January 17 Flu Update
There's a new avian outbreak in the Ukraine.CIDRAP with news from Iran, India, and UK.
ProMed on what appears to be a continuing spread of the disease in India.
West Bengal, India, is criticized for not compensating farmers for culled birds.
Poultry sector in India suffers from bird flu scare.
Vet teams are conducting flu surveillance in India.
India struggles with literacy and poverty issues in fighting bird flu.
A public bird flu meeting was held in the UK.
Meanwhile, the UK won't be exporting any poultry to the Cayman Islands.
Meet Frances Day of Middletown OH, who is one of the few people alive today who almost died in the 1918 pandemic, which hit when she was 7. Here is her story.
Louisiana bird flu surveillance reports....
Georgia professor to speak in Singapore on bird flu.
posted by Orange @ 9:43 AM
1 Comments:
Orange;
Judging from your good set of Indian articles today, the government is going to have really amp up their involvement significantly to gain the upper hand on the spread of the disease. Without strict enforcement and timeliness of their reimbursement procedures (no vouchers/cash only, please), I do not believe they are going to contain this outbreak. Once farmers sense they are not going to be fairly compensated, they will resort to all kinds of devious and innovative ways to skirt the system. And so far – this seems to be the case. The authorities can attribute the lack of culling success to “illiteracy and ignorance of villagers”, however, these poverty level citizens are about as dumb as foxes and are very aware that when their single source of livelihood is threatened – they will protect their economic interests regardless of outcome – as most people anywhere in the third would.
After reading the article about the bird flu meeting in the English village, I see a very concerning statement by the county council of DEFRA: a total of three dead swans near Chesil Beach tested positive for H5N1, but tests on four other dead swans tested negative.
I am really wondering if the DEFRA test procedures are adequate, accurate and precise enough. Maybe swans die of all kinds of causes, but in view of the world situation at the current time, these test results sure look suspicious.
Buried in your Middletown Ohio article about the elderly lady who barely survived the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, are some pretty amazing statistics when you think about them: About 500,000-675,000 Americans died during the years 1918-1919, and an astounding 8-10 percent of the young adults living in the US at that time died from the Spanish Flu. These numbers are truly incredible when you think about it and relate it to what our total US population is at the current time, and make a simple extrapolation of deaths and factor in 2008 demographics.
Finally, I really chuckled at the well worded “legal disclaimer” in your Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries article, which states that “the risk of hunters being infected by HPAI H5N1 is very low”… “However, we cannot guarantee there is no risk, and it would be irresponsible to make predictions”.
With my lousy luck, and if I were a duck hunter (which I am not), I can just see myself being the first pronounced case of the lone hunter who got infected with first HPAI infected duck in North America. What an honor that would be - you know the “15 minutes of fame thing” - but what a terrible way to check out.
Wulfgang
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