Saturday, January 21, 2006

January 21 Flu Update

Two siblings died a short while ago in Indonesia. These are now confirmed H5N1, making the total there 14 deaths. Once again, there are assurances of contacts with dead chickens. Their father and sister are also hospitalized.

ProMed on this case.

The eighth reported human case in China is reported to be recovering.

From Turkey, here's a bizarre one. Its only three paragraphs long, so I'm going to put the whole article below. Talk about family clusters.

Six members of the Ozcan family living in the Dogubayazit district of the far eastern Turkish province of Agri on the Iranian border were transferred on Friday to Igdir State Hospital with suspected bird flu.

Six members of the Ozcan family, related to Fatma Ozcan who died of bird flu last Sunday, applied to hospital complaining of sickness.

Father Mehmet Ozcan said that they had paid a condolence visit to Fatma's family. Two days ago he and his children ate chicken which his wife had killed and put into the deep freezer a month ago.

Recombinomics tries to piece this one together--noting fears of H2H transmission.

This is a little choppy, too, but I think it says that a child died on the way to the hospital, and was feared to have bird flu, but later authorities said the child did not have respiratory symptoms.

Hong Kong says its monitoring is sufficient....

though not everyone agrees.

Pakistan says it is fully bird flu free in poultry.

Greece places funds behind bird flu fight.

The Chinese say that their bird flu work is going well.

Here's a story on a Canadian company turning Christmas tree needles into shikimic acid for Tamiflu.

Iran is increasing its bird flu measures.

ProMed on Syria and Iran.

Here's a Mobile, AL review of the John Barry flu book.

500 public health officials in Kentucky met to work on their pandemic plan, which was developed in 2003.

WHO has published a new bird flu fact sheet. Very informative. Says the virus can survive in bird droppings for a month...a week even in hot weather. On the migratory bird debate:

Direct or indirect contact of domestic flocks with wild migratory waterfowl has been implicated as a frequent cause of epidemics. Live bird markets have also played an important role in the spread of epidemics.
Recombinomics on the Iraqi case, lab negative so far...notes how many times this exact pattern has been seen on clinically presented first case.

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