First human-to-human Bird Flu case NOT confirmed

Editor:

"Earlier today I reported that the World Health Organization had established human-to-human transmission of the bird flu virus in Pakistan.
In fact, officials now say no evidence has been found of that, despite the fact a single case of the H5N1 virus has been established in a sick family.
However, there was no apparent risk of it spreading further."

A statement from the U.N. agency said tests in its special laboratories in Cairo and London had established the “human infection” through presence of the virus, collected from one case in an affected family.

But it said a WHO team invited to Pakistan to look into an outbreak involving up to nine people from late October to December 6th had found no evidence of sustained or community human-to-human transmission.

No identified close contacts of the people infected, including health workers and other members of the affected family, had shown any symptoms and they had all been removed from medical observation, the WHO added.

The outbreak followed a culling of infected chickens in the Peshawar region, in which a veterinary doctor was involved. Subsequently he and three of his brothers developed proven or suspected pneumonia.

The brothers cared for one another and had close personal contact both at home and in hospital, a WHO spokesman in Geneva said. One of them, who was not involved in the culling, died on November 23rd, but the cause of death was not known.

On November 28th another brother who had not been involved in the culling died, and tests on him (in Pakistan as well as in Cairo and London) had established the presence of the H5N1 virus.

The WHO spokesman said there was suspicion that there had been human-to-human transmission, as there had been similar suspicion of such transmission within families in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, but this could not be confirmed.

Earlier this week 2 more Egyptians tested positive for bird flu H5N1, a day after an Egyptian woman died of the disease.
This brings the total number of bird flu deaths in Egypt to 41.

Read the full story about that here

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First human-to-human Bird Flu case officially confirmed

Alert: first cases of bird flu emerged

First human-to-human Bird Flu case officially confirmed

Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva confirmed a single case of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus in a family in Pakistan but said there was no apparent risk of it spreading wider.

A statement from the U.N. agency said tests in its special laboratories in Cairo and London had established the "human infection" through presence of the virus collected from one case in an affected family.

But it said a WHO team invited to Pakistan to look into an outbreak involving up to nine people, from late October to December 6 had found no evidence of sustained or community human-to-human transmission.
No identified close contacts of the people infected, including health workers and other members of the affected family, had shown any symptoms and they had all been removed from medical observation, the WHO added.

The outbreak followed a culling of infected chickens in the Peshawar region, in which a veterinary doctor was involved. Subsequently he and three of his brothers developed proven or suspected pneumonia.

The brothers cared for one another and had close personal contact both at home and in the hospital, a WHO spokesman in Geneva said. One of them, who was not involved in the culling, died on November 23.

His was the human-to-human transmission case confirmed by the WHO. The others all recovered.

"All the evidence suggests that the outbreak within this family does not pose a broader risk," the WHO spokesman said.

"But there is already heightened surveillance and there is a need for ongoing vigilance."

It was the first human-to-human case of H5N1 transmission in Pakistan, while others have been confirmed in Indonesia and Thailand in similar circumstances of what the WHO calls close contacts in a very circumscribed area.

Global health experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from one person to another, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.

So far, the virus has killed 211 people out of 343 infections reported since 2003.

Source: Reuters

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Alert: first cases of bird flu emerged

Alert: first cases of bird flu emerged

The World Health Organization warned today that countries should be on alert for bird flu because it is again on the move, with Pakistan reporting new infections and Myanmar logging its first human case.

"The key to the public health response is surveillance," said Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the WHO Western Pacific region in Manila. "If we do actually get to the cases with antivirals early on, the health outcome is a lot better."

WHO experts arrived in Pakistan to try to sort out cases reported there, South Asia's first human infections. They were expected to visit a hospital and affected areas Tuesday, said WHO country representative Khalif Bile in Islamabad.

"They are here to get more information and to provide more support in the case of any potential risk," he said, adding that the Health Ministry, Agriculture Ministry and WHO are now working closely together following a "communication gap" when the government did not immediately report suspected cases to the WHO.

Four brothers and two cousins fell ill last month in Abbotabad, a small city north of Islamabad, while three others who slaughtered poultry in the same area and a nearby town tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus earlier this month.

Two of the brothers died, but specimens were collected from only one.

The cases were positive for H5N1 in initial government testing, but WHO will conduct further analysis to confirm the results.

"It starts to pop at this time of the year, not just in this region where it's endemic, but it starts to appear in the West," An expert said. "Between now and April is a very dangerous time of the year."

Associated Press

Read the full story here

Global warming and its effect on health care

Depending on where you are, this is going to be a hotter, wetter, drier, windier, calmer, dirtier, buggier or hungrier century than mankind has seen in a while.

In some places, it may be deadlier, too.

The effects of climate change are diverse and sometimes contradictory.
In general, they favor instability and extreme events. On balance, they will tend to harm health rather than promote it.

That is the majority view of scientists trying to solve an equation whose variables range from greenhouse gas concentrations and the El Niño weather pattern to mosquito ecology and human cells' ability to withstand heat.

"We are not dealing with a single toxic agent or a single microbe where we can put our finger with certainty on an exposure and the response," said Jonathan A. Patz, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "Climate change affects everything."

Predictions of how global warming could affect people's health are crude.
They are based on the experience of the past several decades, when there has been a small, well-documented rise in the temperatures of the planet's atmosphere and oceans.
What that says about the future and future health care is quite uncertain.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the average atmospheric temperature rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.
By 2000, that increase was responsible for the annual loss of about 160,000 lives and the loss of 5.5 million years of healthy life, according to estimates by the World Health Organization. The toll is expected to double to about 300,000 lives and 11 million years of healthy life by 2020.

Read the full story here