Who 'suspects' Human-to-human Transmission Of Bird

[xbusman]

Found on yahoo News

WHO 'suspects' human-to-human transmission of bird flu in Thailand

BANGKOK (AFP) - The World Health Organization said it suspected bird flu had passed from human to human in northern Thailand, marking what could be the first such transmission of the lethal virus.

"From the existing data ... we are suspecting human-to-human transmission" of bird flu, the WHO's acting Thailand representative Kumara Rai told AFP after studying information from Kamphaeng Phet province where a girl and boy are suspected to have died from the virus.

The 11-year-old girl's mother, who lived near Bangkok but traveled north to visit her daughter in hospital and then attend her funeral, returned to the Thai capital where she too fell ill and died. Her death is also on the suspect list.

Laboratory tests on the three fatalities, as well as on the girl's aunt who is hospitalised with severe pneumonia, were being conducted to detect the virus that has already killed 28 people in Asia since last December.

Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said Thailand has been put on full alert as a precautionary measure but quickly sought to downplay the fears, stressing preliminary test results from the aunt showed no bird flu.

"Initial test results (from the aunt) were negative, so at the moment it's a relief for the ministry concerning whether the virus has jumped from human to human or not," Sudarat told AFP. "But we still need to double check a final test."

However, Rai said the WHO was still "very much concerned, but we are awaiting the laboratory confirmation", which is expected as early as Monday.

Health ministry officials have confirmed the girl and the 13-year-old boy in Kamphaeng Phet had come into contact with sick households' chickens, but Rai and others have said it was not clear whether the mother and the aunt had contact with the birds.

Rai met Friday with field epidemiologists, Thai-based officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and senior Thai health ministry officials to establish whether the women had come into contact with the fowl.

"We are still almost firm that there was no contacts with sick birds," Rai said.

Charal Trinvuthipong, director general of the disease control department, said in a Thai daily he was concerned that the women may have caught the virus directly from the girl because the mother identified as Pranee and the aunt, Pranom, had "no history of direct contact with chickens".

"If we find the virus in Pranom, and both Pranom and Pranee had no direct contact with the chickens and merely tended to their sick girl, it could mean that the virus jumped from human to human," Matichon newspaper quoted him as saying.

Charal said the aunt's condition had stabilised but her six-year-old son was hospitalised with fever and pneumonia and was now listed as the kingdom's fifth suspected bird flu case.

Several people have been placed on Thailand's suspect list in recent months but nearly all of them have since been cleared.

Rai said he had contacted the UN health agency's headquarters in Geneva to urge them to send experts to Thailand to assist in the investigation.

Avian influenza's lethal H5N1 strain has killed 19 people in Vietnam and nine in Thailand in the past 10 months in two waves of Asian outbreaks which also caused the deaths or culling of more than 100 million chickens.

The WHO fears H5N1 could mutate into a highly contagious form and trigger a global human flu pandemic.

When asked if a confirmed viral leap between humans in the Thai cases would mark the first step in such a feared mutation, Rai said, "I think so."

The WHO suspected human-to-human transmission of bird flu once before in Vietnam during the height of the first wave of outbreaks in February, but was proven wrong, Rai said.

"Hopefully the same holds true for this outbreak."

Since the second wave of bird flu began in early July, Thai authorities have confirmed 149 outbreaks in 30 provinces.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Saturday lashed out at government agencies for failing to contain the new outbreaks.

"I have instructed the public health and agriculture ministers to supervise the tackling of bird flu and the focus on human safety. They have failed to report when poultry is dying," he said in his weekly radio address.

Now I think this could be very very serious. There are those in the scientific community that theorize that the great flu pandemic of 1917 was caused by an avian virus. The Who has repeatidly shown a great concern that the current flu could mutate as described in the above article. I think this is an area where the Thai government better stop saving face and get very serious. From what I have read and learned from medical professionals, this single issue has caused me to put an exit strategy in place.

[Ijustwannateach]

What, a moon trip? Transmission to the states/wherever is one plane trip away. It's a small world, after all. Even the 1917 epidemic, if you'll recall, was a WORLDWIDE one.

"Steven"

[xbusman]

You dont think that a response larger than the SARS response would be mounted? They really did a great job of locking that down quickly and getting it under control and SARS wasnt even all that fatal. You want to get locked down here if the fit hits the shan? There are plenty places I would rather be and I doubt if they let me get there by airplane.

[Rinrada]

And if you check up on your history you will find out that the original 1917 flu outbreak started off in a soldiers regiment in................ the U.S.

[xbusman]

Scientists are convinced the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemics originated in Asia, but there is much debate about where the biggest killer of them all - the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic - came from.

That flu, which killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million people, was so named because the king of Spain got it, not because it originated in Spain.

"We've got a huge amount of information which tells us this virus arose in Europe, not Asia," Oxford said. "If it is the case that it started in Europe, that tells us that these new outbreaks could happen anywhere in the world where the circumstances are right."

The Europe theory holds that the Spanish flu began in the crowded World War I army camps around Etaples in northern France.

There were 100,000 soldiers on any one day there, and they raised chickens, geese and possibly pigs for food, Oxford said. Those conditions mimic what naturally occurs in Asia.

I think that Flu started in Europe due to the abysmal conditions during the war. It was first reported in the US in a Brooklyn hospital handling the returning wounded.

No one is sure about anything regarding the Spanish flu other than it killed a lot more people than the war did.

[Nam Kao]

OT OH !!

[Narachon]

Like I suspected, and also what many other scientists have predicted, the Bird Flu Virus has mutated and crossed Species.... It was only a matter of time... I talked about this possibility in the New Clippings section of this Forum here.

They better do something soon, and track down all the "Patient Zeros", or this thing may become like the "Captain Trips" Pandemic of Stephen Kings book , "The Stand" .....

You saw what it did to Chickens.......

[PeaceBlondie]

I apologize for not having saved the bulletin, but last week Yahoo News reported an infectioous disease conference in Europe - possibly by the EU - that said that Europe is in no way prepared for a flu pandemic.

So you know that no country in the world is prepared, adequately, for a flu pandemic. Many scientists who specialize in this field say that it's only a matter of time.

[phormio]

...

The Europe theory holds that the Spanish flu began in the crowded World War I army camps around Etaples in northern France.

There were 100,000 soldiers on any one day there, and they raised chickens, geese and possibly pigs for food, Oxford said. Those conditions mimic what naturally occurs in Asia.

I think that Flu started in Europe due to the abysmal conditions during the war. It was first reported in the US in a Brooklyn hospital handling the returning wounded.

...

There was a documentary on PBS in the US recently, I think it was an edition of the Frontline Series, that backs-up your opinion.

[xbusman]

As a young man, I took the opportunity to interview as many of the WW1 survivors as I could find. I was fascinated by the history and personal memories of many of the vets. One of the things that kept coming out of their stories was the Spanish Flu. The war was bad, but the flu was devastating. Think about 40 to 50 million people dying at a time when the worlds population was maybe 20% what it is today. Unlike the war in France which was so intensly contained for the most part, the flu knew no boundaries or treaties and was particularly bad for the elderly, infirm and young. Wander through old cemetaries and 1918 and 1919 were banner years for marble quarries.

I worked with the government on a few emergency response projects and they boil down into categories such as nuclear attack, chemical attack, dirty bombs, etc etc. What scare me was they put a majority of their effort in the CDC and WHO response to viral infections. I would hear things like "well an atom bomb would make a mess out of a city for about 30 years but in 50 or 100 years you would really hardly notice. Only about 10 or 20 million might die. What we are really worried about is small pox. If that comes back....." These viral infections are nothing to fool with, nuclear destruction can pale next to some bits of nasty DNA.

I am not one to worry much about what we cant control in life but this bird flu is not a light matter. It surprises me that this forum can muster up 2918 responses to midnight closing but H5N1 is for the most part ignored.

Really folks, take this matter very seriously.

[cathyy]

In nursing school we were taught that the usual path for a new influenza virus was from chickens to pigs to humans. Asia is a part of the world where you frequently have all three species living in close quarters, hence the greater potential for transmission along that path, leading the Asia being the source for most new influenza viruses. Avian flu virus is typically NOT contagious for humans. It needs to mutate into a virus that can infect pigs (because pigs are surprisingly similar to humans biologically) before it becomes a danger to humans.

The H5N1 virus can already infect humans, so the pig step has been bypassed. By not mutating into a virus for pigs, it is a type of virus we have never been exposed to before, and our bodies don't make effective antibodies against it right away. This makes it so dangerous. China has confirmed transmission of the H5N1 virus to pigs, so it's only a matter of time.

Birds migrate south for winter. We will get the virus from China, in whatever form, no matter how well the Thai authorities attempt to control the spread. I'd recommend stocking up on antibacterial hand cleaner and avoiding public places. Also avoiding friends and family if an epidemic/pandemic seems likely.

We will have an influenza epidemic of H5N1 virus, whether it is the Avian form mutated to enable human-to-human transmission or the pig-mutated form. The only question remaining is when it will happen. Human transmission via airborne virus (coughs, sneezes) is the hardest thing to control. Ebola takes contact with body fluids, for example, which the Ebola-infected body oozes in great quantity. But that's a lot easier to control than someone sneezing on a bus.

[GuestHouse]

Asia, and Thailand in particular, offers one other cause for concern in terms of health pandemics and that is the complete inability of the Thai goverment to deal with problems.

The first response is and always has been to deny a problem exists and then, when that fails, to make some gesture of action that is too, late, too little and usually misdirected.

The long denial and cover-up of the avian flu is a fine example of heads burried in the Paddy.

[PeaceBlondie]

cathvv, thanks so much for your analysis from a nurse's point of view. I was just thinking of the number of epidemiologists I've met in the last 50 years: two. And one bacteriologist Ph.D. who couldn't find a job for the last 13 years because they were only hiring virologists and immunologists.

cathvv, would anti-bacterial hand cleanser remove viruses better than regular soap and water?

Yes, guesthouse - but "Thailand in particular" may not be fair. Do you think Burma would admit a problem half as fast as Thailand would? How would Cambodia or Laos even know they have a problem until it was too late?