MARK BANNERMAN: Australia may have been given the all clear, but China is today reporting another outbreak of bird flu in poultry.
It's the fourth outbreak in China in just over two weeks.
China Correspondent John Taylor reports.
JOHN TAYLOR: China's latest bird flu outbreak has occurred in a county in north-eastern Liaoning Province.
The virus has hit family farms in six different villages in Heishan county, killing 9,000 chickens.
Authorities have destroyed more than 350,000 others.
The surrounding area in a three-kilometre radius has been sealed off. Orders have been given to vaccinate more than 13 million birds.
The outbreak was first noticed last week, but was only confirmed yesterday as bird flu.
It's the fourth outbreak in China in just over two weeks.
China's Ministry of Agriculture suspects migratory birds were to blame, and have warned that area is part of the route used by migratory birds to get from East Asia to Australia.
No human deaths have been reported.
Unlike in other parts of Asia, China has not had a single case. The Government insists no one has died or even been infected from any bird flu outbreak.
But authorities have warned that a human case is inevitable if China fails to contain outbreaks in chickens and ducks.
Publicly at least, China is very concerned about bird flu, and has announced quarantine restrictions and action plans to deal with it.
This week, the Government announced the creation of a $US 250 million fighting fund to finance anti-bird flu work.
The Agriculture Minister has gone to this latest outbreak area with a team of experts.
China accounts for nearly a third of the world domestic poultry stocks, with more than 5.2 billion birds.
It's fertile ground for bird flu to jump to humans, but the Government says that among the world's 3,600 reported cases of bird flu since the beginning of last year, less than two per cent have been in China.
This is John Taylor in Beijing, for 'PM'.
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A Vietnamese veterinary officer supervises an authorized poultry slaughterhouse in Hanoi in an effort to contain the spread of bird flu. Photograph: Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images
China and Vietnam today confirmed new bird flu outbreaks, while Japanese authorities said 180,000 chickens would be killed after signs of the virus were found at a farm.
China's latest outbreak - the fourth in the past three weeks - killed almost 9,000 chickens on October 26 in Badaohao village in Liaoning province east of Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The outbreak prompted authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds in the region, Xinhua reported, citing the country's Agriculture Ministry as the source. This came despite efforts to tighten controls on China's 5.2bn chickens, ducks and other poultry; a report on the World Organisation for Animal Health website states that nearly 14m chickens have been vaccinated in the province.
Hong Kong immediately banned poultry imports from Liaoning, reflecting growing concern that China is becoming a potential bird flu flashpoint. No human cases have been reported in China, but authorities warn that human infection is inevitable if the government can't prevent repeated outbreaks in poultry.
In Vietnam, more than 3,000 poultry died or were culled this week in three villages in Bac Giang province, nearly 35 miles northeast of Hanoi, said provincial vice chairman Nguyen Dang.
Transporting poultry to or from the three villages was banned, and the towns and those around them have been disinfected, with remaining poultry vaccinated, he added.
Veterinary officials warned that more cases were likely during the coming months.
"We expect more outbreaks, not just in Bac Giang, but also in other provinces," said Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of the Animal Health department. "Cooler weather now makes it easier for the virus to spread."
In Japan, authorities said antibody testing had found that chickens at a farm in Ibaraki state had been exposed to a virus of the H5 strain, and that 180,000 birds would be culled. Approximately 1.5m birds have already been killed in the state after signs of the disease were found at other farms.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 62 people - including 41 in Vietnam - and resulted in the deaths of more than 100m birds in Asia since 2003.
Most human cases have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, but experts worry the virus could mutate and become easily transmissible between humans, possibly triggering a pandemic.
In Australia, a man who returned from China complaining of shortness of breath was rushed to the hospital with a possible case of bird flu, but he tested negative for the virus, a health official said.
In its battle to control the disease, Beijing authorities created an anti-flu task force this week and a 2bn yuan (£141.5m) fund to pay for anti-disease work. They have also ordered hospitals to report data on flu cases daily to the government, Xinhua said.
President Bush asked Congress this week for $7.1 billion to prepare for a global flu epidemic that health experts believe may be imminent and would likely kill millions.
"A pandemic is a lot like a fire -- a forest fire," Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health. "If caught early, it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder undetected, it can grow to an inferno that spreads quickly beyond our ability to control it."
Regina Phelps, a leading San Francisco emergency-management consultant, said she appreciates the president's belated attention to the matter. But she isn't encouraged.
"I don't know if our government is going to be able to do what it needs to do to meet this challenge," Phelps told me. "In light of what's happening in Iraq and the recent hurricanes, we can't look to government to save us from this.
"Businesses are going to have to rise to the occasion," she said. "It's going to have to happen on the private-sector level."
H5N1 avian influenza -- "bird flu" -- has caused 122 known human cases since December 2003. At least 62 have been fatal.
The deadly virus has already reached Europe from Asia. It's expected to arrive soon in this country. If bird flu adapts (as experts say is likely) to make human-to-human infection more common, a worldwide pandemic could erupt within months.
"I think a pandemic is inevitable," Phelps said in the cool, detached tone of someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the unimaginable. "Pandemics happen only about three times every 100 years. It seems likely that H5N1 will be the next one."
She said she's increasingly being asked by companies to help lay the groundwork for a pandemic response. She's also instructing corporate clients to begin planning now, before it's too late.
Phelps' clients include the likes of Visa, Levi Strauss, Intuit, Macromedia and the World Bank.
In 2003, she worked with Stanford University on a training exercise that simulated an outbreak of highly infectious pneumonic plague on the Palo Alto campus. The elaborate drill was meant to prepare for a terrorist attack or a flu pandemic.
In the United States, Phelps predicted an outbreak of bird flu among humans would kill between 500,000 and 2 million people. Globally, perhaps as many as 200 million could die.
Phelps' projections for U.S. fatalities are in line with figures released by the White House on Wednesday.
"We could be facing the greatest disaster of our lifetime," she said.
50 million died
By comparison, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 550,000 in this country. And this was before air travel allowed viruses to hop continents in just a matter of hours.
Sherry Cooper, chief economist at Toronto investment firm BMO Nesbitt Burns, said in a report last month that ordinary flu outbreaks each year cost the U.S. economy as much as $12 billion in medical expenses and lost productivity.
A flu pandemic, she warned, would have an economic impact of up to $167 billion on the United States and perhaps a more disastrous financial impact on other nations.
"The repercussions on global trade would be devastating," Cooper wrote. "Given that virtually all major economies have a surplus with the (United States), trade disruptions would shutter manufacturing plants and curtail global demand for most commodities."
Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank said Thursday that a flu pandemic could kill 3 million people in Asia and cost regional economies almost $300 billion. "Growth in Asia would virtually stop," the bank predicted.
So what should we be doing?
On the individual level, health experts strongly advocate proven methods to fight the spread of viruses: frequent hand washing, along with routine cleansing of surfaces and equipment shared by others.
For companies, Phelps is warning clients to prepare for as much as a third of their workforce being out sick at any one time. Similar absenteeism will be experienced by vendors and other business partners (not to mention multitudes of customers being stricken or avoiding stores and other public places).
Phelps says employers need to closely monitor workers' health to stay ahead of a fast-moving outbreak. If a pandemic appears likely, face-to-face meetings should be all but eliminated in favor of conference calls and online discussions.
Companies will need plans in place to deal with a worker who becomes seriously ill on the job and to disseminate information among employees as rapidly as possible.
Working from home
Ailing workers must be required to stay home. But for companies to remain operational, Phelps says all "mission critical" employees must be provided in advance with desktop computers in their homes, broadband connections and all necessary supplies.
She knows that few companies have either the financial resources or the wherewithal for such a move. But Phelps says the contingency of what she calls "robust work from home" can make all the difference in allowing a company to ride out a major emergency.
"It's a great strategy if we're trying to recover from an earthquake," she said. "It's really great if we're trying to recover from a pandemic."
As it stands, Phelps believes the disruption to business caused by a pandemic would almost certainly plunge the world into a global recession.
"There are going to be a lot of companies that won't survive this," she said.
Phelps acknowledges that there will be people who won't want to even discuss the prospect of a pandemic because of the enormity of the consequences. Denial is a common response in her line of work.
"I have a pretty bizarre job," she observed. "I spend my time thinking about things that horrify people. But I work on what to do about them."
Should we be frightened?
"We should definitely be frightened," Phelps replied without hesitation. Then she reconsidered.
"Maybe that's too strong a word," she said. "Fear prevents activity. It renders people impotent."
Well, at least the president has requested billions of dollars to help us get ready.
Phelps was silent a moment.
"I don't know if $7 billion is going to be enough," she said softly. "We have so much to do."
Preparing for the potential outbreak of the bird flu in the United States won't be cheap, but steps recently outlined by President George W. Bush have to be looked at not only as an immediate defense, but as a long-range investment to combat annual flu outbreaks.
Bush wants $7.1 billion in emergency spending to acquire enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans from the current strain of bird flu, and to help states prepare for a pandemic, pay for emergency outbreak plans and subsidize the cost of antivirals intended to reduce the severity of the bird flu.
Those are moves based on the "possibility" of bird flu entering the United States. But more importantly, Bush's program includes incentives for vaccine manufacturers to open plants in the United States and to develop technologies that would allow delivery, within six months, of new vaccines and antivirals for various strains of the flu virus.
The immediate need has to deal with bird flu, but perhaps we should be thankful that the potential of that deadly strain spreading has spurred the federal government into a plan that could address our annual concerns with lesser types of flu viruses.
Every year we can almost count on some strain of flu hitting the United States. Now, it takes almost a year from the time a strain is identified in some part of the world until vaccines are available in the United States. Opening or building U.S. plants and developing vaccines quicker are long-term health investments.
Part of the delay in delivering vaccines is because they are being manufactured overseas. Manufacturers claim a flood of lawsuits forced them to move out of the United States. Along with the $7.1 billion request, Bush called for liability protection for manufacturers in hopes it would encourage them to reopen or build plants in the United States.
We haven't seen a killer pandemic in the United States since the Hong Kong flu outbreak in 1968-69 that killed about 34,000 people. We have to wonder why more hasn't been done since then. We have been living on borrowed time. Bush's plan has to be looked at as insurance to lessen the impact of future flu seasons as well as pandemics.
The mutation of bird flu leading to human-to-human transmission and a potential cross-country outbreak of the disease in Asia would slow or halt economic growth in the region, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said here Friday.
"A pandemic (of bird flu) will likely slow or halt economic growth in Asia and lead to a significant reduction in trade, particularly of services. In the long run, potential economic growth will be lower and poverty will increase," the ADB said in a policy brief titled Potential Economic Impact of an Avian Flu Pandemic on Asia.
Provided that the psychological impact of a bird flu pandemic is short-lived and only seriously affects demand for two quarters, Asia faces a demand shock of around 99.2 billion US dollars in its 2006 GDP, the equivalent of 2.3 percentage points of GDP, the ADB report said.
Assuming that the same impact lasted longer and seriously affected demand for four quarters, the estimated loss would be 282. 7 billion US dollars in Asia, around 6.5 percentage points of its GDP, the report added.
The ADB also noted that "avian flu presents a major potential challenge to the development of the region, perhaps the most serious since the financial crisis of 1997."
Governments should react to the outbreak responsibly and not contribute unnecessarily to panic, the ADB suggested.
The report was prepared by the ADB's economist Erik Bloom and economics officer Mary Jane Carangal-San Jose.
Their analysis looks at a relatively mild outbreak, based on the historical experience of previous flu outbreaks and SARS. It focuses on the short-run impact of a pandemic on aggregate economic activity, the report said.
Source: Xinhua
POTENTIAL human and economic costs from a bird flu pandemic are huge, the World Bank said yesterday, while the Asian Development Bank warned such an outbreak could push the world economy into recession.
The World Bank, issuing a separate twice-yearly report on East Asia's economies, said the spread of avian flu was so far confined to the rural areas of several Asian countries.
However, there was a big risk to economic growth in 2006 due to potential policy actions such as quarantines and travel restrictions, it said.
Milan Brahmbhatt, an economist and the main author of the report, said: "While the costs of dealing with this have so far been limited to around 0.1 per cent of GDP, from culling birds and implementation of better animal health surveillance systems, the potential impact of a serious pandemic is of grave concern."
The report said that the most immediate economic impacts of a pandemic might arise not from death or sickness but from people and governments responding in an unco-ordinated way - as was the case with the SARS outbreak of 2003.
While the bank said it was foolhardy to try to estimate costs from such a shock, it noted disruptions from SARS resulted in the loss of possibly 2 per cent of East Asian GDP in one quarter.
A 2 per cent loss of global GDP during a worldwide influenza pandemic would represent around $200 billion (£113 billion) in one quarter, the World Bank said.
The Asian Development Bank said a year-long shock from bird flu in humans would cost Asian economies as much as $283 billion (£160 billion) and would reduce the region's GDP by 6.5 percentage points, hitting Hong Kong and Singapore the most.
GENEVA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - As countries from China to the United States invest more to prevent a human bird flu pandemic, gaps persist and stemming the disease in poultry is still key, the World Health Organisation's top expert said on Thursday. Margaret Chan, head of WHO's pandemic influenza programme, also said that she expected a meeting in Geneva next week to hear calls to help poor countries through the possible creation of regional stockpiles of vaccines and antivirals.
U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao revealed plans this week for more funds to prevent the spread of the deadly H5N1 avian virus, which experts fear could mutate into a form easily passed between people and unleash a pandemic.
Millions of birds have been slaughtered in Asia following outbreaks of the disease and more than 60 people have died since late 2003. The virus has reached the fringes of Europe, spread by migratory birds, and it is feared it could soon hit Africa.
"The U.S. is investing, China is also investing. Many countries are investing in pandemic preparedness plans to build capacity, irrespective if they are developed or developing countries," Chan told Reuters in an interview in her WHO office.
"More work was done in the last few months. But still there are many gaps that we need to fill in terms of human capacity, laboratory capacity and infrastructure."
Chan welcomed the signing by the prime ministers of Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos of a "partnership" pact to provide training in disease surveillance and set up monitoring systems to contain outbreaks. "Regional networks are very important -- you get synergy," she said.
RISK LOW
For now, bird flu is "still very much an animal disease and animal problem", according to Chan, who has recently visited Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
"We should certainly not be complacent, neither should we create confusion by sending a message that we are moving into a pandemic. That is not the case," she said.
"If we can really control the animal sector, the risk to humans is low."
But many developing countries lack adequate human and financial resources for both animal and human disease surveillance as well as laboratory analysis, she said.
"That is why we feel that international partnership to support developing countries is so important. Because if one country is at risk, the whole world is at risk," she said.
The WHO said last week that if bird flu arrived in Africa, where many households keep backyard flocks which often mingle freely with wild birds, humans could be as exposed as they are in parts of Asia.
Bird flu is more than an agricultural or public health problem, it has become a "global health security issue" which can cause social and economic disruption, Chan said.
She expected the issue of regional drug stockpiles to be high on the agenda of the Nov. 7-9 Geneva meeting, called to assess the level of world readiness.
Questions that needed to be resolved included how such stockpiles would be built up, how they would be administered and what would trigger deployment, she said.
"We would be very receptive to suggestions from our member states that would help to improve the level of confidence and also security in regions," she said.
About 65 countries have drawn up pandemic preparedness plans, including more than 40 in Europe, according to Chan, a former Hong Kong health director.
As the headlines warn of a flu that could kill millions and hype and hysteria threaten to confuse and alarm the public, "Bird Flu - Facing the Pandemic" presents the results of a four-month, worldwide investigation into bird flu and asks whether it is likely to trigger a human pandemic.
Speaking to British and international experts and weighing the evidence carefully - even as events are unfolding - Panorama presents a measured account of the development of bird flu, to date, and asks whether it could pose a serious threat to human health.
ASK THE EXPERTS
The Panorama team will be on the road over the next two weeks giving people across the country the chance to ask the experts about Bird Flu and the threat it poses to human health.
Are you worried for your own health or that of your family? Are you a health or emergency worker, a poultry farmer, a butcher or a restauranteur with a message for the scientists or the politicians? Do you have concerns about how the international community will respond to bird flu in Africa, Asia or the Middle East ? Or do you feel the whole issue is being overplayed?
If you would like to put your concerns directly to the experts and are willing to be filmed for our second programme "Ask The Experts", on Sunday 13 November 2005, then please get in touch. Email us at panorama@bbc.co.uk. Tell us what you would like to ask and why. Please make sure you give us a valid email address and telephone number so that the Panorama team can contact you.
Investigating the virus
In South East Asia the bird flu virus that recently found its way to Europe, has jumped the species barrier - killing 61 of the 117 humans so far infected, according to current World Health Organisation (WHO) figures. More outbreaks are expected this winter. Panorama has been to Vietnam, the country that has suffered most, to meet the survivors of this deadly virus and the families of those who died. We talk to doctors about the experience of treating bird flu and the risks they face dealing with this virulent disease.
Each human case provides the H5N1 bird flu virus with another chance to mutate and change - increasing the risk that it might adapt to spread easily from person to person. In the event of such an outbreak scientists, politicians and vaccine manufacturers would struggle to prevent the virus spreading rapidly across the globe with potentially devastating results. And scientists agreed such a breakout is now a question of 'when not if'.
The Department of Health's pandemic plan is analysed in depth and we look at how the new Civil Contingencies Act is obliging local authorities to confront the pandemic threat. From health workers to school children, the strategies which can be put in place to protect those most at risk are being discussed. Resources are limited and there is no way of knowing how much time there is to prepare. Panorama shows how the decisions made so far could affect everyday life during a flu pandemic, and looks at the more difficult choices which every government will have to make in the event of an outbreak.
Cambodia’s Health Ministry has only enough of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to treat about 100 people should the country face a flu pandemic, an official said today.
Ly Sovann, chief of the ministry’s disease surveillance bureau, appealed for donors to speed up implementing their pledges to provide Tamiflu to Cambodia.
"We currently have just over 100 courses in stock in Phnom Penh," he said. "We have given only one course to each province."
Tamiflu, also known as Oseltamivir, is considered to be the most effective antiviral drug to treat flu infections, such as bird flu, but is in short supply worldwide.
Cambodia, with a population of 13.6 million, has registered four human cases of bird flu, all fatal, since the H5N1 virus swept into Asia in late 2003.
Cambodia’s eastern neighbour Vietnam accounts for 91 of the region’s 122 human cases, and 41 of its 62 fatalities, according to the World Health Organisation.
The shortage presents a real challenge for the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which has appealed for donors to help it prepare for future outbreaks of bird flu.
"According to donors’ pledges, the amount of new Tamiflu could be substantial, but they still remain on paper," Ly Sovann said, urging donors "to speed up" supply of the flu drug to Cambodia.
Last month, the US offered Cambodia £1 million in aid for expertise and equipment as part of collaborative efforts against bird flu.
Megge Miller, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organisation, said her office in Cambodia holds 1,600 courses of Tamiflu, suitable for treating 1,600 people.
She said it is too early to know how many treatment courses might be needed "until the pandemic arrives."
"It really depends on the individual country as part of their overall strategy for containing pandemic flu," she said.
"At the moment, it (the stock) should be sufficient for avian flu … in the short term. But if the virus changes and becomes a pandemic virus, we have to look at the reality in Cambodia," she said.
Authorities are concerned the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu could mutate into a form that can be easily passed between people.
Warning that a bird flu pandemic could spin quickly out of control, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday called for international cooperation in developing vaccines and medicines to fight the disease.
Annan urged world leaders to start planning ways to keep transportation and other essential services working in the event of a bird flu pandemic, which could kill millions.
Annan also called for companies and governments to share research while working to find vaccines and medicines to combat the bird influenza.
"Once human-to-human transmission has been established, we will have only a few weeks to lock down the spread before it spins out of control," Annan said.
Annan, speaking at a Manhattan health care conference sponsored by Time magazine, said that in order to prevent spread of the disease, governments should pay poultry farmers to kill their flocks if they become infected. Otherwise, he said, farmers will have no incentive to report sick birds to authorities.
Some countries in Asia, such as Thailand, already offer compensation to poultry farmers, but others, like Indonesia, do not.
"Day by day, alarm bells seem to be ringing louder as new outbreaks are reported," Annan said.
Since 2003, 62 people in Asia have died after contracting the H5N1 strain of avian flu, according to the World Health Organization, and more than 140 million birds have died or been killed after being infected.
So far, health officials say only birds are transmitting the disease, and human-to-human transmission has not yet occurred.
However, animal-to-human transmission has been taking place in countries where people live close to their livestock, and Annan called on those countries to push for new living arrangements. He said stockpiling medicines and vaccines to stem the spread of bird flu in humans should be only part of the fight to stop the disease.
"The current strain of bird flu challenges a way of life that we have become accustomed to for centuries," Annan said.
Annan also said world leaders must find a way to make antiviral bird flu medications available to everyone.
"If other pandemics have taught us anything, it is certainly the truth that silence is death," Annan said. "Let us prepare for it carefully, and let us prepare for it now."
Hanoi (dpa) - Three small outbreaks of bird flu in poultry have been confirmed in northern Vietnam as a suspected human case was also being investigated, local officials said Friday.
The outbreaks were reported in the same province, Bac Giang, where a 24-year-old pregnant woman has been hospitalized with suspected bird flu, said Nguyen Dang Khoa, deputy chairman of the provincial people's committee.
"She is being taken care of in an isolation room in the Bac Giang General Hospital," Khoa said. "Her samples have been sent to the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology for testing, and the results are expected to come out within two or three days."
Nearly 6,000 birds have died in three communes in Bac Giang between October 25 and Thursday, Khoa said.
"One hundred per cent of the samples taken from the poultry have been found with the bird-flu virus," Khoa said from the Bac Giang, 55 kilometres north of Hanoi.
Since the last of the bird deaths on Wednesday, no more deaths had been reported, Khoa said.
The immediate area where the birds died has been disinfected and spread with lime, local officials said.
Meanwhile, in Hanoi, a 35-year-old man died this week with symptoms similar to bird flu.
"We need to do more tests before making a final conclusion that this man died of H5N1 virus," said Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology, referring to the bird-flu strain that has been deadly for 62 people in Southeast Asia.
"We cannot confirm this case now," added Nguyen Van Binh, deputy head of the Ministry of Health's Department for Preventative Medicine.
Vietnam has seen the highest human death toll in the outbreak of bird flu with 41 deaths among 91 confirmed cases since late 2003. Twenty-one other deaths have been reported in Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.
SOME 4000 poultry and water fowl have died in fresh outbreaks of bird flu in northern Vietnam's Bac Giang province, north of the capital, an animal health official said today.
"The chairperson of the provincial people's committee on Thursday declared that bird flu has hit three communes," said the official from Bac Giang's animal health department, refusing to be named. About 4000 poultry and water fowl had died in the province's Yen Lu, Van Trung and Tang Tien communes, around 70 kilometres north of Hanoi from October 25, he said.
The areas are now under a close watch and a quarantine has been imposed.
Two people died in central Vietnam's Quang Binh province in late October with symptoms similar to bird flu but doctors said their samples had never been tested.
Tests are now being made for two suspected human cases, one in Hanoi and another in Bac Giang province, both left in hospital after showing bird flu symptoms.
Two-thirds of the more than 60 people killed by the H5N1 strain of bird flu since late 2003 have been in Vietnam.
Experts fear a pandemic could kill millions across the globe if H5N1 mutates and becomes easily transmissible among humans.
KIGALI, Nov. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- African agriculture and health ministers are consulting on bird flu precautions here on Friday inthe wake of United Nation's warning of a possible avian influenza outbreak in the poor-prepared continent.
Seventeen ministers in charge of agriculture or health, along with over 200 experts, particularly veterinaries, from more than 40 Africa countries and 20 international organizations, added birdflu as the top agenda to the 7th African Union Conference of Ministers Responsible for Animal Resources held in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
The delegates are expected to define a precaution scheme against the threat of the H5N1 strain that has killed more than 60persons in Asia and sparked a global panic.
The Food and Agriculture organization of UN warned that upcoming migration of wild birds are likely to carry the virus into the continent from Europe where the H5N1 strain had been found among fowls in the past three weeks
KIGALI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Bird flu could devastate African poultry and awareness campaigns must reach deep into rural areas to prevent its spread, a leading expert said on Wednesday.
"The threat is a real one," Dr Karim Tounkara, an expert on animal resources in the African Union, said on the sidelines of a meeting of specialists from around the continent tasked with hammering out an African-wide response to the threat.
"If we have cases of this disease, it will be real havoc for the continent because the mortality rate (among birds) can reach 80 percent. Once the domestic birds are infected, then the virus spreads like a fire in the bush," he told Reuters.
Although the H5N1 strain of bird flu has not been detected in Africa, experts say finding and controlling the virus could be a Herculean task if it hits the continent's rural hinterlands.
The informal nature of production and the fact that mortality rates among Africa's backyard chickens are already high would make detection harder.
"We have called for massive awareness campaigns with all farmers so that if they see any suspicions, then they report early," Tounkara said.
Agriculture ministers and other officials from over 40 African countries are expected to endorse a blueprint on Friday for combating the virus.
The conference was initially intended to be a forum for talks on eradicating Rinderpest from the continent and stemming the spread of other animal diseases such as African swine fever.
But events have been overtaken by the global H5N1 bird flu scare, making it the focus of the conference.
West Africa is considered less at risk than East Africa, where experts say wild fowl migrating through the region's Rift Valley stop off on water ways, a possible conduit for the virus.
Scientists' greatest fear is that H5N1 bird flu virus will mutate into a form that passes easily among people, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.
In Africa, already reeling from AIDS and malaria, its spread through the human population could be catastrophic.
TOKYO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Authorities in eastern Japan ordered the culling of 180,000 chickens at a poultry farm after avian flu antibodies were found in the birds on Friday, a local official said.
Tests showed that chickens at a farm in the town of Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, had been exposed to the H5 strain of avian flu, although the virus itself was not detected, an official at Ibaraki prefecture said.
"It is not the case that there were abnormalities, that there was a rise in the death rate among chickens (at the farm)," the official said, adding that although antibodies were found, the chickens apparently did not develop symptoms.
Due to the lack of a virus, it may be hard to pin down the exact strain of avian flu the chickens were exposed to, he added.
A total of 1.48 million chickens have been culled in Ibaraki prefecture between June -- when a bird flu outbreak was first detected there -- and mid-October.
The World Health Organisation has said the H5N1 strain of the virus is endemic in most poultry flocks in Asia and experts say migratory birds, which act as hosts for the virus, could be spreading it.
The virus has already surfaced in eastern Europe in birds, though no human infections have been detected there.
In Asia, though, it has killed 62 people and infected 122 since late 2003. It remains hard for people to catch and is spread almost exclusively through human contact with birds.
But scientists say it is steadily mutating and could acquire changes that make it easy to spread from human to human, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.
The risk of humans becoming infected with the deadly bird flu virus will remain high over coming weeks due to bird migration patterns, Russia’s emergencies ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry said that new outbreaks of the H5N1 virus were possible in November, particularly in southern Russia as wild birds continued to migrate toward milder parts of Europe and the Middle East and into Africa, the Reuters news agency reported.
"The possibility of people getting infected with bird flu still remains, especially those who have contacts with poultry, wild fowl or bird farms suspected of being infected with bird flu type A H5N1," it said on its Web site, www.mchs.gov.ru.
There have been no human cases in Russia since the outbreak was first registered in Siberia, neighbouring Kazakhstan and Mongolia in July. But Russians are still on high alert for reports of new cases of the virus which has killed more than 60 people in Asia over the past two years and is now creeping into Europe and toward Africa.
The agriculture ministry said in a statement that vets had discovered bird flu in another village in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk, bringing the total number of infected settlements to 13, as of Thursday. It did not say whether the Chelyabinsk village had the dangerous H5N1 type. The ministry said in a separate statement that 20 other villages were being investigated by health officials.
The prospect of the disease spreading further has prompted warnings that the virus might mutate in humans and unleash a global influenza pandemic that could kill millions.
MOSCOW, November 3 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Agriculture Ministry said Thursday that bird flu had been confirmed in 12 Russian villages and that 20 more could be contaminated.
The disease has been registered in a village in the Omsk region and in three villages in the Altai Territory, both in Siberia. Another is suspected of contamination in Altai.
Two villages were hit in the Chelyabinsk region, and three in the Kurgan region (both in the Urals), with four more areas suspected of an outbreak.
Two villages have been infected in the central Russian region of Tambov, about 250 miles southeast of Moscow and one village has the disease in the Tula region, about 120 miles south to the Russian capital.
Sixteen villages in the Siberian Novosibirsk region could also have instances of bird flu.
Russia has discovered outbreaks of avian flu in 10 areas, and 19 more are under suspicion, agriculture ministry officials were quoted by the Itar-Tass agency as saying on Tuesday.
Among the areas affected are southern Siberia’s Altai and Omsk regions, the south Urals’ Kurgan region, neighboring Chelyabinsk and in central Russia’s Tambov regions as well as the Tula region south of Moscow.
"Three more areas in the Kurgan region and 16 in the (southern Siberian) Novosibirsk region are under suspicion," the ministry added.
Migratory birds had apparently carried the virus to Siberia from southeast Asia, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of fowl and the introduction of quarantine measures.
The EU already has various bird import bans in place for Romania, Russia, Thailand and Turkey, countries which have announced confirmed cases of the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain, which humans can catch from infected birds.
ROSTOV-ON-DON. November 2. KAZINFORM. - Next year bird flu may spread to the whole of East European Russia, a sanitary official said Wednesday.
The Russian agricultural supervision agency held a meeting with the heads of its departments in the Southern Federal District Wednesday to discuss measures to prevent the spread of especially dangerous animal diseases.
"The virus has been found in this part of Russia where the number of birds is considerably larger and, therefore, the probability of virus spread increases by 100 times," someone said at the meeting.
As of Wednesday, about 700,000 birds have died of avian influenza, a sanitary official said.
He stressed the need for private farmers to vaccinate their fowl, Kazinform quotes RIA Novosti.
"It is unrealistic to destroy all wild fowl or prevent contact with domestic birds. Vaccination is the right solution to prevent the spread of the virus in Russia," the official said.
BEIJING (AP) - China reported its fourth bird flu outbreak in three weeks, saying Friday that 8,940 chickens died in a northeastern village despite a countrywide effort to contain the virus. The discovery prompted authorities to destroy about 370,000 birds.
Authorities in Japan have detected signs of bird flu at a northern farm and plan to kill 180,000 chickens after they detected antibodies in some for the H5 family of bird flu virus. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is the only one that has spread to humans, has not yet been detected in Japan but the less virulent H5N2 strain hit the country last year.
Japan's Agriculture Ministry said it ordered 30 farms in eight prefectures across the country to undergo testing because previous tests at these farms had been carried out by private veterinarians. This called the results into question, said ministry spokesman Hirofumi Kugita.
Vietnam also confirmed bird flu outbreaks in three northern villages, despite stepped up efforts to fight the disease. More than 3,000 poultry died or were killed this week in the Bac Giang province, said Nguyen Dang Khoa, vice-chairman of the People's Committee of the province.
Transporting poultry to or from the villages was banned, and the towns and those around them have been disinfected and remaining poultry vaccinated, he said. In one of the villages, Van Trung, about a dozen local officials on Friday went from house to house, beating to death any poultry they found.
In Thailand, where 13 people have died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the head of the state drug production company said Friday the country could begin as early as February distributing its own generic version of Oseltamivir, considered to be one of the most effective anti-viral drug to treat bird flu.
The Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche developed Oseltamivir, better known by the trademarked name Tamiflu, but cannot keep up with demand from countries trying to stockpile the drug, which is in short supply worldwide.
Roche confirmed Tamiflu is not patented in Thailand and the country could manufacture it without compensating the company. It also offered Thailand its expertise in making the drug, saying it was "interested in ensuring the best possible global preparedness for a potential pandemic threat."
Hong Kong's government said Friday it was banning imports of poultry meat as well live chickens from the bird flu-affected northern Chinese province of Liaoning. Hong Kong does not import live poultry from Liaoning, but had imported 14,300 tons of poultry meat from the province this year, the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said.
The latest outbreak in China was on Oct. 26 in Badaohao, in Liaoning province, east of Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Agriculture Ministry. The outbreak came despite efforts to tighten controls on China's 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry. Beijing created a cabinet-level anti-flu task force this week, backed by a $250-million US fund to pay for anti-disease work.
China has not reported any human infections, but experts say one is inevitable if it cannot stop repeated outbreaks in poultry. Health experts worry that the virus might be spread by migrating wild birds.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged Southeast Asia since 2003 and killed at least 62 people there. Most of the cases were among those in close contact with infected poultry. But health authorities are concerned the deadly strain could mutate into a form easily spread from person to person and cause a global pandemic.
In Liaoning, local TV showed health workers in masks, gloves and protective suits dumping white plastic sacks filled with dead chickens into a landfill, while others vaccinated living birds.
"Basically the outbreak is under control now. But the culling is not complete," said Chen Jinsheng, an official of the Liaoning Animal Hygiene Monitoring Department. "We may still have to observe the situation for 21 days until we can say it is completely under control."
BEIJING, Nov 4 (Reuters) - China and Vietnam reported major bird flu outbreaks in poultry on Friday, days before global health experts meet to refine plans to control the virus that has killed more than 60 people in Asia and spread to Europe.
Experts say the virus must be stopped in poultry to prevent more people catching it and nowhere is that fight more crucial than in densely populated Asia, where farmers and even city dwellers live side-by-side with poultry and other livestock. In China, the world's most populous nation, officials are struggling to control the spread of bird flu in poultry.
In the fourth outbreak in a month, nearly 9,000 chickens had died and 369,000 domestic birds culled within a three-km (2-mile) radius in the northeast province of Liaoning, an official at the Agriculture Ministry said. The outbreak was detected last week.
"370,000 in one outbreak to be destroyed is really, really big. This is not a good signal," said Noureddin Mona, China representative for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation.
In Vietnam, where 41 people have died of avian influenza, a 24-year-old pregnant woman with a fever and respiratory problems is the latest suspected case in Asia after Indonesia said on Thursday three children were being tested for bird flu. The results are due in a few days.
State media said the woman came from Bac Giang province where bird flu has infected poultry in three communes, killing more than 3,000 chickens, ducks and geese. Bac Giang is near the capital Hanoi.
The World Health Organisation has said H5N1 is endemic in most poultry flocks in Asia and experts say migratory birds, which act as hosts for the virus, could be spreading it.
The virus has already surfaced in eastern Europe in birds, though no human infections have been detected there.
In Asia, though, it has killed 62 people and infected 122 since late 2003. It remains hard for people to catch and is spread almost exclusively through human contact with birds.
But scientists say it is steadily mutating and could acquire changes that make it easy to spread from human to human, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die, devastating societies, overburdening health systems and disrupting trade.
MAKE-OR-BREAK MEETING
Highlighting a growing urgency, health and veterinary officials from around the globe meet in Geneva from Monday to discuss plans to control H5N1.
"The Geneva summit will be a make-or-break time for the human threat of H5N1 influenza," The Lancet medical journal said in an editorial.
"There remains no reliable early warning system in place across large parts of the world. This vacuum in surveillance poses the most serious threat to human health," it added.
The United States is already painting a dire picture should a pandemic occur and this week announced a $7.1 billion bird flu action plan.
"An influenza pandemic has the potential to cause more death and illness than any other public health threat," the Health and Human Services department says in its new flu plan, posted on the Internet at http://pandemicflu.gov.
Governments around the world are stockpiling anti-viral drugs and funding development of vaccines. There is no commercially available vaccine for H5N1.
Such is the demand that Swiss drug maker Roche has stopped supplying anti-viral drug Tamiflu to private doctors and pharmacies in Hong Kong. The move follows a similar suspension by Roche in the United States and Canada to head off hoarding by consumers worried about the spread of bird flu.
Vietnam's health ministry has asked Roche to supply 33 million tablets but Roche said its first delivery could be in January 2007 at the earliest, state-run media reported.
As countries invest more to prevent a pandemic, gaps persisted and stemming the disease in poultry was crucial, said Margaret Chan, head of WHO's pandemic influenza programme.
For now, bird flu is "still very much an animal disease and animal problem", Chan told Reuters. "If we can really control the animal sector, the risk to humans is low".
But many developing countries lack adequate human and financial resources for both animal and human disease surveillance as well as laboratory analysis, she said. (For more stories, pictures and video on bird flu see http://today.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage2.aspx?src=cms) (Additional reporting by Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi, Kim Coghill in Hong Kong, Patricia Reaney in London, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Maggie Fox in Washington)
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WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Nearly two million dead. Schools and public transit closed for days or even weeks. Hospitals overwhelmed.
This frightening picture of an influenza pandemic is envisaged in the official U.S. plan released this week.
H5N1 avian influenza has killed 62 people and infected at least 122 since 2003 -- hardly an alarming number. But the virus is sweeping through poultry flocks and has moved into birds in Europe.
Agriculture and health officials agree the H5N1 virus is probably unstoppable, and say it could mutate at any time to become a disease that sweeps just as easily among humans.
Experts have warned for years that an influenza pandemic is overdue and have a good idea of what it would look like. Three influenza pandemics occurred in the last century.
The 1918 pandemic was the worst, killing anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people globally, depending on the estimate. The 1957 pandemic killed an estimated 2 million people globally and the last one, in 1968, killed 1 million.
"An influenza pandemic has the potential to cause more death and illness than any other public health threat," the Health and Human Services department says in its new flu plan, posted on the Internet at http://pandemicflu.gov.
"If a pandemic influenza virus with similar virulence to the 1918 strain emerged today, in the absence of intervention, it is estimated that 1.9 million Americans could die and almost 10 million could be hospitalized over the course of the pandemic, which may evolve over a year or more."
Why paint such a frightening scenario?
"We felt that it would be important that we have a worst-case scenario to make sure our planning efforts were measured against that," said Dr. Bruce Gellin, a vaccine expert who is heading up HHS's pandemic influenza planning.
WORST CASE SCENARIO
"We don't know what the H5N1 virus will do. We don't know what any virus will do. But we felt that we would be best suited to have our preparations based on that worst case which is, in modern memory, in 1918," Gellin told reporters this week.
And help from the government would be limited. A vaccine against H5N1 is not ready, and there are not enough drugs in stock yet to treat more than a fraction of victims.
"It is unlikely that there will be sufficient personnel, equipment, and supplies to respond adequately to multiple areas of the country for a sustained period of time," the HHS plan cautions.
It says schools may close for 10 days at a stretch or even longer. Public transport and office buildings may be closed to curb the spread of the virus.
People should prepare for the emotional impact of "mass casualties and deaths among children" and well as "economic collapse or acute shortages of food, water, electricity, or other essential services," it says.
People could not plan on turning to hospitals for shelter. The American Hospital Association has said its members already have limited beds and equipment and are short of nurses.
Experts say despite medical advances the world is more vulnerable to flu than in 1918, with a higher, more urban population, far higher international travel and more sick and elderly people.
Creating quarantines and closing borders would have limited effect as influenza can be transmitted a day before a patient starts showing symptoms.
The HHS report says globally and nationally, a pandemic might last for more than a year, while disease outbreaks in local communities may last five to 10 weeks.
KERGLOFF, France (Reuters) - A bird flu outbreak in France would trigger the gassing of any infected flock, radio messages to reassure the public and use of the army to reinforce security, according to a plan tested on Friday.
At the end of a two-day test of the country's preparedness for an outbreak of the virus in poultry, officials said they needed to improve communication in order to avoid creating unnecessary panic.
"It all worked very well," said Francois Lucas, the regional official in charge of the drill.
"But we need to work on communication."
The exercise was planned nearly a year ago but took on a new significance in the light of the spread of the avian flu virus, which has infected 122 people in Asia and killed 62 in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.
The virus has been detected in birds in eastern Europe but no human cases have been reported. There are fears the virus could mutate into a form allowing human to human spread, possibly triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.
Local veterinary and safety officials set up a barrier around the farm buildings where early on Thursday morning a chicken farmer kicked off the exercise by reporting a suspicious illness among one of his birds.
Anyone leaving the farm disinfected their boots in a footbath before going into a special tent complete with an inflatable shower to take off protective masks, hats and clothing and then scrub themselves with soap and water.
Special workers would be allowed into the farm to kill all the poultry in the flock with gas before the carcasses were transported to a regional incinerator. For the exercise no birds were actually killed on the site, which is in an area dense with poultry breeders.
A 3 kilometer (2 mile) secure zone would be set up around the farm and enforced by police and a 10 kilometer protection zone would be set up to disinfect certain vehicles leaving the area. In a real case, the army could be used as reinforcements.
Certain trucks, including those carrying animals, would drive through a trough containing disinfectant and straw to prevent the virus spreading outsid
