patent holder would still be entitled to a payment, according to the WTO secretariat.
FEELING THE HEAT
James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a U.S. lobby group, believes every government that does not have sufficient stockpiles on Tamiflu should now be issuing compulsory licences.
"Roche is clearly feeling the heat, but also falling well short of the measures that would best protect the public health," he said in a statement.
The U.S. government came close to over-riding Bayer's patents on Cipro in 2001 during the scare over anthrax in the postal system before deciding it was not necessary.
For drug companies -- already suffering from a rock-bottom reputation in the wake of recent scandals over the safety of Vioxx and other top-selling drugs -- the Tamiflu controversy is worryingly reminiscent of the furore over AIDS treatments.
The industry famously mishandled an AIDS dispute five years ago, by contesting a South African law to loosen patent restrictions and suing Nelson Mandela's government.
The experience still haunts "big pharma" and Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, warned earlier this month he did not want to see intellectual property obstructing the supply of flu drugs to the poor in the same way.
This time round, the stakes could be even higher, with pressure on patents potentially coming not only from developing countries but also rich nations worried about drug supplies.
Roche and the rest of the industry have a challenge to navigate this controversy successfully.
"Companies are very aware of the AIDS experience and the impact that had on their reputation. Have they learnt the lesson? It is difficult to speculate on that before we see what actually happens in practice," said Simon Friend, global pharmaceuticals practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Indian companies may be able to make generic copies of Roche's anti-influenza drug Tamiflu with its patent still pending in the country.
Cipla, which has made its intention clear to make a generic copy of Tamiflu, considered the most effective medicine against bird flu, has said it has not formally approached Roche due to doubts over the validity of license in India.
"There is a doubt over their (Roche) valid license in India. I am in talks with my lawyers on how to proceed on this issue," Amar Lulla, Cipla's joint managing director told PTI from Mumbai.
However, industry sources said going ahead with the generic copies was a big risk as the patent could be granted anytime since the application was made in 1996.
Cipla had earlier said it was ready for an in-licensing agreement with Roche to make generic copy of Tamiflu. When asked to confirm the status of Tamiflu's patent in India, Roche's India head G L Telang said, "It is pending".
He, however, declined to comment on when the patent is expected to be cleared. Cipla said it planned to begin commercial production of its generic version of Tamiflu by January next year.
Lulla said the company expected to make 750 kg (about one million doses) of its generic version in the first six months of production.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Roche Pharmaceuticals (RHHDY) has agreed in principle to license its antiflu drug Tamiflu to four generic drugmakers in an effort to boost supplies, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., announced Thursday after meeting with Roche CEO George Abercrombie. The senator said Roche agreed to meet with four companies -- Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA) , Barr Laboratories (BRL) , Mylan Laboratories (MYL) and Ranbaxy Labs (RBXZF) -- to negotiate terms for licensing the drug, the only effective treatment for avian flu.
INDONESIA covered up a bird flu epidemic in its poultry industry for nearly two years until the disease began infecting people, a former top health official has claimed.
Australia's northern neighbour is considered by many experts to be a likely flashpoint for a pandemic that could kill tens of thousands of Australians and millions of people worldwide.
Indonesia's former national director of animal health, Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, said officials knew in 2003 that chickens were dying from bird flu, but kept it quiet because of lobbying from the poultry industry.
She was fired by the Agriculture Ministry after making the claim.
UN officials later complained that her dismissal had set back efforts to fight the disease.
"I talked to the minister about it many times. He said a disease outbreak is not a national emergency, not a disaster," she has told The Washington Post.
The claim came as:
¦ Quarantine officers destroyed three pigeons imported to Melbourne from Canada because they carried antibodies to an unidentified strain of bird flu, meaning they had come into contact with the disease.
Authorities in Taiwan confirmed their first bird flu case.
¦ Thailand reported its first bird flu death in a year and China reported its first major outbreak for two months.
¦ The UN food agency warned the disease could spread to east Africa, where it could be virtually impossible to control.
¦ European Union health ministers convened a special session to discuss the crisis.
¦ Bird culls to control probable new outbreaks began on farms in Russia and Macedonia
Australia has stockpiled 4 million doses of anti-viral drugs and is working with drug firm CSL to develop a vaccine against the disease. The Federal Government has also given Indonesia $15.5 million to boost its readiness for an outbreak.
At least 60 people have died from the disease in South-East Asia and the federal Health Department estimates the first wave of a pandemic would kill at least 13,000 Australians and hospitalise another 58,000.
First, the virus would need to mutate to become transmissible between people — a risk the Health Department puts at one-in-10 within the next year.
In Indonesia, Ms Naipospos said powerful poultry owners feared that bad publicity would harm chicken and egg sales. They had even lobbied Indonesia's then president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, to keep containment measures quiet.
Indonesia's Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono rejected the claims, saying the Government considered bird flu a major concern.
He said he fired Ms Naipospos because he was not happy with her handling of bird flu.
Chairul Nidom, the Indonesian microbiologist who first identified the virus in his country's birds, backed Ms Naipospos' claims. "If the Government had acted sooner to stamp it out, there would be no outbreak. They have wasted so much time," he said.
A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer declined to comment on the cover-up claims and said Australia was working closely with the Indonesian Government to ensure it was prepared for any pandemic.
Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said it was "critical now for Mr Downer to establish the truth of these claims".
Flu expert Alan Hampson, of the Australian Influenza Specialists Group, has told The Age Indonesia was a likely place for any pandemic to take off and was struggling to prepare itself. "Their bureaucracy is fragmented, with lots of people at different levels and no straightforward line of command for dealing with it at a national level," he said. "A few dead village poultry don't necessarily raise alarm bells, yet that's where the problem starts."
Thailand's latest death took its toll to 13, as thousands of chickens were culled and authorities declared an epidemic outbreak zone in Kanchanaburi province. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said: "The guy was infected with bird flu because he took a sick chicken, slaughtered it and then ate it."
A spokesman for the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service said the three pigeons destroyed in Melbourne were part of a consignment of 102 birds imported from Canada that were being held in high security quarantine.
Antibodies carried by the birds showed they had come into contact with some form of bird flu virus, though not necessarily the H5N1 strain currently sweeping through Asia and parts of Eastern Europe. They posed no risk to humans or Australian birds, the spokesman said.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian officials covered up and then neglected a spreading bird-flu epidemic for two years until it began to sicken humans this summer, posing a grave threat to people well beyond the country's borders, according to Indonesian and international health experts.
Unlike Southeast Asian countries that began to see human cases almost as soon as avian influenza was identified in their poultry, Indonesia had a generous head start to prevent an outbreak among people. Since July, however, it has registered more human cases than any other country, including three deaths confirmed by international testing. Influenza specialists agree that the actual number of human cases is higher and expect it to rise with the approach of the rainy season.
Health experts say the Indonesian epidemic started in commercial poultry farms, spread among the tens of millions of free-range chickens raised in back yards and finally infected people. At each step, the Indonesian government failed to take measures that could have broken the chain, while discouraging research into the outbreak.
As a result, specialists are concerned that the Indonesia cases pose a worldwide threat if the bird-flu virus changes and becomes contagious among humans.
"If the government had acted sooner to stamp it out, there would be no outbreak. They have wasted so much time," said Chairul Nidom, an Indonesian microbiologist who first identified the virus in the country's birds. "What terrifies me is that it just won't affect Indonesia."
In recent days, the virus has killed birds in Turkey, Romania and possibly Greece, for the first time presenting a danger to European poultry. Russia yesterday reported that preliminary tests, conducted after hundreds of birds died south of Moscow, showed the presence of the virus, according to news services. China also reported a fresh outbreak of bird flu in its northern grasslands, where 2,600 birds died of the disease.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the chances were increased that avian flu would move to the Middle East and Africa.
Health experts stress, however, that a human pandemic still is most likely to erupt in East Asia. Bird flu already is deeply entrenched among Asian poultry. Moreover, many countries in the region lack basic agricultural safeguards to prevent the disease from spreading to humans. They also lack health-care systems able to contain the virus.
At least 60 people in Southeast Asia have died of the illness since 2003. U.N. health officials warn the threat could multiply if bird flu develops into a form easily passed among humans, potentially setting off a plague killing tens of millions of people worldwide.
Indonesia, in particular, worries U.N. and other international experts, partly because it has Southeast Asia's largest population of both people and poultry. The country also has an impoverished health-care system that has deteriorated significantly since the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the weakening of central-government authority after the 1998 ouster of the longtime dictator Suharto.
In an interview with The Washington Post last spring, Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, Indonesia's national director of animal health, first disclosed that officials had known chickens were dying from bird flu since the middle of 2003 but kept this secret until last year because of lobbying by the poultry industry. She also revealed that the government had not set aside money this year to vaccinate poultry against the virus though officials had trumpeted this as the centerpiece of their strategy to contain the disease.
Naipospos repeated her allegations late last month in a local newspaper. The Agriculture Ministry fired her one day later.
U.N. officials complained that her dismissal has set back efforts to fight the virus, faulting the government for ousting what they call its most respected animal-health expert at the height of a crisis.
Naipospos alleged that bird flu never has been a priority in the Agriculture Ministry. Until recent months, she added, the ministry even was unwilling to tap its $3 million emergency account to pay for disease-control measures.
"They could not see the potential threat until there was an actual threat," she said last week. "I talked to the minister about it many times. He said a disease outbreak is not a national emergency, not a disaster."
Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said the government considers bird flu a matter of great concern. Every morning, he said, he files a report with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on efforts to battle the disease.
"That means our attention is very high on how to address this problem," the minister said. "The thing is, we don't want to publicize too much about bird flu because of the effect on our farms. Prices have dropped very drastically."
Apriyantono said he fired Naipospos because he was not happy with her handling of bird flu and her working relationship with top ministry officials.
When the virus first appeared in the summer of 2003, Indonesian officials were divided over whether the sudden deaths of hens on a commercial farm on Java island were caused by bird flu or a less virulent ailment, Newcastle disease. Nidom, a professor at Indonesia's Airlangga University, was called in. Within two months, he said his research had determined that the ailment was indeed bird flu and was genetically related to a strain found seven years earlier in southern China.
But owners of major poultry companies, who have personal ties to senior Agriculture Ministry officials, insisted that any containment efforts be done secretly, Naipospos recalled. Naipospos said last week that owners even lobbied Indonesia's president at the time, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
In January 2004, Nidom broke ranks and announced his findings. The Agriculture Ministry confirmed the bird-flu outbreak a day later. But the disease had spread across Java and on to Bali and Sumatra islands.
"It was too late. The virus was everywhere," Nidom recalled.
Last fall, with human cases mounting in Vietnam and Thailand, Nidom arranged an October conference at his university to examine bird flu. He invited premier influenza researchers from the United States, Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China.
Shortly before its scheduled start, a senior agriculture official demanded that foreign participants and all media be banned, according to Yoes Prijatna Dachlan, chairman of the university's Tropical Disease Center. Dachlan rejected the conditions and canceled the gathering.
Apriyantono said he was unfamiliar with the incident but that Indonesia was open to foreign researchers.
Through this summer, avian flu continued to spread, often unreported, and containment efforts remained unfunded. The disease reached two-thirds of the country's provinces.
Then in July, a father and two daughters in an affluent Jakarta suburb died of respiratory disease. The father tested positive as the country's first bird-flu victim. Investigators concluded his daughters likely died of the same cause.
Responding to public anxiety, Apriyantono went on television to oversee the culling of several dozen pigs and ducks on a farm 10 miles away. But the campaign stalled when the cameras left. Thousands of chickens, identified by health experts as the leading suspects in the outbreak, escaped slaughter.
As suspected human cases mounted last month, government officials said they would take extraordinary measures.
But Apriyantono acknowledged one month later that he has yet to define a highly infected area. As a result, he has directed that culling be limited to the specific property where an infection is detected.
Post special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.
Adults in the prime of life could be most at risk of deadly bird flu, the Government's top medical adviser warned last night.
Sir Liam Donaldson said that men and women aged 20 to 40 could be the main target of the human form of the disease.
He said a similar flu hit exactly that group almost 100 years ago.
Sir Liam also cautioned that the bug could strike more than once, re-emerging again and again to sweep through the population in 'waves'.
The second wave could be even more lethal than the first, he said.
The Government believes one in four people will be infected and around 50,000 will die if the flu strikes.
But it also acknowledges the bug could be much more lethal - infecting one in two people and claiming more than 700,000 lives.
Launching the Government's updated bird flu contingency plan, Sir Liam said the arrival of the bug, was 'inevitable', though no one knows when it will strike or how it will act.
Those most at risk of normal winter flu - the very young and very old - may not be those most in danger during a pandemic, he said.
"We cannot determine in advance what the risk groups are going to be," he said. "They are more likely to be the usual groups but it is just possible it could have its own signature like Spanish flu and disproportionately affect another age group."
He added that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed 50million worldwide 'selectively targeted' 20 to 40 year olds. Medicine was in its infancy then and 99 per cent of the deaths were among the under-65s.
Working age-adults
Research has shown that the Spanish flu virus bears terrifying genetic similarities to today's bird flu.
The Department of Health's contingency plan warns: "The 1918-19 pandemic mainly affected healthy young adults and seemed to spare those at the extremes of life.
"Mortality rates are likely to vary considerably between different age groups. At least a third of the total deaths may be in people under 65.
"If working age adults are predominately affected this will impact more seriously on provision of services and business continuity, while illness in the very young and the elderly is likely to present a greater burden on health services, especially, for the former, for paediatric intensive care."
Vaccinating the very old and the very young first could leave the middle-aged vulnerable to infection.
It is also possible the elderly may have been exposed to a similar bug in the past and so have some immunity to the new virus, leaving younger adults more vulnerable.
The document, Pandemic Flu: UK Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan, also warns that Britain could be hit by successive 'waves' of bird flu, each lasting three to five months. They could be weeks or months apart, leaving Britain in the grip of bird flu for up to three years, according to one estimate.
Sir Liam said: "The evidence from the past is that we won't just have one wave of infection, we will have subsequent waves as well, which may be as intense or even more intense than the initial wave."
'Very, very transmissible'
He said that the pandemic virus need not stem from the H5N1 strain that emerged in Asia. It has infected almost 120 people and killed 60.
"We have got to remain flexible," he said. "We cannot just have tunnel vision and assume this is going to happen from the current bird flu strain although that is more likely because it is obviously around a lot more at the moment."
He added: "It is a very, very transmissible disease and will come in from all points. We cannot be sure what the levels of death are."
Plans to vaccinate everyone in the UK against the human form of bird flu were also announced yesterday.
The Government is to put a firm on stand-by to make 120million doses as soon as a pandemic emerges.
Production cannot start earlier because it must be specifically formulated to target the human form.
Sir Liam said the order would "put Britain towards the front of the queue when it comes to getting the vaccine first". However, the vaccine will take up to six months to produce, meaning people will not be vaccinated at the start of the outbreak.
"We would be very lucky not to have the pandemic come before the vaccine is produced," Sir Liam said.
Travel restrictions
Other protection will come from the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. The Government has an order in for 14.6million courses - enough to cover a quarter of the population.
The updated contingency plan outlines who would be given priority for jabs and tablets during an outbreak.
Other possible measures include travel restrictions, and the cancelling of football matches and pop concerts.
Doctors' surgeries are to receive a 50-page technical guide giving advice on symptoms and treatment.
The lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu has already been confirmed in poultry in Turkey and Romania. Yesterday, there were suspected outbreaks in China, Russia and Romania. Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Croatia are also waiting for test results.
One hundred and two pigeons exposed to the bird flu virus have been seized by Australian quarantine inspectors.
Inspectors said three of the birds, which were imported from Canada, had tested positive to bird flu antibodies and would be put down.
A spokesman for the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, David Finlayson, said the birds posed "no risk to human health, no risk to bird life because quarantine facilities are a high- security, purpose-built facility designed for this very purpose".
He stressed that the birds did not have the disease.
The birds arrived in Melbourne last month and were put into quarantine for testing. The diagnosis was confirmed "some days ago". A highly contagious strain of avian influenza, H7, was found on a farm in Canada last year.
The federal Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, who this week said he was considering vaccinating Australia against bird flu, would not comment on the incident, saying it was a quarantine issue.
The chief veterinary officer, Gardner Murray, said last night the incident was not Australia's first brush with bird flu.
All NSW councils have been asked to identify possible sites to dispose of dead birds and to plan their response in the event of a bird flu outbreak in Australia. - with AAP
(CBS/AP) Bird flu sent jitters across Asia on Thursday, with Thailand's prime minister confirming another fatality from the illness and Taiwan reporting the island's first incidence of the lethal virus.
A 48-year-old man who succumbed after handling his neighbor's sick chickens became the 13th person to die of the disease in Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said, citing new lab results confirming the diagnosis.
Meanwhile, Europe's top health officials meet Thursday for talks on how to thwart the spread of bird flu, as Prime Minister Tony Blair scheduled similar meetings with British politicians and the country's largest farmers' union.
The victim in Thailand was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on Sunday, about two weeks after he killed, cooked and ate his neighbor's sick chickens. Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes but were not tested for bird flu.
Most human cases have been linked to direct physical contact with sick birds. Health officials say it is not dangerous to eat properly cooked chicken. They urge standard hygiene practices be taken during preparation, such as thoroughly washing hands and surfaces in contact with raw meat.
In related developments:
A human pandemic of bird flu can be avoided, provided rich nations channel funds to poorer countries to help them report and contain the disease in birds, an official at the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health said. "In our opinion, the first line of defense is to mobilize resources and tackle the problem in the bird rather than focusing on anti-virals and vaccines," Alejandro Thiermann, head of the group's standard-setting committee for terrestrial animals, said Wednesday. He noted that it was still very rare for humans to become infected.
Europe's top health officials meet Thursday for talks on how to thwart the spread of bird flu, as Prime Minister Tony Blair scheduled similar meetings with British politicians and the country's largest farmers' union. Other countries across Europe were already slaughtering suspect birds. Veterinary officials killed poultry in a small village in central Russia on Thursday, and Germany ordered farmers to keep poultry indoors as a precaution. British farmers were taking similar measures. As EU ministers meet Thursday afternoon, Blair will hold private talks with British government ministers and the head of the National Farmers Union.
Authorities at Shanghai's two airports will start checking travelers' bags for animal products, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said as countries in the region step up vigilance against the disease.
Serbia on Thursday ordered that all poultry and pigs be kept indoors, and banned the sale of live birds to minimize the risk of bird flu spreading in Europe. The Agriculture Ministry said the measure was taken "to prevent contacts of poultry and pigs with wild birds." All animal feed must also be kept indoors, the ministry said. People are also barred from taking domestic fowl or pigs to open water, as well as to "live bird displays." The H5N1 strain of bird flu was found last week in neighboring Romania and in Turkey.
The Philippines announced new measures to keep the country free of bird flu. The country will host about 7,000 athletes and officials from 11 next month for the 23rd Southeast Asian Games. Health officials said thermal screening will be conducted at the airport in Manila, and athletes entering with a fever will be isolated and examined. The country has so far been free of the virus.
The World Health Organization also announced China had destroyed 91,100 birds near a farm in the country's north. The birds were slaughtered after 2,600 chickens and ducks died of the H5N1 virus in a breeding facility in a village in the Inner Mongolia region.
Taiwan on Thursday confirmed the island's first case of deadly bird flu. The Agricultural Council said birds smuggled in from China on a Panama-registered freighter tested positive for the H5N1 virus strain.
The man's 7-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, has been hospitalized in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection and is suspected of having bird flu, said Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control.
"The people in this area should have known better," he said. "They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous."
Also in Asia, Indonesia's health minister on Thursday expressed concern about the virus possibly mutating into a form that spreads easily from person to person.
Several of Indonesia's bird flu deaths, infections and suspected cases occurred within at least two separate families, Minister of Health Siti Fadillah Supari told reporters, adding that a third suspected cluster was under investigation.
"The more we find clusters of human bird flu cases, the bigger the possibility of human-to-human infection," Supari said.
So far most human bird flu cases have been traced to contact with birds. The virus has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia since late 2003, and health experts worry if the virus alters to a form that is highly contagious among humans, it could spark a global pandemic that kills millions.
In recent days, the H5N1 virus has been discovered in poultry in Turkey and Romania, which lie along the natural flyways of migratory birds. The European Union was trying to assess whether the virus had spread into Macedonia and Greece, while emergency workers were killing domestic and wild fowl in and near a bird flu-affected village south of Moscow in Russia.
In response, Bangladesh has banned poultry imports from those countries.
Beijing - China is sharing little of its efforts to contain bird flu with the rest of the world, the New York Times reports.
The world's most populous nation and poultry producer identified the first case of the avian influenza strain H5N1 in 1996 in a goose.
Hong Kong researchers this summer reported migratory birds in western China appear to have contracted the disease, although authorities in Beijing say none of China's poultry is currently infected. China has refused to share samples of the disease in migratory birds.
In the past two years, 60 people in Thailand and Vietnam have died from bird flu and health officials worldwide fear the virus could mutate and be transmitted from human to human, creating a pandemic.
The fact that we've now had human cases in Indonesia certainly makes us think again about the possibility we'll see human cases in China, Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told the Times.
Health officials fear local Chinese officials may be hiding human cases of bird flu as they did when SARS -- severe acute respiratory syndrome -- erupted in 2002.
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The bird flu virus has spread to western Russia, with the deadly H5N1 strain reportedly detected in initial tests in the Tula region south of Moscow, where hundreds of birds have died.
The Russian daily Vremya reported that 247 chickens, geese and ducks on a farm in the Russian village of Yandovka had died due to a severe viral infection between Friday and Monday, according to a report on The Wall Street Journal Web site.
The case, if confirmed, would be the first in European Russia, the Journal reported. The disease had been registered in six regions of Siberia and the Urals region.
And the virus has also been detected in a second location in Romania, the BBC reported on its Web site.
Samples from the village of Maliuc tested positive for the virus. It follows an outbreak in Ceamurlia de Jos, also in Romania's Danube delta.
The spread comes as the European Union begins a two-day exercise to test readiness to deal with a major health crisis, the BBC reported. The E.U. said the exercise was planned 18 months ago, long before the current outbreak of bird flu.
At least 60 people in Asia have died after contracting flu from birds infected by H5N1, but scientists say the disease does not appear able to spread between humans.
The Journal report also said China has confirmed a fresh outbreak of avian influenza in birds in the northern province of Inner Mongolia. Tests confirmed the outbreak at a rare-bird farm in the village of Tengjiaying, near the province's capital of Hohhot northwest of Beijing, was the deadly H5N1 strain, state-run news media reported.
The outbreak has been controlled and hasn't spread to any new locations, the reports by China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency said.
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, buffeted by criticism over the government's faulty reaction to Hurricane Katrina, is rushing to get ahead of a possibly even more devastating threat: avian influenza.
As bird flu sweeps across Asia and threatens Europe, Bush is preparing the public and the government for the possibility the disease could spread to humans and ignite a deadly global outbreak. A moderate to severe outbreak in the U.S. may kill as many as 500,000 Americans and sicken 2 million, according to the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit public health advocacy group in Washington.
With his poll approval ratings at all-time lows for his presidency -- 39 percent in an Oct. 13-16 CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey -- because of public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq and doubts about the government's ability to respond to a disaster after Katrina, Bush can't afford to be caught short.
``If cases break out and the government isn't prepared, you're going to have a worse backlash than you did post- Katrina,'' said Robert J. Blendon, professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in an interview. ``Right now, the president is way ahead of the public on this.''
In the past month Bush has convened a bird flu conference with representatives of 81 nations, met with executives of six drugmakers to prod them to speed up development of a vaccine and dispatched Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to meet with officials of Southeast Asia. He has also raised the possibility of using the military to enforce quarantines and travel restrictions in the event of an outbreak.
`The First Pandemic'
``If left unchallenged, this virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century,'' Bush told world leaders Sept. 14 at the United Nations.
Critics, including Democratic lawmakers and one former Bush administration official, say the U.S. still isn't as prepared as it should be. Tommy Thompson, Health and Human Services secretary in Bush's first term, said the White House and Congress should already have adopted a blueprint for fighting the disease.
Three years ago, Thompson recommended a speedier way to develop vaccines, shifting from egg-based manufacturing to a ``cell culture'' method. He also urged the White House and Congress to grant vaccine makers immunity from liability lawsuits while assuring pharmaceutical companies the government would buy their product.
When he left office in December, Thompson called avian influenza ``a really huge bomb out there.'' In an interview last week, he said that things haven't improved since.
`Not Protected'
``We're not protected right now, and unless we do the things I'm talking about, we're going to have problems,'' Thompson said. ``If we would have taken precautions then, we wouldn't be in this situation today.''
Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California faults Bush for not endorsing pandemic flu legislation, failing to finish a flu response plan and proposing $130 million in cuts for public health departments.
``The administration's record has been characterized by neglect and poor management,'' said Waxman, a frequent administration critic, in a statement last week.
The U.S. is much less prepared to handle bird flu than nations such as Canada that experienced outbreaks in 2003 of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, said Tim Brookes, who wrote a book about SARS for the American Public Health Association.
Steps Behind
``The U.S. is a couple of steps behind,'' Brookes, author of ``Behind the Mask: How the World Survived SARS, the First Epidemic of the 21st Century,'' said in an interview yesterday. ``What is needed is a temporary socialization of medicine, a central organizing authority and a cohesive plan.''
The strategic plan for dealing with a flu crisis being compiled at HHS hasn't been released. Leavitt said it may be ready by the end of this month.
The strain of flu causing concern, known as H5n1, erupted in Southeast Asia, where more than 140 million birds have died or been destroyed. So far, about 120 people have been infected through birds, resulting in 60 deaths. The virus, which hasn't yet acquired the ability to pass from person to person, has been detected in Russia and Romania, spread by migratory birds.
The Agriculture Department and the U.S. poultry industry say they are taking precautions to keep the disease out of U.S. flocks. Along with banning importation of live birds and hatching eggs from countries hit by avian flu, scientists are routinely checking migratory birds along the West Coast, according to the department and the National Chicken Council.
Public Awareness
Bush has sought to raise public awareness of the threat. He spoke about it at length during an Oct. 4 news conference, three weeks after taking responsibility for the federal government's inability to deliver sufficient relief supplies to the parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama left stricken by Hurricane Katrina.
He interrupted a reporter's question -- ``wait a minute, this is an important subject'' -- to discuss the 1918 influenza outbreak, which killed more than 20 million people, and the mechanics of quarantines.
``I take this issue very seriously,'' Bush said. ``I'm not predicting an outbreak, but just suggesting to you we ought to be thinking about it, and we are.''
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Bush was ``very interested and concerned'' about bird flu even before Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf coast Aug. 29, while adding that ``it would be foolish not to apply any lessons learned because of Katrina.''
Using the Military
Among the proposals Bush advanced was the possibility of asking Congress for authority to use the military to enforce a domestic quarantine and travel restrictions in the event of a bird flu pandemic. That caught some public health specialists by surprise.
``For a lot of the public, the president's remarks about the use of the military were a bolt out of the blue,'' Harvard's Blendon said. ``It was out of context with the usual discussion of vaccines.''
One critical hurdle yet to be overcome is developing, producing and distributing an effective vaccine. Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis SA, the biggest supplier of seasonal flu shots for the U.S. market, has tested a vaccine that raises humans' immune protection to bird flu; Brentford, U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc and San Diego-based Vical Inc. are developing them as well. The National Institutes of Health is studying how Basel, Switzerland-based Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu works against bird flu in Vietnam.
Six Months of Production
All the flu vaccine plants in the world can make about 450 million shots in six months of production, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That would protect less than 10 percent of the world's population.
Last year, the U.S. had a shortage of vaccine for the annual flu season when a U.K factory run by Emeryville, California-based Chiron Corp. was closed because of contamination. The lack of adequate vaccine supplies became an issue in the presidential race between Bush and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate.
``The shortage wasn't anywhere near as serious as this is, and you remember how upset people were about that,'' Blendon said. ``If governments don't pay any attention, and something happens, people feel like the whole system let them down.''
The recent spread of avian flu in Asia and Europe has rattled consumers and battered poultry producers in those parts of the world. So far, the U.S. poultry industry has been spared -- in part, say industry experts, because differences in U.S. production methods make an outbreak less likely here. But analysts say the multi-billion industry remains vulnerable to further global spread of the disease -- and to public fears that could reduce Americans' appetite for poultry in the coming months.
Poultry farming is big business, and the U.S. is the world’s leading producer and exporter of poultry meat. About 75 percent of that comes from chicken production, the rest from the sales of eggs and turkey. And in recent years, the business has been sizzling: American poultry farmers served up $29 billion worth of birds last year, some 24 percent more than in 2003.
But now, following a flurry of reports of new outbreaks of bird flu outside the U.S., some analysts warn that the U.S. industry could be at risk -- even if the disease doesn't show up here.
"Although consumers have been largely undeterred from beef consumption in the wake of Mad Cow (disease), we believe the prevalence and familiarity with flu in modern society may foster a more tentative public reaction and possibly lead to a reduction in consumption," Jonathan Feeney, a food and beverage industry analyst at Wachovia Securities, recently warned in a research note to clients.
Public concern about bird flu intensified last week following a report that scientists had linked the deadly Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 - which killed as many as 50 million people -- to a strain of bird flu that mutated and began spreading among humans. That report was followed by a series of recent bird flu outbreaks in Turkey, Romania, Greece after earlier outbreaks in Southeast Asia. Officials in Russia Wednesday confirmed an outbreak. In all, some 16 countries have reported outbreaks, and more than 100 million birds have been killed by the disease or put down after being infected.
Health officials are most concerned about the possible spread of the disease to humans. Last week, on a tour of Southeast Asia countries hit by bird flu, U.S. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt warned that while preparations are increasing, "no nation is adequately prepared for a pandemic flu." Separately, a senior World Health Organization official said that such a pandemic would result in "hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths worldwide."
Much of the outlook for U.S. poultry farmers depends on the public’s reaction to statements like those, and to the latest news reports surrounding multiple outbreaks of avian flu. Health officials are walking a fine line between alerting the public to the potential risks of the flu while not panicking the public.
"My mom called me other day and asked me, ‘Should I be worried?’" said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "And I said, ‘No you shouldn’t be worried. What you should do -- because you’re in a high risk group -- is get your flu shot.’ Every year, our flu kills 36,000 Americans -- regular domestic flu."
Better ‘biosecurity’
The U.S. poultry industry, meanwhile, has stepped up surveillance of the hundreds of millions of chickens and turkeys grown on farms throughout the U.S. Industry experts stress that, unlike the "backyard" production methods used in Asia, where roaming fowl make frequent contact with humans and other migratory birds, U.S. poultry farming isolates its flocks through various layers of "biosecurity" designed to prevent the spread of disease. (Even so-called "free range" chickens do not, in fact, roam free on a range; they’re raised in small, closed pens and not allowed to mingle with migratory birds.)
To check the spread of the disease to the U.S., the Department of Agriculture has banned imports of live birds and eggs from infected countries and is quarantining and testing all imported birds before letting them in the country. Poultry meat from some Asian nations is also required to be processed or cooked under USDA requirements to lower the risk of contamination.
While the threat of a human pandemic is very real, the risk of contracting the disease directly from poultry is mostly limited to contact with live birds. There is no evidence that the disease can be contracted through consumption of well-cooked chicken or eggs.
And though there have been several outbreaks of bird flu in the U.S. since 2004, none have involved the deadly, high-pathogenic H5N1 strain that has been found in Asia and recently began appearing in Europe. (The letters in a flu name refers to the antigens, in this case Hemagglutinin and Neuraminidase, which come in several types. Epidemiologist further classify these viruses as low-pathogenic, which spread slowly, and high-pathogenic, which are much more dangerous.)
The latest outbreak of human H5N1 infection appears to have originated from a Vietnamese man who ate a pudding made form raw duck blood, according to Daigle.
"If you cook the meat thoroughly, then it’s not a problem at all," he said.
Eggs should also be cooked thoroughly, said Daigle. Other precautions include washing your hands, along with cutting boards and utensils, after handling or cutting raw meat.
Happy Thanksgiving?
Despite concerns about the spread of the disease, American consumers don’t seem to have lost their appetite for poultry. The U.S. industry will get a good indication of public sentiment in a few weeks, when ten of millions of Americans sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, which traditionally takes a big slice out of the 7.5 billion pounds of U.S. turkey produced each year.
But so far, there doesn’t appear to be any drop in chicken consumption in the U.S. beyond the seasonal dip that typically occurs when cold weather in much of the country puts an end to the summer grilling season, according to Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council.
"There is certainly is that potential but we think if people look at the facts, we will not have any problem with people continuing to enjoy chicken," said Lobb.
In Europe, where the disease has hit closer to home, consumer reaction has been more pronounced.
"We’ve noticed a drop in poultry consumption of 10 percent since the beginning of October compared to last year," a spokeswoman for a poultry wholesalers’ union in France, which is Europe’s largest poultry producer. "We believe that the main reason is bird flu."
In Italy, a leading farmers’ group, Coldiretti, said chicken consumption has fallen over 30 percent year-on-year in September amid widespread bird flu concern.
But in Germany, a spokesman for the poultry industry association said consumption hasn’t been impacted yet.
"This is what we found from a quick-fire poll. Customers realize the threat is to the animals and not to the product," said a spokesman. But if the disease struck Germany, he said: "It would have dramatic effects."
Farmers in the Netherlands are especially vulnerable. After an outbreak of a milder form of the virus in 2003, some 30 million chickens had to be destroyed, wiping out nearly a third of the total stock. The Dutch Agricultural Research Institute estimates the outbreak cost farmer and distributors as much as $600 million.
"The situation in the Netherlands is worse than in other countries," said Albert Osterhaus, an avian flu expert at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. "It could be quite explosive because of the huge concentration and numbers of poultry."
The multiple outbreaks of bird flu in Europe could end up boosting orders for U.S. producers, the world leader in poultry exports, which make up some 15 percent of U.S. chicken production and 6 percent of turkey production. Poultry farmers in countries hit by the disease will need to import bird to replace flocks that have been put down and food distributors will need to find alternate sources of poultry.
But Lobb said any potential boost to U.S. exports could be dampened by restrictive tariffs that have already limited the growth of poultry shipments abroad.
(The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.)
'Is Tamiflu A Prescription For Survival?'
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Further down this page, you'll also find a comprehensive selection of the finest books on Urban Survival and Survival in the City. You can also click on the Amazon.com button under each of these titles to read extracts from, or reviews of them, or to place an order.
This expertly-written book on Survival Skills in the City, by John Wiseman, author of the bestselling 'SAS SURVIVAL HANDBOOK' and survival skills instructor for the famed British SAS Regiment, will equipt you for survival in the toughest environment of all - the urban jungle!
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This is the finest survival instruction and reference guide available. These techniques were taught to elite commando troops who were trained to carry out isolated, arduous operations all over the world; resupply was frequently impossible, requiring them to live off the land.
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This book will give you expert instruction in the complete spectrum of wilderness skills, and could save your life! Ideal for hunters, fishermen, canoeists, campers, climbers, prospectors, wilderness travellers, military, militia and rescue personnel etc., and for those who wish to learn how to stay alive in the wilderness, and in rough country, and to survive under any conceivable set of circumstances. "
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Whether you want to learn useful rural, homesteader or "back-to-the-land" survival skills, acquire invaluable money-saving or food-raising and preserving techniques, or to use and enjoy the astonishing wealth of over 1,000 recipes and hundreds of proven tips for cutting your personal living costs or becoming more self-reliant, or you just want regular access to Carla Emery's unparalleled storehouse of experience and advice on everything related to self-sufficient living, this is a book that you must have!
This amazing 864 page volume, now in its ninth printing, is the result of an extraordinary fusion of Carla Henry's vast experience in every area of self-reliant living with the feedback and comments [many of which are reproduced in the book] of her more than thirty thousand readers around the world. The book, in consequence, is an invaluable treasure-trove of well-tested, practical and ingenious recipes, formulas, ideas and advice. Whether you live in the city or the country, you'll find yourself consulting Carla Henry's 'Encyclopedia Of Country Living' frequently and profiting by it - or just sitting down and reading it for sheer pleasure! It is perhaps the most comprehensive resource available on the topics it covers.
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We couldn't agree more, and we urge you to add this one-of-a-kind telephone book-sized treasury of earthy, folksy and wise country wisdom to your own library, while you still can! You'll save a lot, you'll learn a lot, end you'll be endlessly informed, intrigued, amused and edified by its seemingly-inexaustible and ever-useful contents.
Outsize paperback; 864 pages
And it seems that we're not alone in our high opinion of this superb modern classic!
What reviewers across America thought of this superb reference and instructional resource book:
"It is a superb reference book, better than any number of those that pretend to teach you survival skills by concentrating on just a few crafts." - Survival Tomorrow
"This is really an encylopedia and, like a good encyclopedia, the narrative is clear and complete, the illustrations are plentiful and the whole thing is thoroughly indexed. You can spend a fortune on a library of neo-pioneer books or you can buy "BACK TO BASICS" - Times & World News, Roanoke, Va.
"If you're going to go back to the good old days you'll need some the good old days didn't have...an instruction manual." - Cincinnati Enquirer
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"...it would be an asset to anyone's personal library at home. We recommend it highly." - Kansas City TimesFrom the Introduction:
"'Back To Basics' is a book about the simple life. It is about old-fashioned ways of doing things, and old-fashioned craftsmanship, and old-fashioned food, and old-fashioned fun. It is also about independence - the kind of down-home self-reliance that our grandparents and great grandparents took for granted, and that we moderns often think has vanished forever, along with supermarket tomatoes that taste good, packaged bread that does not have additives, and holidays that are not commercialized.In a period of terrorism, war, and increasing oil and gasoline prices, with the disruptions, shortages, and inflation which are likely to result, that last paragraph reminds us that we may all have an increasing need for improved personal survival, budgetary, and independent-living skills over the next few years! This is an essential book that anyone concerned with saving money and with deveoping practical living-skills must have.At its heart 'Back To Basics' is a how-to book packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations to help you and your family reestablish control over your day-to-day lives. The book is organized into six main sections. The first deals with shelter, the second with energy, the third with raising food, the forth with preserving food, the fifth with home crafts, and the sixth with recreation. The subjects presented lead in logical sequence along the way stations on the road to self-sufficiency. An added feature, "Sources and Resources," lists suggestions for further reading plus names of suppliers of hard-to-find equipment.
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While 'Back To Basics' is a book for doing, it is also a book for dreaming. There is no need to run out and start baking adobe bricks in order to enjoy learning the ins and outs of adobe construction. [It might even set you thinking about putting up your own adobe home someday]. Similarly, your imagination is apt to be fired by the interviews with folks around the country who are already practicing the skills and crafts described in 'Back To Basics'. Among others, you will hear from a husband-and-wife team who built a log cabin in Alaska, some suburban kids who raise goats and pigs in their backyard, a city worker who specializes in urban gardening, and a New Hampshire artisan who is keeping alive the Indian art of building birchbark canoes. There are also descriptions of by-gone ways of doing things: the technique of pitsawing, the Indian way of smoking a deer hide and making jerky, the inner workings of a water-powered gristmill. These - along with the historical background of each skill and charming old prints that illustrate many of them - make for fascinating reading.
Americans are a contradictory people. No nation has ever moved further from the harsh realities of wilderness existence. Yet. paradoxically, no nation has clung more tenaciously to its early ideals - to the concept of personal independence, to the mystique of the frontier, to the early pioneers' sense of rugged self-reliance. It is as if somewhere, deep in the American spirit, there has always lurked a distrust of the very technology that we, more than any other people, have spawned. Perhaps this distrust was an accident, but perhaps it was fate; for in the light of recent events that have called into question our easy dependence on modern technology, it seems to have been prophetic. Americans have long yearned for a return to basics; now, suddenly, it has become a necessity. 'Back To Basics' can do much to guide the way."
This is an absolutely essential book if you wish to increase your self-reliance and personal survival skills, as well as provide yourself with an essential reference and how-to resource in preparation for any future food or energy disruptions and shortages. We urge you to order your own copy quickly to be sure of obtaining one! This is an ideal companion to the equally-essential, bestselling 'ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING' [see above].
Take this opportunity to add the superb, comprehensive, and invaluable 'BACK TO BASICS' to your survival, independent-living, or home library!"
Large hardback; 456 pages pages
