India and France Confirm Cases

BOMBAY, Feb. 18, 2006
©MMVI, The Associated Press

India and France both confirmed their first outbreak of the deadly strain of bird flu among fowl on Saturday, and an Indian official said authorities planned to cull a half-million birds to check the spread of the virus.

Tens of thousands of chickens have died from bird flu in recent weeks in western India, and people suffering from flu-like symptoms in the region were to be tested for the infection, officials said.

The challenge is to keep sick wild fowl from infecting domestic birds because most human beings catch bird flu from domestic poultry, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

Saturday's announcement came as other nations fought to contain outbreaks of the H5N1 strain, which has spread from Asia amid fears of a worldwide flu pandemic if the virus mutates into a form that is easily transmitted between humans. Bird flu has killed at least 91 people—most of them in Asia—since 2003, according to World Health Organization figures.

In western India, officials planned to immediately begin slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the town of Navapur where the confirmed cases were detected, said Anees Ahmed, the minister for animal husbandry in the state of Maharashtra.

"Around 500,000 birds will be killed," he said.

An unknown number of people in the area were reportedly suffering from flu and fever, and scientists were to start testing them on Sunday, said Milind Gore, deputy director of the National Institute of Virology in Pune.

At least 30,000 chickens have died in and around Navapur, a major poultry-farming region of Maharashtra, over the past two weeks, Ahmed said.

Police have cordoned off the area around the poultry farms, Ahmed said.

An area of three to five miles around the cordoned region will be under surveillance, and all poultry not killed will be vaccinated against bird flu, the health ministry said in a statement.

Indian chicken farmers were devastated by the announcement.

"All of us will have to start again from scratch, and I don't know how many of us will survive," said Ghulam Vhora, a member of the Navapur Poultry Farmers Association. "Most farmers cannot believe the news and are hoping the lab tests confirming bird flu are wrong."

France confirmed its first case of the H5N1 strain in a wild duck found dead in a bird reserve some 20 miles northeast of Lyon, France's third-largest city, the Agriculture Ministry said. All fowl have been ordered indoors or vaccinated there.

"There's a little bit of panic because we don't know what to do," said Madeleine Monnet, 60, in the town of Joyeux, where the diseased bird was discovered. "Here everybody has a little bit of fowl—chickens or ducks—for their personal consumption."

Countries from Europe to Asia were struggling with their outbreaks.

In Indonesia, another man died from the H5N1 virus, bringing the nation's death toll to 19, a Health Ministry official confirmed Saturday.

The man, who died Feb. 10, had frequent contact with poultry, said Hariadi Wibisono, a health ministry official.

German and Austrian authorities ordered all poultry and fowl kept indoors, and in Germany, 28 wild birds were diagnosed with the deadly strain on the same northern island where the country's first cases were detected earlier this week.

Egypt's agriculture minister, meanwhile, said Saturday that the number of cases of bird flu in the country are not high enough to warrant large-scale slaughter of birds, but that authorities will act accordingly if the disease spreads.

There have been conflicting reports about the number of H5N1 cases found in Egypt, but the government said Friday there had been seven cases in three provinces.

"The disease is not at a level that leads to getting rid of large numbers" of fowl, Amin Abaza told the Arabic-language Al-Arabiya satellite channel. "There are known international measures that are taken. Poultry within a certain radius get culled."


Animal Cases: Summary of Current Situation
Since December 2003, avian influenza A (H5N1) infections in poultry or wild birds have been reported in the following countries:

Africa:
Nigeria
East Asia & the Pacific:
Cambodia
China
Hong Kong (SARPRC)
Indonesia
Japan
Laos
Malaysia
Mongolia
Thailand
Vietnam
Europe & Eurasia:
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bosnia & Herzegovina (H5)
Bulgaria
Croatia
France (H5)
Germany
Greece
Italy
Romania
Russia
Slovenia (H5)
Turkey
Ukraine
Near East:
Egypt
Iraq (H5)
Iran
South Asia:
India
Kazakhstan

For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Organization for Animal Health Web site.

Updated February 21, 2006

Bird flu 'could take 142m lives'

Worst case economic cost is $4.4 trillion

Thursday, February 16, 2006; Posted: 10:28 a.m. EST (15:28 GMT)

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- As many as 142 million people around the world could die if bird flu turns into a "worst case" influenza pandemic, according to a sobering new study of its possible consequences.

And global economic losses could run to $4.4 trillion -- the equivalent of wiping out the Japanese economy's annual output.

The study, prepared for the Sydney, Australia-based Lowy Institute think tank, says there are "enormous uncertainties" about whether a flu pandemic might happen, and where and when it might happen first.

But it says even a mild pandemic could kill 1.4 million people and cost $330 billion.

In its "ultra" or worst-case scenario, Hong Kong's economy is halved, the large-scale collapse of Asian economic activity causes global trade flows to dry up, and money flows out to safe havens in North America and Europe. Deaths could top 28 million in China and 24 million in India.

The report's release in Sydney Thursday comes as two more countries in Europe -- Germany and Austria -- report that the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected in wild fowl (Full story).

The Lowy Institute's report, titled Global Macroeconomic Consequences of Pandemic Influenza, looks at four possible scenarios:

Mild, in which the pandemic is similar to the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu;

Moderate, similar to the 1957 Asian flu;

Severe, similar to the 1918-19 Spanish flu (which infected an estimated 1 billion people and claimed as many as 50 million lives);

An "ultra" scenario that is worse than the Spanish flu outbreak.

Although the 1918-19 flu outbreak probably originated in Asia, it was known as the Spanish flu because the Spanish media were the first to report on its impact.

Since bird flu first appeared in China's Guangdong province -- which adjoins Hong Kong -- in 1996, the disease has claimed more than 90 human lives -- almost all in Asia, with the most recent deaths in Turkey.

In addition, about 200 million birds around the world have died or been culled.

Outside of Asia, there have been bird flu outbreaks in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Croatia, Russia, Azerbaijan and Romania in Europe, Iraq and Iran in the Middle East and in Nigeria, Africa. (Full story)

This spread of the disease from Asia to the fringes of Europe in recent weeks has prompted massive global attention on possible prevention measures, with the U.S., the EU and countries such as China and Japan committing hefty financial and human resources to combating the disease.

But the new Lowy Institute report, by the Australian National University's Prof. Warwick McKibbin and research fellow Dr Alexandra Sidorenko, says the major difficulty with influenza vaccine development is "the need to hit the constantly moving target as the virus mutates very rapidly."

Their observation follows a scientific study released last week which said bird flu was much more diverse than previously thought, with at least four distinct types of the deadly H5N1 virus (Full story).

In that study, a group of 29 scientists around the globe found that the virus was both more genetically diverse and able to survive in birds showing no signs of illness.

One of the researchers, Dr. Malik Peiris, professor of microbiology at Hong Kong University, told CNN on February 8 that regional virus types meant there was a need to look for "broad cross-protection" rather than a single vaccine.

Peiris said that while wild birds may contribute to the introduction and spread of bird flu, the perpetuation of the disease was through stocks of domestic poultry. He said no country was fully prepared to combat the disease, which needed to be tracked back and tackled at its source.

Further mutation
So far, all but a handful of cases of human sickness have been caused by direct contact with sick birds, suggesting the virus is unable to move easily among humans.

But health officials have warned that with continued exposure to people, the virus could mutate further and develop that ability.

While scientists scramble to prepare an effective medical response, the Lowy Institute report primarily looks at the macroeconomic impact of a flu pandemic.

It said there would be four main sets of "shocks" for each scenario: shocks to the labor force (through deaths and dislocation to production); additional supply shocks through increased costs; demand shocks; and risk premium shocks, involving financial flows.

In the worst scenario, it said the death toll could reach 28.4 million in China, 24 million in India, 11.4 million in Indonesia, 4.1 million in the Philippines, 2.1 million in Japan, 2.0 million in the United States and 5.6 million in Europe. In the world's least developed countries, the toll could top 33 million.

The study's figure of 142 million possible deaths is similar to an earlier estimate of 150 million deaths by World Health Organization senior official David Nabarro, when he was named as head of the United Nations avian flu response team in September last year.

The Lowy Institute study found that East Asian economies would be proportionately more affected than the United States or Europe. In the "ultra" or worst-case scenario, Hong Kong's economy, for example, would shrink by more than 53 percent.

"This is clearly a major economic catastrophe," the report's authors note.

"The large scale collapse of Asia causes global trade flows to dry up and capital to flow to safe havens in North America and Europe."

Japan would experience a larger shock than other industrialized economies, but a smaller shock than the rest of East Asia. However, its integration with the collapsing East Asian economies means it would take a further shock through declining trade flows.

The authors say a "key part of the story" is the monetary policy response.

"Those countries that tend to focus on preventing exchange rate changes are coincidentally the countries that experience the largest epidemiological shocks," they say.

"This is particularly true of Hong Kong, which receives the largest shocks and has the most rigid exchange rate regime."

The report concludes that a "large investment of resources" should be dedicated to preventing an outbreak of pandemic influenza.

Bird flu reports spread in Europe

Iran detects deadly strain in dead swans

Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Posted: 10:17 p.m. EST (03:17 GMT)

CNN) -- Three new countries on Tuesday reported they had detected the deadly strain of bird flu as public health officials battled the H5N1 strain of avian influenza on various fronts across the globe.

Germany and Austria reported apparent cases of H5N1 bird flu in wild swans, becoming the third and fourth European Union nations to detect the virus that has killed 91 people since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. Italy and Greece reported swan deaths from the highly pathogenic strain on Saturday.

Iran's government said H5N1 had been detected in wild swans found dead near the Caspian Sea. (Full story)

Experts had said it was only a matter of time before the H5N1 strain dangerous to humans broke out in Iran, a wintering place for wildfowl that may be carriers. (Migratory patterns)

Both Germany and Austria -- each of which found the virus in two swans -- said they were sending samples of the dead swans to the EU laboratory in Weybridge, Britain, for further confirmation.

German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said Tuesday night that initial tests revealed the virus in two swans on Ruegen Island in northern Germany, and he ordered all fowl to be quarantined by Friday to help keep the disease from spreading, especially among birds that migrate.

Last year bird owners in Germany were required to keep their animals indoors for several months in a similar precaution.

"We expect a confirmation on Thursday," Seehofer said Tuesday night.

"The chance is very high. ... At the moment, where farming livestock is hopefully not affected, we do not have to slaughter."

He said the National Crisis Board would meet Wednesday to discuss the situation with all ministers and all relevant organizations.

"All possible means will be discussed and if necessary implemented so that a transmission from wild birds to farming livestock can be prevented. That is the most crucial point at the moment," Seehofer added.

The Austrian Health Ministry said its dead swans were found in the southern part of the country.

The Health Ministry said it had taken preventive measures, including the creation of a restricted zone within a 3-kilometer (2-mile) radius of where the dead swans were found, near Graz in the Styria region bordering Slovenia, Reuters reports.

In this area, all poultry trade has been banned for at least 30 days. Monitoring for signs of bird flu will be carried out within a further 10 kilometer (6-mile) radius, and poultry bought and sold only with ministry permits.

In the entire area, farmers would have to confine their poultry stock to barns. Poultry markets and shows, and hunting for wild fowl, have been banned, the ministry said.

Italy said Saturday that six wild swans found in the southern regions of Sicily, Puglia and Calabria tested positive for H5N1. Northern Greece also reported cases Saturday.

The avian influenza threat in all affected EU countries will be reviewed by the EU's Food Chain and Animal Health Committee which meets on Wednesday and Thursday, the European Commission said in a separate statement, according to AP.

About 200 million birds have died or been culled around the world since the disease first appeared in China's Guangdong province -- which adjoins Hong Kong -- in 1996.

So far the World Health Organization has confirmed 165 human cases of the disease in a number of nations, including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, which has suffered the most fatalities.

Outbreaks have also been detected in Turkey, Croatia, Russia, Azerbaijan and Romania in Europe, Iraq and Iran in the Middle East and in Nigeria, Africa. (Full story)

All but a handful of cases of human sickness have been caused by direct contact with sick birds, suggesting the virus, so far, is unable to move easily among humans.

But health officials have warned that with continued exposure to people, the virus could mutate further and develop that ability.

Officials have expressed fears that the virus is currently acting similarly to the 1918 flu virus, a pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people.

Nigeria screens farm workers for bird flu virus

KADUNA, Nigeria (AP) — A deadly strain of bird flu may have emerged in eight of Nigeria's 36 states, authorities said Monday, as concerns grew that the virus had been spreading long before officials knew it was in Africa.

Farm workers wait to see a doctor outside of a medical center in Nigeria.
By George Osodi, AP

The disease has also apparently spread further into Greece, where a wild goose tested positive on the Aegean Sea island of Skyros — adding to the three known cases in the northern Greek mainland.

With this weekend's discovery of the H5N1 strain in Greece and Italy — both European Union members — countries throughout the continent are increasing preventative measures against the disease, which has killed at least 91 people since 2003, mostly in Asia.

Albania, which is close to both Greece and Italy, is buying protective clothing and stockpiles of antiviral drugs. In Bulgaria, where the disease has been confirmed in wild birds, authorities declared six-mile "risk zones" around the places where the dead birds were found and police were restricting traffic around some wetlands.

In the Netherlands, the agriculture minister has ordered commercial fowl to be kept indoors as a protective measure to prevent an outbreak, Dutch media reported Monday.

Nigeria, which reported Africa's first cases of the disease in birds, was screening workers from the farm where the H5N1 strain was first discovered. It was confirmed in three northern states and has already killed thousands of birds in the area.

On Monday, health officials said five additional states were also suspected to have the disease.

Barry Schoub, executive director of South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said the virus probably has spread over a much more extensive area in Nigeria and that he expected to see large-scale destruction of birds there.

"The Nigeria case is very, very concerning because the spread in poultry appears to have been going on for quite some time and may well be more extensive," Schoub told reporters in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He said destroying birds was the most effective way to stop the spread of the infection in developing countries.

Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a pandemic. Most human cases of the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.

On Sunday, samples taken from a Nigerian family with two sick children suspected of contracting bird flu were sent abroad for testing, said Abdulsalam Nasidi.

Nasidi gave no details on the family's size and declined to say where the tests were sent. He said the children "are in fairly good condition ... but we are still observing them."

In the northern town of Jaji, near the farm where H5N1 was first confirmed, doctors examined 20 workers but lacked proper testing materials, which they said a World Health Organization team would bring by Tuesday.

But scores of workers failed to present themselves for tests. After years of repressive and corrupt military rule, many Nigerians shy away from any contact with officials.

Ibrahim Hassan, who worked at Sambawa Farms before it was quarantined last week, said his co-workers were worried about being taken away somewhere by the health officials if they tested positive for bird flu.

"Many people are afraid to come," he said.

Nigerian officials have tried to contain the disease by burning chickens and other birds suspected of being infected across the north, but poultry markets continue to operate and birds are being shipped around the country despite international recommendations to stop those practices.

Bird Flu Hits Western Europe

ROME, Feb. 12, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greek authorities appealed for calm after a British laboratory on Saturday Feb. 11, 2006 confirmed samples from three wild swans in northern Greece, had tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. (AP Photo)

(AP) The deadly bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans, while the European Union confirmed the presence of the deadly strain in Bulgaria.

Sunday, the Indonesian health ministry says tests have confirmed that two women died last week of bird flu.

Saturday's announcement by Greece and Italy comes a day after the opening of the Winter Games in Turin, and marks the first time the potentially dangerous virus was detected in a EU country.

Authorities in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria said there were no reports of people being infected, and Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace sought to reassure Italians that the outbreak posed no immediate threat to humans, as the virus had only affected wild birds.

"It's a relatively safe situation for human health, less so for animal health," Storace said.

Also Saturday, authorities in Nigeria said they were investigating whether a deadly bird flu strain discovered in the West African country last week had spread to humans after at least two children were reported ill.

Bird flu has killed at least 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. It has been ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 140 million birds.

Almost all the human deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, possibly sparking a human flu pandemic that could kill millions.

Experts said they were reassured by the fact that the virus has been detected in wild birds rather than on poultry farms, where it would be more likely to spread and where people would be in closer contact to infected birds.

"The risk to humans is less if the disease is in wildlife than if it is in poultry," said Juan Lubroth, a senior animal health officer at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The virus was found in five swans in the three southern Italian regions of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, Storace said. The swans had arrived from the Balkans, he said, likely pushed south by cold weather.

The European Union issued a statement saying that Italy has agreed to apply the same precautionary measures as those adopted by Greece a day earlier. They include creating a two-mile high-risk, protection zone around each outbreak area, and a surveillance zone of an additional seven kilometers.

Tests will be done on samples of domestic birds inside the protection zone, where poultry is to be separated to avoid contact with other domestic birds. Birds that are infected or suspected of being infected will be killed.

Hunting wild birds will be banned in both zones, and poultry cannot travel out of the surveillance zone, the Italian Health Ministry said.

Also Saturday, the European Union reference laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed that samples from dead swans found within a 45-mile radius from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki had tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

Authorities said health experts in the region were carrying out checks on farms and homes with poultry.

A senior Agriculture Ministry official said there was no immediate need to extend existing precautionary measures in an area near Thessaloniki, which is Greece's second-largest city.

"No new measures are required," Spyros Kyriakis said. "The 10 days within which the sick birds were contagious have passed without any reports of an outbreak among farm poultry. These birds were discovered 11 days ago, so there's no need to panic."

The EU also confirmed that wild swans in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border, had tested positive for the H5N1 strain. The Bulgarian Health Ministry tried to calm fears, saying that so far no humans had caught the virus directly from wild birds.

"The incubation period for the disease has passed, and there are no reports of people infected with the bird flu virus," the ministry said.

But in Nigeria, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said authorities were trying to determine whether the H5N1 bird flu strain discovered on a farm in the northern state of Kaduna on Wednesday, the first time it was found in Africa, had spread to humans after several people were reported ill. Authorities have since reported the same virus in two other states.

Investigations were being conducted in the commercial capital, Lagos, and in Kaduna. Lambo gave no details, but said he expected results to be released Sunday.

Elsewhere, China reported its eighth human death from the H5N1 strain, and Indonesia reported its 18th death.

Arizona Governor Napolitano's Message of the Week

Dear Friends,

We have been talking about preparedness at a national and local level for the past several years now, and even more recently, how we can be ready as a community if there is an outbreak of a serious type of influenza. While we have had a relatively mild flu season this year, we should always be prepared if and when a more aggressive outbreak occurs.

This week, the Department of Health Services (DHS) released an updated Arizona Influenza Pandemic Response Plan, the work of experienced health practitioners and professionals with input from individuals at the community and nonprofit level. This very detailed plan is impressive: it deals with prevention, treatment and coordination between state, local, federal and community agencies and groups, and is clear, unbiased and easy to understand, even for those who are not involved in the health services realm. What I like about the plan is that it is not set in stone. It is constantly being updated as we receive more scientific information and news, and explains the role of the state, community, and individuals in keeping our citizens safe.

We expect that this plan will become a template for other states across the country to use to write their own comprehensive approaches to managing a pandemic flu. The plan is available online at http://www.azdhs.gov/.

Being prepared for whatever could come our way is critical. Whether it is a small business with half of its ten-person workforce calling in sick with the flu, a medium-sized corporation’s headquarters affected by flood damage, a school with a stomach flu outbreak, or the threat of wildfire, having a plan in place on how to deal with a disruption can really make a difference, should it ever needed.

As always, I appreciate your input, and encourage you to call my office at 602.542.1318 if you have questions or thoughts to share. Or, please visit our website at http://www.azgovernor.gov for information and news in state government.


Yours very truly,


Janet Napolitano
Governor


Please encourage your friends and family to sign up for my Message of the Week at http://www.azgovernor.gov

Bird Flu in Africa

'Highly pathogenic' bird flu found in Nigeria
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria? the first reported outbreak in Africa, the World Organization for Animal Health said Wednesday.
The outbreak appears to be restricted to birds, and no human infections have been reported, the Paris-based organization said.

Nigeria said the outbreak was on a farm in Jaji, a village in the northern state of Kaduna. Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello told reporters in Abuja that the deadly strain of the virus was detected in samples taken Jan. 16 from birds on the farm. (Related: Understanding bird flu)

"We are dealing with a new continent," said Alex Thiermann, an expert for the World Organization for Animal Health, known as the OIE, told The Associated Press.

Bird flu began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003, forcing the slaughter of more than 100 million birds and jumping to humans. The World Health Organization has confirmed 88 deaths from bird flu out of a total of 165 cases of human infection. Almost all the cases have been in Asia, but the disease recently has been detected in Europe and the Middle East.

Though all the people who contracted the disease so far are believed to have been infected through contact with sick birds, experts are concerned the disease could mutate into a form easily spread from human to human, potentially triggering a global pandemic.

Experts have long been concerned about Africa's ability to deal with a bird flu outbreak. Thiermann noted that some African countries have "very weak" veterinary systems.

Thiermann said all 46,000 birds on the Nigerian farm have been killed and their bodies disposed of, and Nigerian authorities have banned the movement of birds and people from the farm. Officials also are investigating whether birds were transferred to other farms in the past 21 days, and they, too, are being quarantined, he said.

"We feel that they are doing everything they can and they certainly need help," he said.

Additional protective clothing was being moved Wednesday from Senegal to Nigeria, he said.

Experts had suspected that migrating wild birds could spread the disease to Africa, said Thiermann, noting that Nigeria is on a "major flyway."

A laboratory in Padua, Italy, identified the H5N1 strain in the Nigerian birds, OIE said in a statement. It added further tests were being carried out to determine how closely the Nigerian strain matched the H5N1 strain detected elsewhere in the world.

The Italian Health Ministry said the bird flu strain is very similar to those found in Siberia and Mongolia.

The OIE said it was working with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization to "coordinate a common response to this event."

A team of experts to assess and provide technical advice will leave for Nigeria toward the end of this week, said Thiermann, who is a special adviser to the OIE's director.

Health officials had feared a deadly bird flu virus could enter impoverished, loosely governed African regions, where many people raise chickens at home for personal consumption.

Nigerian officials said Wednesday that initial tests on chickens that mysteriously died in Kano, a state neighboring Kaduna, showed no signs of bird flu. Salihu Jibrin, head of the state's livestock department said at least 60,000 birds have died in Kano state in recent weeks. Tests were ongoing.

Nigerian authorities nevertheless urged farmers to monitor their flocks and report strange ailments to authorities. Kano set up a committee of veterinary surgeons to visit farms and watch out for evidence of a bird flu outbreak after some poultry farms reported large-scale bird deaths last week.

Large-scale poultry farms aside, many Nigerian families live in close quarters with chickens and other fowl, which are an important food source. The birds generally are kept with other domestic animals at night but are allowed to roam freely during the day.

Controlling the spread of the virus could be particularly difficult in Africa, where central governments often exert little control in far-flung rural areas most likely to have people keeping fowl in their homes.