BEIJING, Nov 6 (Reuters) - In the blaze of speeches, meetings and regulations about bird flu that China's leaders have fired off in recent days, SARS has never been mentioned.
But memories of that epidemic two years ago are shadowing China's increasingly urgent response to the latest health threat, say Chinese experts and journalists.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which started in southern China in early 2003, killed 349 Chinese after officials hid or underplayed the flu-like illness, and China faced international censure after SARS spread to Hong Kong, then Asia and North America, killing hundreds more.
China dismissed two senior officials and blamed them for the cover-up.
On Friday, China announced that it was mobilizing a national "command headquarters" under the country's top emergency official, Hua Jianmin, to bring together six government and party departments and coordinate the fight against bird flu.
With rising global fears about the H5N1 avian flu virus, even parts of China's state-dominated press have recently said habitual government secrecy and cumbersome bureaucracy could again undercut efforts to contain an epidemic.
Scientists fear H5N1 could mutate into a form communicable between people, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions and overwhelm health systems.
"At present, the information about avian influenza cases released to the public here is clearly too tardy and inadequate," the outspoken business weekly, Caijing, said in an editorial that cited parallels with SARS.
While several Chinese experts interviewed also called for more official candour, they also said Chinese officials appeared to be reporting outbreaks of bird flu faster than they did during the SARS epidemic.
And central leaders have stepped in to ensure that disparate government agencies, especially the agriculture and health ministries, pull together.
"SARS is the model nobody wants to repeat. The public health system and official incentives have changed and I wouldn't expect the same problems," said Mao Shoulong, a government policy expert at the People's University of China who has studied official reactions to both SARS and the bird flu.
China's leaders have good reason to improve transparency. Bird flu has already killed more than 60 people in Asia and China on Friday reported its fourth outbreak in birds in a month. But so far, the country has not had any cases of humans being infected with H5N1, officials have said.
If China does succumb to bird flu, it will not be for lack of official plans. On Tuesday, China's Ministry of Agriculture issued an "emergency response" for any bird flu epidemic among birds and livestock in coming months, joining dozens of similar documents from central and local bureaucracies.
The agriculture ministry's plan demands that local officials report suspected cases of infection to the ministry within four hours.
"Those responsible for hiding, overlooking or delaying reports will be harshly punished according to the law," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a high-level meeting about bird flu on Tuesday.
"NO INCENTIVE TO HIDE"
Mao, the policy expert, said these demands from national leaders mean central government agencies will cooperate more and local officials will be much less likely to hide cases of bird flu than they were SARS.
"Officials have no incentive to hide bird flu outbreaks," he said. "Their political career won't be damaged if they report, but they would be ended if they hid information." Farmers are also given compensation for culled poultry, he noted.
Pressure on local officials to report all possible cases may even lead to "systemic overload", as junior officials report even unlikely cases out of fear of punishment, said Lan Xue, a public policy researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing who has advised China's leaders about dealing with emergencies.
Since SARS struck, China has also invested in a new nationwide network of emergency offices and plans. These preparations include one master plan, 25 plans for specific emergencies such as disease outbreaks, floods and earthquakes, and 80 plans for government departments, Xue said.
The government has established a national office to coordinate response to emergencies, and it has also drafted a law to encode the responsibilities and powers of officials in emergencies and pumped over 5 billion yuan ($619 million) into local disease surveillance offices, Xue said.
"Once the government realises something is wrong, it can really go all the way. But now the challenge is implementation," he said.
But rapid response to a large outbreak among birds or possible human infection could be made more difficult by official reluctance to share information about specific outbreaks with citizens, said Chinese experts.
"Risk communication is not an easy task -- there's always the problem of over-reaction -- but the best way to deal with this is to get the general public educated," Xue said.
And in a country as large as China, even the $248 million that Prime Minister Wen promised to fight bird flu may be stretched if the virus spreads.
Each Chinese province has received tens of thousands of yuan to monitor migratory birds, which are thought to carry the virus, said Chu Guozhong, a Beijing-based ornithologist who is advising Chinese wildlife authorities on the disease.
"Local officials are now paying attention, but that's not much money to build up monitoring, and in some places it hasn't arrived yet." ($1=8.082 Yuan)
If you're puzzled about the way a virus mutates from animal to human-to-human capability, or you are sceptical of such an occurence in the case of bird flu, you need to read the superb bestseller
"The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging
Diseases in a World Out of Balance"
"A sobering vision of the future and a deeply unsettling one...a sober, scary book that not only limns the dangers posed by emerging diseases but also raises serious questions about two centuries of Enlightenment beliefs in science and technology and progress" - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.
"Barrett aims to dispel social and poltical complacency about the threat of old, new, and yet-unknown microbial catastrophes in a global ecology that links Bujumbura, Bangkok and Boston more closely than almost anyone appreciates" - Richard A. Knox, The Boston Globe.
"Garrett's stories are enthralling, like solid war reporting. But her book also offers the clearest, most detailed, and most impeccably researched description of the science of microbiology that lay readers have had in sixty years." - David Perlman, The San Francisco Chronicle.
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"The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging
Diseases in a World Out of Balance"
by Laurie Garrett
Confirmation that avian influenza ("bird flu") has reached the UK - albeit one isolated case involving the death of a parrot in quarantine - has inevitably sounded the alarm bells. In tackling the economic implications I am profoundly conscious of a major failing - I know next to nothing about avian flu, or indeed about any other sort of flu.
Whether it has been foot and mouth, the Iraq War, the SARS outbreak, Hurricane Katrina or London's victory in the battle to secure the 2012 Olympic Games, my response has been the same - business as usual. But scale alone potentially makes this different.
Perspective
The current strains of bird flu are not necessarily a big deal - so far. Bird flu has been common in South Asian countries for many years and there has been little economic impact beyond the local poultry industries. Only very occasionally has bird flu affected the human population, typically in poor rural areas where families live in much closer proximity to animals than in the UK.
The immediate concern is that the current strains of bird flu might mutate into a version that can be transmitted easily between humans. This risk does need to be taken seriously. The World Health Organisation estimates that an avian flu pandemic could kill between 2m and 7m people across the world.
And influenza has a long track record of killing large numbers of people. The best known example is the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918, which is estimated to have caused 50m deaths worldwide and 250,000 in the UK alone. Variations of Asian flu also killed 33,000 in the UK in 1957-58 and 30,000 in 1968-69.
The Department of Health estimates that if an avian flu pandemic were to hit the UK about 50,000 people would be likely to die. This is a very large number but our chart puts it into perspective. It is less than a tenth of the total annual deaths from all causes and less than half of the deaths from cancer.
Moreover, the pandemic would be a one-off event. These others cause deaths year in, year out. "Ordinary" flu already affects 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the population every year, and causes around 12,000 deaths. As many as 5,000 people are thought to die every year in the UK from hospital-acquired infections, such as MRSA.
Economic effects
Even if only one person were to die from bird flu, it would be a human tragedy and if many thousands die it would be a human disaster, far transcending any economic issues. Nevertheless, there is clearly a potentially large economic impact.
Economics is no respecter of human sensibility. The economic implications are likely to depend on three things: who is affected by the virus, the measures taken to control it, and the wider impact on confidence.
Health problems such as HIV-Aids, which typically affect young people who are active in the workforce, tend to have a much larger economic impact than those such as Sars which mainly affect the long-term sick or the elderly. Any new form of influenza is more likely to fall into the latter category.
Even so, measures to control a pandemic might have implications that are much larger than the direct impact of the disease itself and larger than the cost of measures to deal with the source of the disease, such as bird culls or restrictions on agricultural imports and exports.
Examples could include travel bans, school closures and disruption to emergency services, all of which could have major effects on economic activity. Indeed, there is a serious risk that the measures taken to contain the pandemic could cause economic loss out of all proportion to the effectiveness of the measures in preserving health.
Reality is one thing but perception is another. Fears of infection, whether justified or not, may have a big impact on sectors such as retail spending and tourism as people opt to stay at home. That proved to be the main cost of the 2002-2003 Sars outbreak in Asia. Our inset chart shows just how dramatic the effect of Sars was in China - although it also shows how quickly the economy rebounded once the worst fears lifted.
This time so far there have been none of the usual warning signs of a pandemic (such as clusters of patients in time and space, or transmission to health workers) even in the south Asian countries where bird flu has been common for many years. The mutation of the current strains of bird flu into something much more serious is a theoretical risk rather than an actual event.
But a crisis of this kind is almost certain to happen eventually, and with substantial economic cost. For the moment, though, unless there is some major new development, it makes more sense to focus on downside risks to the economy arising from more conventional causes.
Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics and economic adviser to Deloitte. You can contact him at roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com
H5N1. Get ready to remember that sequence of letters and numbers. It is the official designation for the influenza virus that is being called the Avian Flu. Depending on whom you talk to, it could be a medical nuisance or the next plague.
"This virus is very treacherous," said Dr. Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization. "While we cannot predict when or if the virus might spark a pandemic, we cannot ignore the warning signs."
The WHO is gathering health officials from around the globe for a meeting in Geneva this week to develop a strategy to control the virus in domestic animals and prepare for a potential human influenza pandemic. But, closer to home, several San Diego companies are already doing their part in the war against the bird flu. Vical (Nasdaq: VICL) announced in September that it has received a $2.9 million grant from the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a DNA vaccine against strains of avian influenza.
"The goal is to design a vaccine that could be developed and manufactured quickly and safely, without handling the infectious organism, and stockpiled longer than conventional vaccines," according to a company statement when the grant was awarded.
"We believe that our DNA vaccine technology is well-suited to address the potential threat from emerging pathogens such as the avian influenza virus," said Vical's CEO Vijay Samant.
A lot of money will be spent to make sure the Avian Flu does not become pandemic, a virus that is transferable from person to person with little or no natural immunity.
The White House has requested more than $7 billion in funding to make sure the virus never reaches that level in the United States.
"If history is our guide, there is reason to be concerned," said President George W. Bush when he proposed the plan to find the threatening virus. "In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them."
The 1918 outbreak killed 20 million people worldwide including half a million Americans. One-third of the U.S. population was infected and the life expectancy at the time was cut by 13 years.
"By making critical investments today, we'll strengthen our ability to safeguard the American people in the awful event of a devastating global pandemic, and at the same time will bring our nation's public health and medical infrastructure squarely into the 21st century," Bush said.
As is the case with any influenza, early detection will be a critical part of protection and survival. Another San Diego company is working on a diagnostic test that can provide immediate information.
Quidel Corp. reported last month that clinical tests continue to validate the effectiveness of its 10-minute test for influenza. The University of Rochester Medical Center, Australia's National Research and Evaluation Ethics Committee and a university in Japan have conducted tests.
"I found the Quidel kit to be as sensitive and reliable in detecting avian influenza viruses as it is in detecting human influenza viruses," said Professor Hiroshi Kida at the Hokkaido University. "Therefore, the kit has potential for research and field use in animal surveillance, as well as in human diagnostics should there be a pandemic influenza outbreak.'
Despite the worldwide urgent call to action, there are those that believe the battle against the Avian Flu will be too little, too late.
"Even if bird flu isn't the culprit, there almost certainly will be a disastrous pandemic of some sort in the next 20 years," said Paul Offit, M.D., chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. "And if we continue on our present course, the U.S. will not be prepared to handle it."
However, some households are stocking up on a common product that surprisingly has been found to fight various flu strains: Sauerkraut. Retailers in the Midwest are reporting a run on cans of the boiled cabbage after scientists at Seoul National University used sauerkraut to treat chickens infected with the Avian Flu.
"We saw our sales climb immediately as this news hit," said Chris Smith of Frank's Sauerkraut. "Men's Health Magazine also advised constructing a pandemic kit containing sauerkraut because of its lactic acid bacteria. People are stocking up on sauerkraut like bottled water before a hurricane hits."
Don't forget the can opener. Chamberlin's financial analysis column appears each Monday in The Daily Transcript. Chamberlin also reports daily on stocks and local business on NBC 7/39 and on "Money In The Morning" on KOGO 600 AM. Send comments to editor@sddt.com. All letters are forwarded to the author and may be used as Letters to the Editor.
SAIHAN, Inner Mongolia, Nov. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The white characters "Xingxing Breeding Farm" can still be seen on the red brick wall, but there is no poultry there.
On Oct. 14, chickens suddenly dropped dead by the dozen in the farm in Tengjiaying Village in Saihan District of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. On Oct. 19, the State Bird Flu Reference Lab confirmed that they died of H5N1 bird flu.
After being sprayed with disinfectant at two checkpoints, 24 reporters, in protective suits and masks, were allowed to enter the village Thursday.
The road to the Xingxing Breeding Farm in the village was covered by lime, a kind of white, chalky disinfectant powder.
Coving nearly one hectare of land, the farm had some 7,000 poultry, including chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks and pigeons.
Before the outbreak of the bird flu, owner of the farm Qin Zhijun, 44, had an average income of more than 100,000 yuan (12,340 US dollars) every year.
"I have been raising chickens for 20 years, but I had never seen chickens dying like that," Qin said.
On Oct. 14, Qin found his chickens dead for no apparent reason and made a report to the local government. When the dead chickens were proved to have died of bird flu, all the 7,000 poultry and birds were killed in two days. Meanwhile, the local government ordered closure of the farm and a three kilometers radius around it.
The area within five to eight kilometers radius from the farm was considered "bird-flu-threatened" and all poultry in the area should receive vaccination.
"At first, it was hard to bear," said Qin. ``I did not feel like eating, nor sleeping. I was frustrated."
"Now I have thought it over and over again. I believe the government will not leave us alone. We could still start from scratch again."
Qin said his wife and he himself are fortunate enough to stay healthy. Nevertheless, the couple are still under medical monitoring and not allowed to leave the courtyard. Doctors come totake their temperatures every week.
After the outbreak of bird flu in the region, a total of 25 people in close contact with dead poultry and their dejecta received medical monitoring and 11 of them have been relieved of monitoring. The other 14 are in good condition, said a local government official.
China has not reported any human infection of bird flu so far.
There are 380 households in Tengjiaying Village. Only Qin has apoultry farm. Many other households in the village breed cows, a backbone industry in the region.
Qi Xiuzhi, 50, is a neighbour of Qin. Qi has raised two chickens herself. But they had been killed together with other poultry in the village after the outbreak of the disease.
"Every one knows there is something wrong with Qin's poultry," said Qi.
Qi said there were days when panic hung over the village and relatives outside the village dared not come for visit. "It's overnow," Qi said.
Apart from checkpoints, the ground covered with lime powder, and a notice of closure on the wall, the village is not different from any other small village in China.
Seeing so many people with protective suits coming in, especially some foreigners with blue eyes and big noses, villagers stood far away, watching, chatting with each other in dialect, andlaughing loudly. No one wore protective suits like reporters.
As the village has been under closure, villagers have to pass checkpoints after being disinfected and registered every day when they go out and come back.
"It's troublesome," said a villager who declined to give his name, "But what else can we do? We know it's a contagious disease."
Qin said he knew he would lose a lot of money this time, even though the government had promised to pay compensation. But he said he wants to raise chickens after the disease dies out.
"What else can I do?" said Qin."It's all I know how to do."
The local government has promised to help farmers like Qin recover production by providing interest-free or low-interest loans to them and helping them build new coops.
Compensation will be paid to farmers, at an average of 30 yuan per chicken. The central government will cover 10 yuan while the local governments will cover the remainder.
Since Autumn this year, China has reported four cases of bird flu outbreaks in Anhui, Hunan, Inner Mongolia and the latest Liaoning province.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra confirmed in Bangkok on Saturday that there has been no transmission of bird flu virus from human to human.
The prime minister said during his weekly radio address that so far 12 areas in Thailand's six provinces, most of which are in the central region, have been found to be hit by avian influenza.
Fowls which were suspected of having contracted the disease had been culled and public health officials are now watching closely to determine whether the areas remain infected with the disease, Thaksin added.
Meanwhile, a senior medical doctor said that 11 patients suspected of having contracted the deadly avian influenza in the country's northern province of Chiang Rai earlier are not infected with the virus after all.
The medical expert, Dr. Surin Sumnapun, assistant public health official in Chiang Rai, also told a press conference on Saturday that tests on the 11 patients suspected of having contracted the disease were carried out and that it was determined that none of them suffered from avian influenza.
Source: Xinhua
AP, JAKARTA - Indonesia said the number of its people killed by bird flu climbed to five yesterday, as the World Bank finalized plans to provide up to US$500 million to help poor countries fight the disease.
China, which has not yet recorded any human bird flu cases, mobilized its massive military to try to stamp out the H5N1 virus in poultry after thousands of birds started dropping dead in a village east of Beijing.
A 19-year-old woman from Tangerang, a town outside Jakarta, died of bird flu last month and another eight-year-old boy was sickened by the virus, said Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono, citing Hong Kong laboratory test results.
That brought the total number of human cases in Indonesia to nine -- five deaths and four infections -- though some health experts say the number is likely higher.
Meanwhile, the World Bank was gearing up for an international conference in Geneva this week to discuss managing bird flu outbreaks, as well as plans to cope with a possible human flu pandemic.
A funding package of US$300 million to US$500 million could be used by poorer countries to "supplement government resources, to strengthen the veterinary systems and to put in place culling and vaccine programs for animals," said Jim Adams, a bank vice president.
According to the World Health Organization, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 62 people -- all of them in Southeast Asia -- and resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million birds since 2003.
Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds.
The latest Chinese outbreak -- the fourth in three weeks -- killed 8,940 chickens on Oct. 26 in Badaohao, a village in Liaoning Province, prompting authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds in the area.
Hong Kong immediately banned poultry imports from Liaoning.
In an effort to show it is harnessing all available resources, China has mobilized it military to work with local authorities and to stockpile disinfectant and medicine, a military newspaper reported yesterday.
The 2.3-million-member People's Liberation Army is to make "urgent plans" with health and agriculture agencies to help stop possible outbreaks, the Liberation Army Daily said.
"All levels must clearly understand the epidemic situation and absolutely cannot lower their guard or be careless," the order said, according to the newspaper.
In Vietnam -- where most of the human deaths have occurred -- more than 3,000 poultry died or were culled this week in three villages in Bac Giang province about 60km northeast of Hanoi, said provincial vice chairman Nguyen Dang Khoa.
Transporting poultry to or from the three 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 Japan, authorities said antibody testing had found that 80 chickens at a farm in Ibaraki prefecture had been exposed to a virus of the H5 strain, but survived. Nevertheless, 180,000 of the 300,000 birds at the farm would be culled, officials said.
PARIS (AFP): Attempts to avert a pandemic that could claim tens of millions of lives and cost hundreds of billions of dollars take a step forward on Monday with a top-level meeting to flesh out global and national action plans against bird flu.
The three-day meeting in Geneva on avian influenza is the first to gather the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
It comes at a critical time in the campaign to prevent the H5N1 virus -- a pathogen at present restricted to birds and humans who come into contact with infected fowl -- from mutating into a mass killer.
So far, more than 60 people have died since the virus was detected among poultry flocks in Asia in 2003.
Countries have culled around 150 million chickens, ducks and geese, quarantined suspected farms, barred imports and shored up veterinary surveillance.
But these efforts have not even stopped the spread of the virus, let alone rolled it back.
"This virus is very treacherous," says Margaret Chan, the WHO's point person on the H5N1 threat. "While we cannot predict when or if the H5N1 virus might spark a pandemic, we cannot ignore the warning signs."
Little by little, helped by infected migrating birds, the virus this year has crept out of its origins in Southeast Asia, heading northwards into China and into Siberia, and has now touched poultry in the southeastern corner of Europe. Africa, which hosts millions of migrating birds during the northernhemisphere winter, may now be exposed.
As the geographical spread widens, so does the risk that infected birds will pass on their virus to humans -- and that the avian virus will mutate by mingling with the conventional flu virus.
The three-day Geneva conference will gather more than 400 animal and human health experts, senior policymakers, economists and industry representatives.
Their task is to make an up-to-date assessment of the problem, pool knowledge about national measures and strengthen international coordination against what is a global threat.
Priority number one is poultry, where the virus holes up.
TOKYO (AP): Japan is considering a 300 million yen (US$2.6 million) contribution to the World Health Organization next year to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, a report said Sunday.
The government is also planning to invite influenza experts from Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries early next year for training at the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Tokyo, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing unnamed government sources.
The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 62 people in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand, and decimated poultry stocks across the region since 2003.
The WHO contributions will be spent on improving surveillance of infection routes for bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the newspaper said.
Tokyo, which contributed about 160 million yen (US$1.36 million) to WHO for 2005, plans to increase its annual contribution next year following the spread of bird flu in developing countries, according to the newspaper.
Officials at the Health and Agricultural ministries were not available for comment Sunday.
The bird flu-hit county of Heishan, in northeast China's Liaoning Province , is to be totally sealed off, according to provincial authorities at a press conference on the prevention and control of the avian flu early Sunday morning.
Local farmers who raise poultry found some chickens dying in the county's Badaohao Township and reported the case to the local government. China's Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the case as the H5N1 bird flu strain on Thursday.
By Saturday, poultry raisers in fifteen townships within the county had been affected.
The province launched an emergency response plan by allocating 85 million yuan, or about 11 million US dollars, for preventative measures and bringing in 60 million doses of vaccine. The province has also established a 300-strong rapid response team made up of epidemic prevention professionals.
So far, compulsory slaughtering of all the poultry in the county is in operation and epidemic prevention work is well underway.
Meanwhile, China has stepped up nationwide inspections and quarantines of live poultry in order to stem the spread of the avian flu, detected so far also in Inner Mongolia, Anhui and Hunan provinces.
Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, started to close down all of its live poultry markets and launched a campaign to have all the poultry inoculated.
The industrial and commercial departments at all levels in the southwestern Sichuan Province have begun to monitor the entire transaction process in the poultry markets.
Volunteers in Nanning, capital of southern China's Guangxi Province, inoculated all the pigeons at public squares with the bird flu vaccine to prevent people there from contracting the avian flu through contact with the birds.
The Helongjiang Province in northeast China and the central Province of Jiangxi have adopted measures to improve the quarantine procedures for meat processing.
In a related development, the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government on Saturday earmarked over 3 billion Hong Kong dollars to beef up its medical system by establishing epidemic treatment centers, installing more than 1400 quarantine beds in emergency hospitals and stockpiling anti-flu medicine.
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow said the HKSAR government also has a contingency plan in place to respond to any flu outbreaks.
(The Epoch Times) The Center For Disease Control (CDC) reports that "[the] H5N1 virus circulates among birds worldwide, is very contagious among birds and can be deadly...In 1997...the first case of spread from a bird to a human was seen during an outbreak of bird flu in poultry in Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region. The virus caused severe respiratory illness in 18 people, 6 of whom died. Since that time, there have been other cases of H5N1 infection among humans. Recent human cases of H5N1 infection that have occurred in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam have coincided with large H5N1 outbreaks in poultry." With currently no commercially available vaccine to protect humans against the H5N1, the looming threat of a bird-flu pandemic spreads over the globe. Many wonder what conditions could have lead to such a catastrophe.
According to immunologist and molecular biologist, Dr. Lili Feng, the abysmal state of China’s industrial environment is, in effect, poisoning the world. "...China has 16 of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities. Bad air from its industries and coal-fired power plants pollutes not only China but also the entire planet. An estimated 2,000,000 Chinese citizens die each year from diseases related to air pollution. According to State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) of China, there are at least 370 million of people who cannot obtain clean drinking water. It was estimated that logging in China has led to the deforestation of more than 95% of the primary forests. According to Xinhuanet, over-mining has hollowed out one seventh of land in China's coal rich Shanxi Province and deprived nearly 400,000 people of their land, shelter or jobs."
Combining the perspectives of ecology, environment and immunology, Dr. Feng will lecture on the bird flu phenomenon at Northwestern University on Saturday, November 10th. "China ’s economic growth over the past two decades has dramatically depleted the country’s natural resources and produced irreversible skyrocketing rates of pollution," she writes. Dr. Feng describes how industry in China, that has gone largely unregulated, has lead to "significant public health problems, including degradation-related infectious disease outbreaks and pandemic bird flu threats."
After obtaining her MD in 1984, Dr. Feng worked at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA as Assistant Professor from 1994 to 2000, focusing on immune diseases and inflammation. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine-Nephrology at Houston, TX. Dr. Feng has been awarded five research grants from NIH— including one on the "Molecular Mechanism of Acupuncture" as well as five grants from pharmaceutical companies.
In addition to her dozens of articles published in peer-reviewed journals, Dr. Feng’s thoughtful insight on the impact of ecology on immunity has earned her invitations to speak at the United Nations and around the world.
High-resolution image (2048 x 1360 px, 180 dpi) Avian flu surveillance difficulties and cover-ups of outbreaks are the top areas of concern in dealing effectively with the looming influenza pandemic, experts say. Lack-luster efforts in both vaccine development and public health education follow closely behind.
"The next pandemic is not preventable, and we have no mechanism to stop it. We’re talking about increasing the early warning systems," said Dr. Alison McGeer, Director of Infection Control at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and one of Canada’s foremost infectious disease specialists.
McGeer sees the level of success of North America’s preparations for an influenza pandemic as closely linked to overseas efforts. "What we most need is better surveillance in the countries of Southeast Asia. [It’s] a question of design and resources for those countries," she said.
Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, a specialist in biological defense policy, serving as a special assistant to the U.S. president, agrees. "We really view this as a threat that cannot be addressed just within our borders. We see this as an international threat," she told reporters while outlining the Bush administration’s new $7.1 billion USD plan for avian-flu defense.
The U.S. plan means to be an example to state and local governments, as well as other countries, she added.
However, it is unlikely that most of what constitutes pandemic preparedness plans in the West will actually be applicable to most nations, in particular ones that are part of the developing world. For those countries, public health education may be the only useful course of action.
"There’s no direct benefit say to Laos, of better surveillance, because they don’t have vaccines, they don’t have antivirals, and they can’t afford them. And, they actually need to be investing in [reducing] HIV transmission and [in] childhood vaccines. So, there’s an element that this is a ‘First World’ problem. It’s not going to make any difference to Laos," predicted McGeer.
"What we need to recognize is that early detection of the pandemic will allow us to make a vaccine, and potentially some other things that will increase our protection. But it will not do any good for people in the rest of the world," she added.
In addition, even when health officials fully intend to make accurate diagnoses, often the means are simply not available. In places like Northern China, said McGeer, scientists dealing with bird flu likely "do not have any diagnostic capacity."
Not Knowing, or Covering Up?
With the rapid spread of H5N1 among birds in Europe, several new bird flu outbreaks in Asia, as well as additional human infections and deaths, officials are compelled to quickly pronounce judgment on cases where avian influenza is a possible cause.
"There’s some variability in the capacity of different countries to be definitive [about what subtype of bird flu they have] that you have to take into account," with developing countries again having less of an ability to be definite, said McGeer.
Sometimes, officials may feel the pressure to make premature announcements, make announcements based on incomplete information, or hide the most troubling findings. With respect to the latter, McGeer is optimistic. "I think that most countries recognize now that you can’t cover up effectively or for long. So I think that it’s less likely to happen than it used to," she said.
However, she acknowledged that covering up is an "insoluble problem" since the international system tends to penalized countries for talking about things, "so of course people don’t want to talk."
Several governments, including those of Thailand, Indonesia and China, have covered up bird flu incidents in the past. And, evidence of cover-ups continues to come to light. In Indonesia last week, Chairul Nidom, a senior microbiologist said that his government covered up the initial outbreak of bird flu in the country.
"The government has in the past often been tardy in anticipating outbreaks and it seems that old habits die hard. Little has changed," Nidom told AFP.
In the spirit of disclosure, Chinese Health Minister Gao Qiang, while at the October 25 international pandemic preparation summit in Ottawa, revealed current avian flu outbreaks among birds in five Chinese provinces (two more than reported by Chinese state media), and outbreaks in 16 provinces over the past year.
However, provincial health officials in Hunan Province, the site of one of the current bird infections, have refused World Health Organization (WHO) requests for retesting samples from a girl that died "of pneumonia" after eating infected poultry. Officials insist that her death was not due to bird flu, though they cremated her body on October 17, the day of her death. Her brother, who is exhibiting similar bird-flu-like symptoms to hers, along with the whole village, remains in quarantine, and no new information on the situation has been available since October 28.
This behavior highlights a lack of transparency, irrespective of what caused the Chinese girl’s death. This stands in stark contrast to the approach of hospital officials in Vietnam, for example, where doctors were quick to name H5N1 as a suspect in the death of two people last week.
"It's very, very clear that all the critical symptoms pointed to bird flu," Dr Nguyen Ngoc Tai, director of the Vietnam-Cuba Hospital in Dong Hoi in central Vietnam, told Reuters.
Following Vietnam’s model of disclosing possible human bird flu cases even without conclusive evidence, especially considering that testing may take time and that initial tests may not be correct, could be a very good way to help slow the spread of the pandemic, if it happens. In the case of an H5N1 outbreak among people, it is clearly better to err on the side of caution - but the odds are stacked against this approach.
The State of Pandemic Preparedness in North America
McGeer’s assertion that increased surveillance for human influenza outbreaks in Asia will really only lead to direct benefits for people in Western countries is troubling at best. Effectively, this suggests that the developed world needs to provide incentives for such surveillance to take place, and for it to be effective. In this context, projects such as the $7 million USD UN initiative with Vietnam boost health and veterinary services appear to be directly in the interest of the West.
"The [key] Canadian issues are investment in early warning systems," she said. The same applies to the U.S.
Also a vaccine specialist, McGeer, stressed that although mechanisms for mass production of a regular influenza vaccine are already in place, development of a proven bird flu vaccine is at least a year away, assuming that research and development goes full tilt from now on. "We’ve talked about spending $25 million Can on H5N1 vaccine development, but we haven’t actually spent it yet," she said.
The new U.S. pandemic preparedness plan calls for $1.2 billion to make 20 million more doses of the current experimental vaccine against H5N1, and $2.8 billion to accelerate new flu-vaccine technology.
Also, Canada has not yet stockpiled enough antivirals, McGeer said. The U.S. plan allocates an additional $1 billion for these drugs, though critics say that that is not nearly enough.
Finally, McGeer said, advances in health care planning and public education need to be made to round out the effort. "We’re not even close to where we ought to be in terms of preventing the extra mortality and social disruption… We still have a long way to go in terms of public education so that people understand what the likely effects of a pandemic may be, and how to protect themselves," she said.
SINGAPORE, Nov 5 (Reuters) - As Asian governments keep a lookout for new cases of bird flu, Singapore is deploying some unlikely "flu police" at the world's largest bird park: chickens.
Singapore's Jurong Bird Park has put 19 chickens, known as "sentinel chickens", in all its aviaries to help detect the presence of any infectious disease.
"These chickens are bred without any immunity. So they will be the first ones to fall ill if there is an outbreak of bird flu or other infectious diseases at the park," Wong Hon Mun, executive director of Jurong Bird Park, told Reuters.
He said the chickens are bred from birds that have never been vaccinated against any disease and so act as a first line of defence against bird flu or any other illness brought in by wild birds.
Since last year the park has started vaccinating all other birds and giving flu jabs to its staff. It has also introduced foot baths and disinfecting floor mats to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.
Wong said the park has done scenario planning with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, and added that if any of its captive birds were found to have contracted bird flu, the park would have to cull all the birds in the particular aviary.
"They will have to be put down, whether it's the toucans or birds of paradise," Wong said. "It is a very tough decision. But the thinking is that it has to be done because we are talking about a possible transmission to humans."
The park has more than 9,000 birds of 600 species including such endangered ones as the Toco Toucans, Caribbean Flamingos and Dalmatian Pelicans. Vets check the birds daily.
The park -- the world's largest in terms of number of birds and second largest in terms of land area after Germany's Vogelpark Walsrode -- would temporarily shut down if there was an outbreak.
Despite growing fears about bird flu, Wong said visitor arrivals had not dipped.
"In fact, the number of visitors has increased by about 20 percent this year compared to last year," he said.
Although Singapore is currently free of bird flu, there are increasing concerns that imported birds could carry the deadly virus onto its shores.
Britain said last month that a parrot that died in quarantine tested positive for H5N1. The authorities believe the parrot was infected in Taiwan.
Wong said the park has stopped all bird imports and exports since March last year and any new bird imports would have to fulfil government regulations.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu, transmitted through human contact with birds, has killed 62 people in Asia and infected 122 since late 2003.
Experts fear that H5N1 will mutate to allow it to pass easily from person to person. If it does so, it could cause a catastrophic pandemic, killing tens of millions, because humans lack immunity to it.
BEIJING, China (AP) -- A bird flu outbreak in northern China that sparked the culling of about 370,000 birds lies along a migration route that spans from East Asia to Australia, a media report said Sunday, as officials continued killing thousands of birds east of Beijing.
As Indonesia confirmed its fifth fatality from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, and jitters mounted across Asia, Japan was reportedly considering a plan to nearly double its annual contribution to the World Health Organization to help combat the deadly virus.
Around 1,700 Chinese officials and armed police were expected to complete by Sunday the culling of poultry in Liaoning province's Badaohao village, close to the border with North Korea, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The Badaohao outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu strain -- the fourth in China in three weeks -- killed 8,940 chickens and prompted authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds, the government has said.
More than 20 magpies and other migratory birds were spotted in the area, Xinhua said without giving further details.
Chinese authorities have said they are concerned that wild birds might spread the virus, particularly following an outbreak last spring that killed more than 6,000 migratory geese and gulls at northwestern China's Qinghai Lake. (Global bird migration paths)
The State Forestry Bureau said last month it was activating a reporting network to detect outbreaks among wild birds.
Meanwhile in Beijing, new regulations went into effect Sunday that allow detention for up to 15 days and fines of up to 200 yuan (US$25; euro21) for anyone who fails to immunize their birds, the Beijing Morning Post reported.
The rules, announced jointly by the Beijing Agricultural Bureau and the Beijing Public Security Bureau, are aimed at ensuring a 100 percent bird vaccination rate in the capital, the newspaper said.
No human cases have been reported in China, but authorities warn they are inevitable if the government cannot stop repeated outbreaks in poultry.
Meanwhile, Japan was mulling a plan to give 300 million yen (US$2.6 million; euro2.1 million) to the WHO to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing unnamed government sources.
Tokyo, which gave around 160 million yen (US$1.36 million; euro1.1 million) to the global health agency for 2005, said the money would be used to improve surveillance of infection routes of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the report said.
The government was also planning to invite influenza experts from Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries early next year for training at the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Tokyo, Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Officials at the Health and Agricultural Ministries were not available for comment Sunday.
The response comes a day after Indonesian officials confirmed that a 19-year-old woman died of bird flu, bringing the number of people killed by the disease in Indonesia to five.
The woman, from the town of Tangerang on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, was believed to have contracted the virus from infected dead chickens in her neighborhood, Ministry of Health official Hariadi Wibisono said Saturday.
An 8-year-old boy from her family was hospitalized with the virus, but it was not immediately clear how the young boy contracted the disease.
Since late 2003, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks and killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia.
Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed among humans, and possibly trigger a worldwide pandemic.
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A bird flu outbreak in northern China which sparked the cull of about 370,000 birds lies along a migration route that spans from East Asia to Australia, a media report said today, as officials continued killing thousands of birds east of Beijing.
As Indonesia confirmed its fifth fatality from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, and jitters mounted across Asia, Japan was reportedly considering a plan to nearly double its annual contribution to the World Health Organisation to help combat the deadly virus.
About 1,700 Chinese officials and armed police were expected to complete by today the culling of poultry in Liaoning province's Badaohao village, close to the border with North Korea, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The Badaohao outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu strain - the fourth in China in three weeks - killed 8,940 chickens and prompted authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds, the Government has said.
More than 20 magpies and other migratory birds were spotted in the area, Xinhua said without giving further details.
Chinese authorities have said they are concerned that wild birds might spread the virus, particularly following an outbreak last spring that killed more than 6,000 migratory geese and gulls at north-western China's Qinghai Lake.
The State Forestry Bureau said last month it was activating a reporting network to detect outbreaks among wild birds.
No human cases have been reported in China, but authorities warn they are inevitable if the Government cannot stop repeated outbreaks in poultry.
Meanwhile, Japan was considering a plan to give 300 million yen ($3.52 million) to the World Health Organisation to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported today, citing unnamed Government sources.
Tokyo, which gave about 160 million yen to the global health agency for 2005, said the money would be used to improve surveillance of infection routes of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the report said.
The Government was also planning to invite influenza experts from Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries early next year for training at the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Tokyo, Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Officials at the health and agricultural ministries were not available for comment today.
The response comes a day after Indonesian officials confirmed that a 19-year-old woman died of bird flu, bringing the number of people killed by the disease in Indonesia to five.
The woman, from the town of Tangerang on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, was believed to have contracted the virus from infected dead chickens in her neighbourhood, Ministry of Health official Hariadi Wibisono said yesterday.
An 8-year-old boy from her family was hospitalised with the virus, but it was not immediately clear how the young boy contracted the disease.
Since late 2003, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks and killed more than 60 people in South-East Asia.
Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed among humans, and possibly trigger a worldwide pandemic.
BEIJING - (AP) China said Sunday it had asked for outside help to test three possible cases of bird flu in humans, and reported that its latest outbreak among poultry lies along a migration route for wild birds.
As North Korea announced its leaders were taking the threat of bird flu seriously, Japan mulled a plan to give $2.6 million to the World Health Organization to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries.
China said Sunday it had asked WHO to help it determine whether the death of a 12-year-old girl last month was caused by bird flu.
There have been four outbreaks of the deadly and virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu among poultry in China in the past three weeks, but Beijing has not confirmed any human deaths from the virus, which has killed at least 62 people across Southeast Asia.
But on Sunday, Xinhua reported that Chinese experts "cannot rule out the possibility of human transmission of H5N1 bird flu" in the cases of three people in Wantang in central Hunan province who came down with pneumonia last month following a bird flu outbreak among local poultry.
One of them, the 12-year-old girl, died. Her 9-year-old brother and a 36-year-old middle school teacher recovered. Chinese officials initially said the girl and her brother tested negative for the bird flu virus.
Since late 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia and jumped from birds to humans. Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed among humans and possibly spark a worldwide flu pandemic.
China, which was heavily criticized during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome for initially covering up the illness, has pledged to be more open about reporting on bird flu.
Meanwhile in Liaoning province's Badaohao village, close to the border with North Korea, 1,700 officials and 100 police finished culling about 370,000 birds after bird flu killed 8,940 chickens there.
Xinhua said that Badaohao lies along a migration route used by migratory birds heading from East Asia to Australia, contributing to fears that wild birds could spread the disease.
In North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency said officials and workers across the country "have turned out as one in the prevention of bird flu."
Leader Kim Jong Il "recently spoke of bird flu several times and took concrete measures," KCNA said.
Ministries are studying the situation abroad and have intensified quarantine at ports and airports, KCNA said. Chicken farms are also preventing visitors from entering and are sterilizing coops and vehicles, it said.
Japan was mulling a plan to give $2.6 million to the WHO to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing unnamed government sources.
Tokyo, which gave around $1.36 million to the global health agency for 2005, said the money would be used to improve surveillance of infection routes of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the report said.
Also Sunday, authorities ruled out bird flu as the cause of death in 100 pigeons in western Malaysia. Tests on the dead birds in Bidor, about 75 miles north of Kuala Lumpur, showed they had not contracted the virus, Hawari Hussein, an Agriculture Ministry official said.
More tests were being carried out to establish what killed the birds, he said.
China says it has asked for help from the World Health Organisation in determining whether the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus killed a 12-year-old girl last month and sickened two others.
If any of the cases are confirmed, it would be China's first reported case of bird flu in humans.
Three people living in central China's Hunan province came down with pneumonia last month following an outbreak of H5N1 among local poultry, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Of those, a 12-year-old girl died. Her nine-year-old brother and a 36-year-old school teacher recovered from the illness. Chinese officials initially said the girl and her brother had tested negative for the virus.
However on Sunday, Xinhua said experts "cannot rule out the possibility of human transmission of H5N1 bird flu. The specific cause needs further laboratory tests."
China has asked the World Health Organisation for help in testing blood and throat swabs from the three victims, Xinhua reported.
Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing, confirmed that China approached the agency for help last week. He did not give a specific date.
"This is a reiteration of how much of a public-health threat bird flu really is," said Wadia. "Sometimes it takes a human case or a suspected human case to raise the alarm, to remind us that no country, whether China or anywhere else, can afford to be complacent."
Wadia said China and the WHO were still working out the details of their cooperation. Samples might be sent to a WHO lab or WHO experts might be asked to help Chinese officials perform the testing in China, he said.
Beijing has been criticised before for being slow to share information on public health crises, including an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, two years ago.
SARS first emerged in China's southern Guangdong province and killed almost 800 people worldwide before subsiding in 2003.
Wadia said he didn't think China had delayed its announcement of the suspected cases but it was instead trying to be thorough before going public.
"I think the information they have shared with us has been shared as soon as they can corroborate it."
Wadia also said it was not unusual to have initial tests for a virus such as H5N1 come back negative and then later to become positive.
The girl, He Yin, who came into "close contact with sick birds", died on October 13, three days after developing a high fever, Xinhua said. The girl's younger brother was hospitalised with similar symptoms but recovered.
The third suspected victim, the school teacher, had reportedly chopped raw chicken while suffering from a minor injury on his hand and later fell ill, Xinhua said. The agency identified him only by his surname, Song.
All three lived in or near Wantang, a village where the government says 545 chickens and ducks died of bird flu last month.
Also on Sunday, 1700 officials and 100 police finished culling about 370,000 birds in northern China's Liaoning province after bird flu killed 8940 chickens there.
The outbreak in Liaoning's Badaohao village, east of Beijing, was China's fourth reported outbreak in three weeks.
State television o
