Bird flu - Now its Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan: An outbreak of H5N1 avian flu has been reported in Afghanistan and Afghan authorities are culling poultry after the virus was found in chickens in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Kunaraneastern Afghan city, a U.N. official reported on Wednesday.

SergeVerniau is the representative of the U.N.'s Food andAgriculture Organization in Afghanistan.

The virus in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad is reportedto be the H5N1 bird flu strain but there is no confirmation yet of the strain involved in the outbreak in Kunar.The first Afghan outbreaks of H5N1 were March and April 2006 in Kabul and Kapisa, Logar and Nangarhar provinces. There have been no infections of humans however.

Interestingly the reports of an Afghan bird flu outbreak come just a day after reports that neighbouring Pakistan closed a zoo in Islamabad after tests confirmed H5N1 in peacocks and geese. Afghanistan is a migratory bird crossing point and there is considerable trade between neighbouring countries. However Verniau said that it was not yet clear if the same strain was involved in the Afghan and Pakistan outbreaks.

Employers - How to plan for bird flu

How will you manage your business if an flu pandemic occurs? Do you have flu pandemic plans?
We have already outlined some factors that will be pertinent to pandemic planning in the food supply sector. here we look at some more general issues.

First lets deal with the solution that most people think of first. Asking staff to work from home.
This may be feasible for organisations if home working is already an established practice and in particular if there is already the IT infrastructure to support this. For organisations which require staff to be based on the premises this is less of an immediate solution however.
If you are planning for this you need to be aware of some issues in managing this strategy for maintaining business continuity during a pandemic.

Many other companies and organizations are likely to try to also arrange for staff to work from home. These staff as well as working are likely to want to use their internet resource to communicate with friends and family about the impact of the epidemic.
You must anticipate that a flu pandemic will strain the infrastructure of the intranet and that there will be a great demand for intranet resources. Individuals and companies may need to restrain themselves from surfing high-bandwidth sites, such as YouTube if the Internet is to continue to function. Failing this it is possible that governments may be forced to limit Net usage during a pandemic.

In 2006, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a group of telecom and government officials conducted a pandemic exercise based on a hypothetical bird flu outbreakin central Europe.

The scenario assumed total absenteeism of 30% to 60% and absentees trying to work from home. This would have overwhelmed the Internet and so building an assumption of business or organisational continuity based solely on staff working from home is probably untenable.

You should not completely discount home working from your flu pandemic planning but you should also not assume that productivity will be unaffected or that this will be an unproblematic solution.

Factors to consider in Business planning for a flu pandemic.

Most of all don't assume that your business or organisation will operate as normal. You should identify the core activities of your business and be prepared to retrench to them. You might find it useful to plan for staged retrenchment linked to differing levels of staff absence in different sectors of you business.

1) You should assume staff shortages, through employees taking time off ill, to care for others, or to avoid infection, at the 30% to 60% level - 50% is probably a reasonable planning figure.

2) You should not assume that you will be able to find cover for these absent staff.

3) Don't assume home working will maintain your business uninterupted - it will provide some insurance but may be subject to internet overload issues. Factor in additional cost for home-working for those unable to attend work. Look at alternative methods of communication, including web casting and video conferencing. Reconsider policies on flexible working and home working and have alternatives ready that can be triggered if a pandemic strikes.

4) Build in the cost of stringent health & safety policies and procedures for preventing spread of the virus .

5) Factor in public transport disruption making it difficult or impossible for staff to get to work.

6) Consider and plan for problems caused by disruption to your supply chain.

7) Dont panic your employees but do inform and consult employees about your plans. Make them aware a plan exists and inform them what to do if the pandemic occurs.

8) Involve your employees in the planning - they may come up with good solutions.

9) Identify and keep records of employee skills and capabilities to assist employee redeployment if necessary.

10) Identify how you will monitor pandemic progress and have trigger points in your plan linked to pandemic severity.

Russia: No Human H5N1 infection says State

MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow Region health authorities
have dismissed rumors of a human avian flu case following the outbreak
of H5N1 in poultry farms in the region last week.

There had been Internet sources reporting on Tuesday that a resident
of Ramenskoye who owned poultry contaminated with the bird flu virus
had been hospitalized.

"He [the resident of the Ramenskoye district] has been admitted to the
infectious diseases ward at a local hospital, but his diagnosis is
rhinitis, or simply a common cold," a local health official said.

She said the illness had probably been caused by stress related to the
bird flu outbreak, and that lab tests did not show H5N1 virus
infection.

The Russian agricultural watchdog confirmed on Monday that last weeks
outbreak did involve the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.

150 dead birds were found at private farms in the Domodedovo, the
Odintsovo, the Podolsk, the Naro-Fominsk, and the Taldom districts
last week, and another 75 were discovered in the Ramenskoye district
this week, but no cases of humans infected with the virus have been
registered so far.

In addition, the Russian veterinary watchdog reported on Wednesday
that 70 dead fowl had been found at poultry farms in the Republic of
Adygea, near to the southern Krasnodar Region, where the most recent
bird flu outbreak occurred in mid-January.

Russia recorded its first cases of avian flu in August 2005, but
previous outbreaks occurred only in southern provinces and in Siberia.

Bird Flu - Food supply chain planning

Food supplies may be a critical issue in the event of a flu pandemic. With predictions that up to a third of the population may become ill in such a pandemic what planning has the food industry taken for such an event?
As individuals, in western countries, we give little thought these days to the security of our food supplies. When we need food we go to the nearest supermarket or grocery store and buy what we need. Our expectation is that the food and other supplies will be there when we need it and in the amounts we need. But will this be the case if a flu pandemic occurs? How will the food industry supply us with fresh produce if their staff are affected by the pandemic? What will we do if the advice is to stay away from public places?

Mothers looking after families are normally able to rely on going to the supermarket once or twice a week for their main shopping. The prospect that families will not be able to do this will cause alarm as many families are likely to have stocks of food for no more than three or four days.

In the USA sectors like water, energy and health care have assistance from state and federal government in their disaster planning. Such assistance does not appear to have been forthcoming however for the food industry. Individual supermarket chains and wholesalers must therefore plan themselves to deal with a potentially large number of sick workers that could affect store operations and disrupt the food supply.

The U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services estimates a third of the population could fall ill if the H5N1 strain of the bird flu mutates into a form that spreads easily from person to person - although it is of course not certain that this will happen.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has projected that worker absenteeism could reach over 40 percent for a prolonged period. If this scale of absenteeism does occur during a pandemic, retail food stores would have major worker shortages and there would be supply chain disruption.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security lists the food and agriculture industry among 13 critical-infrastructure sectors that must remain functional during a pandemic. Maintaining critical facilities such as power, water and food is of course vital during a pandemic.

Another factor that must be taken into account is that in the U.S. and the UK people tend to be eating out more than in the past. During a pandemic food consumption is likely to move significantly away from restaurants and fast-food back to eating at home. The consequence of this will be greater demand for groceries and a need for retailers and distributors to plan for this.
Retailers planning for a pandemic must consider alternative supply chains and anticipate products that will be in high demand during a pandemic situation - in particular medicines and staple foods.

However if retailers and suppliers make all their plans individually and in secret there is a risk that competitive behaviour during a pandemic will reduce the efficiency of a stressed food supply chain. There are strong arguments for government therefore to ensure that there is a core element of co-ordinated planning and that overall control can be assumed in the event that individual plans are unable to deliver continuing food supplies.

It also makes sense for individuals and families to consider maintaining larger stocks of foods, in particular non-perishable staples (eg canned foods, dried fruit, powdered milk) as this will provide an element of additional insurance.

Japan - did rats carry bird flu?

JAPANESE scientists have raised the possibility that rats may have carried avian flu into four poultry farms in the past month. This worrying possibility suggests the virus may have transmission routes that have not yet been identified or controlled.

Government experts who inspected the farms in the Miyazaki and Okayama prefectures believe rodents infected by wild ducks from China may have carried the highly virulent H5N1 virus.

Nets and coverings were in place at the farms to prevent large migratory birds from coming into contact with the poultry. At three farms they found many dead chickens in areas furthest from the entrance of the coops, which caused them to speculate that wild birds were not the direct carriers.
Toshihiro Ito, professor of veterinary microbiology at Tottori University, who heads the team of specialists speculated that it may be possible that small rodents carried the virus into the chicken coops because although the nets could keep out large birds, such as ducks, they could not have stopped very small animals getting to the chickens.
If the fears were confirmed, it would be almost impossible for farmers to avoid similar outbreaks, the task force said.

Russia confirms more bird flu - is it bioterrorism?

As Russia authorities try to contain an outbreak of bird flu near Moscow news emerges that about 3,000 wild ducks have been destroyed near the Black Sea city of Anapa after a number were found dead. No human cases of bird flu have been recorded in Russia yet.
Experts are also testing at a fourth location near the capital. According to a veterinary official it is almost certain the deadly H5N1 strain, as in three earlier cases. Measures have been put in place to combat the spread of the disease. The chickens involved in all cases were thought to have been bought at a market close to the main motorway encircling Moscow. People in contact with the dead birds were taken to hospital but showed no signs of any illness. The outbreak is Russia's second this year and the first recorded close to the capital.

The chief veterinary official for the Moscow region, Valery Sitnikov, told Interfax on Sunday that bio-terrorism can not be discouunted as a cause of the Moscow poultry market bird flu outbreak. He said this was a matter for the Federal Security Service and other law enforcement services.
"The regional veterinary services have almost no doubts that the deadly illness came from Moscow's poultry market", Sitnikov said. "The birds that contracted the disease on the poultry market could have infected other fowl. Bird flu symptoms appear two-three days following infection, which can be seen from what is happening. The first decorative hen was bought on February 9. It died on February 11. In the second case, several hens, bought on February 11, died on February 13," he said. "The management of the poultry market for some reasons have failed to block the arrival of birds infected by the virus. I don't rule out bio-terrorism. The Federal Security Service and other law enforcement agencies must have their say," the official said.

Egypt -further bird flu death

The bird flu death toll in Egypt has reached 22 after an Egyptian woman died of bird flu in a Cairo hospital and a boy aged 5, became the 22nd Egyptian to test positive for the deadly disease, health officials said yesterday.
A World Health Organisation expert said a delay in reporting symptoms was largely behind the most recent deaths in Egypt. A mutated strain that killed three people in December is not suspected to have recurred, officials say.
37-year-old Nadia Abdel Hafez was at first reported to be stable and improving after being transferred to a hospital in Cairo, but her condition deteriorated.
5-year-old Mohamed Ahmed Suleiman of Sharqiya province, was in a stable condition and is being treated with Tamiflu. He tested positive for bird flu after developing a high fever on Wednesday.

Egypt has the highest known cluster of human bird flu cases outside Asia.
Thirteen have died.

Most people infected in Egypt had been in contact with poultry kept at home. Bird flu initially caused panic and did extensive damage to the poultry industry, although the sector has largely recovered.
John Jabbour, a WHO official in Cairo, said a delay in reporting symptoms was making bird flu more deadly in Egypt, where many people keep birds at home but are often reluctant to disclose that to health officials for fear of sanctions.

The fatality rate from bird flu this winter is significantly higher than it was in the same period of 2006, before the country witnessed a 5-month warm-weather lull in human cases. Then just six of 14 people .
Eight Egyptians have contracted bird flu since the disease reappeared in humans in Egypt in October and seven have died - an extrememly high mortality rate which emphasises the improtance of prompt treatment of human case of bird flu.

Moscow Russia confirms Bird Flu outbreak

Russian health authorities confirm an outbreak of bird flu in the Moscow region. Dead birds in the village of Pavlovsky have tested positive for the disease.
Nikolai Vlasov, Russia's top veterinary official, said further tests are being conducted to see if the Moscow outbreak is the H5N1 strain, which is potentially lethal to humans. Poultry farms in the area have been placed under special quarantine as a preventive measure.
Russia recently recorded its first cases this year of the H5N1 strain in dead domestic birds. The virus was found in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia.
Russia had over 90 cases of bird flu last year. Most were in the southern regions, particularly the North Caucasus bordering Georgia and Azerbaijan. Cases also occured in the Siberian regions of Novosibirsk and Omsk.

Catch the flu to avoid dying from Bird flu?

A recent study suggests that immunity to ordinary flu may confer some degree of resistance to the H5N1 bird flu virus. The study involved innoculating mice with the human virus H5N1.
The study found that these mice were less likely to die when they were then infected with a small amount of H5N1 - although protection disappeared after a greater dose of H5N1. Five out of 10 mice infected with a small dose of the full H5N1 virus lived, although all the mice infected with a big dose of H5N1 died. This suggests it is possible that people previously infected with or vaccinated against flu may have soem degree of protection from H5N1.

Richard Webby (St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennesse) writing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine said "It is weak protection ...It is not protection from infection -- it is protection from death."

There has been speculation about the possibility that people previously infected with one strain of influenza might show partial immunity to another strain. It has always been clear that this could not confer complete immunity - because flu can infect the same person over and over again.

But there may be enough protection to stop a new infection from mutated H5N1 from being deadly to those individuals.

Webby said that it was this possibility that they wanted to test. No human has immunity to H5N1 yet as far as is known. H5N1 avian influenza virus has infected over 270 people since 2003 and over 160. The fear is that it may mutate into a form which will readily spread from human to human and kill millions of people. One of the characteristics of the Flu virus in all its forms is its ability to mutate.

Webby's team speculate that some people may have been infected with H5N1 and not became seriously ill because they have some natural immunity. So far, the virus has killed 60 percent of those known to have been infected.

This may explain why 90% of H5N1 victims are aged under 40. Older people may have a degree of immunity from earlier influenza infection. There is no clear proof of this yet and it is thought there are other explanations for younger people being more likely to be infected or diagnosed.

Influenza strains are referred to by their "H" and "N" designations. The H being the type of Hemagglutinin, the protein that the flu virus uses to get into cells, and the N is Neuraminidase, which the virus uses to get back out of infected cells and spread to others.

People have been catching H1N1 flu since at least 1918, when the worst-ever-documented influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people globally. The type of flu which normally circualtes today is a much less dangerous descendant of H1N1 circulates and this is used the annual seasonal flu vaccine. The H5N1 flu virus differs mainly in the H5 part.

The issue therefore is whether immunity to N1, either from natural infection or the vaccine, might provide some protection from the worst effects of H5N1.

"Antibodies to the human version of the N1 do cross-react to some extent with the H5N1," Webby said. Because influenza viruses mutate constantly the match is not perfect and the N1 in human seasonal flu looks substantially different from the N1 in H5N1 avian flu. Vaccines against seasonal flu focus on the "H" part of the virus, because they are meant to block infection completely. It is not clear how much "N" component current vaccines have, Webby said.

They also tested human blood samples against two strains of H5N1 from human victims and found eight out of 38 had antibodies that reacted to one strain, and nine of 38 responded to the other.

Bird Flu - the UK hungary connection

Hungarian officials are denying any link between the recent outbreak of bird flu in Britain and the outbreak in Hungary and the BBC reports their deputy chief vet BBC saying he believes that wild birds have carried the virus to the UK. He did acknowledge the suspicion that the trail led back to Hungary.

Last week, almost 160,000 turkeys were culled at a Bernard Mathews turkey plant after the discovery of the H5N1 virus. The Bernrad mathews company also owns Saga Foods in Hungary and evidence has emerged of a traffic in partly processed poultry meat between Hungary and the UK.

Last month bird flu was discovered at geese farms in the south east of Hungary.

THe UK outbreak led to two men who suffered respiratory symptoms being tested for Bird Flu after they were involved in the clean up operation. The tests proved negative. So far there have been no other outbreaks of Bird Flu in the UK this winter. However it is increasingly clear that the extent of the traffic in poutry and poultry products between coutries is more extensive than many had realised and that this may itself pose a bio-security hazard in controlling teh spread of Avian Flu. These two outbreaks have also emboldened thos who argue that intensive poutry farming systems are connected with the rise and spread of H5N1.

South Korea bird flu outbreak

South Korea
A cull of thousands of chickens has begun near the capital Seoul in South Korea after a new bird flu outbreak was discovered. Avian influenza reemerged in South Korea three months ago after a three-year absence and this is the sixth outbreak since then

THe outbreak was identified on Tuesday at a poultry farm, housing more than 130,000 chickens, near Ansung near Seoul, officials said. Tests have yet to confirm if it is the H5N1 strain which is potentially fatal to humans. The agriculture ministry released a statement confirming that breeding chickens at a farm in Iljuk village had been infected with the highly contagious bird flu virus.

In addition to culling the birds at the farm where the outbreak occurred officials have ordered a cull of another 107,000 on nearby farms.

More than two million birds will have been slaughtered in the country since bird flu reappeared there in November 2006.

Given the numbers of birds at the farm involved in this latest outbreak this will fuel the arguments of those who claim that avian influenza, or to be more specific, the H5N1 strain, is intimately connected with intensive poutry systems. It has been suggested that the virus may have indeed arisn in such intensive production systems and spread from there to wild birds rather than the transmission route being the other way. Such speculation is as yet unproved.

Bird Flu-Indonesia deaths and Pakistan outbreak.

JAKARTA, Feb 6 - On Tuesday two more Indonesians were confirmed to have bird flu and Pakistan reported its first case in a year after finding the deadly virus was found in a small flock of chickens near the capital Islamabad.

The H5N1 virus has surfaced again in Asia in recent months, and has been found in poultry flocks in South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The H5N1 virus has also spread into the Middle East, Africa and Europe since it reemerged in 2003 and outbreaks have been detected in birds in around 50 countries.

Indonesia has the highest human bird flu death toll and the latest human case was a girl from Jakarta who had caught a wild bird which died two days later.

The other was a West Java man who lived in an area where many poultry had died.
Indonesia has had 63 human deaths from the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, six of them this year. The virus is endemic in poultry in most of the provinces in the country of 17,000 islands.

The two new cases came as Indonesia stopped sharing human genetic samples of the most deadly strain of bird flu with foreign laboratories. It wants to keep control of the intellectual property rights of the H5N1 strain.
"We can't share samples for free. There should be rules of the game for it," said the health ministry's spokeswoman, Lily Sulistyowati. "Just imagine they could research, use and patent the Indonesia strain. We can't give the samples but we can share data in the gene bank."

Sulistyowati said Indonesia would sign a Memorandum of Understanding with U.S. medical products maker Baxter International on Wednesday to collaborate on making a human bird flu vaccine. "The vaccine is to prevent poultry-to-human infection. That's what we need for the current situation and not for the future pandemic," she said. Baxter has confirmed it expected to conclude a "framework for future collaboration" with Indonesia, but said it would still abide by World Health Organisation rules on sharing virus samples, the Financial Times newspaper said.
Pakistan

Mohammad Afzal, Livestock Commissioner at the Ministry of Agriculture in Pakistan, said all the chickens in a flock of about 40 birds in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad, had died or been culled due to H5N1.
"It has been contained and there is no danger of the spread of this virus because there are no poultry farms near this house," he told Reuters.
Pakistan's first reported cases were found in chickens in February last year in North West Frontier Province and this resulted in about 40,000 chickens being culled. Fortunately, there have been no human cases in Pakistan.
(Reuters)

England Bird flu outbreak update

After the slaughter of around 159,000 turkeys after a bird flu outbreak. at a Suffolk farm a cleaning operation of the site has now begun.
The sheds which housed the birds at the Bernard Matthews plant will now be disinfected.
More than 320 farm workers have now taken the antiviral drug Tamiflu and so far no-one has been reported being ill.

There are strict controls in place around the farm near Lowestoft, but the risk to humans is "negligible" according to experts.

A Staffordshire MP raised concerns, however, about the safety of driving the culled turkeys across England. Bill Cash, the member for Stone, has said people living in Stone were "deeply concerned" about trucks carrying the dead birds through the area.

The workers who have taken Tamiflu include those who may have handled more than 2,000 birds who died from the virus.
While the outrbreak has so far not had implications for human health in England it is having economic consequences. South Africa, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong have blocked all UK poultry imports. Russia however, is still allowing the importation of cooked meats. Britain is Europe's second-largest poultry producer with annual poultry exports of around £300m.

A 3km (1.9 miles) protection zone and a 10km (6.2 miles) surveillance zone are in place around the farm where the outbreak occurred.
Poultry owners in a wider restricted zone, covering 2,090 sq km (807 sq miles) around Holton, must keep their flocks isolated from wild birds.
The source of the outbreak is currently unknown and there is speculation that it may prove to be impossible to trace the source. This causes some concern as if the source remains unknown then lessons can not be learned that would help prevent further outbreaks.

Egypt, 17 yr old girl dies of avian flu

In Egypt the number of confirmed deaths from avian flu has risen to 12 with the death of a 17-year-old Egyptian girl, Nouri Nadi, from Fayyoum Shewas admitted to hospital a week ago after being initially diagnosed with human flu.
As with most other cases so far, it is thought she became infected with avian influenza after coming into contact with sick and infected birds.
This death brings the number of known infections in Egypt to 20 which is the largest human cluster outside Asia. The virus has been found in 19 of the 26 provinces in the country.
Of the 12 people who have died from the illness in Egypt, 11 have been women - a pattern thought to be related to the fact that women and girls often look after poultry in Egypt.

Several weeks ago, the WHO announced that two of those who had died had been infected with a strain of the virus that showed moderate resistance to the antiviral drug, Tamiflu. This is a clearly worrying development.