A Travel and vacations forum. TravelBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » TravelBanter forum » Travel Regions » Asia
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Bird flu stops poultry movements



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old January 22nd, 2007, 08:31 PM posted to soc.culture.thai,rec.travel.asia,rec.travel.air
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 47
Default Bird flu stops poultry movements


White House predict over 62 Million US Bird Flu deaths

Submitted by Tom Cruse on January 20, 2007 - 2:02am. Bird Flu | Health
| Infectious Disease
White House predict over 62 Million US Bird Flu deaths

Stock Photo

Rajeev Venkayya, Special Assistant for Biodefense to U.S. President
George W. Bush said "I think that number is a very optimistic number if
we are talking about a 1918-wide pandemic today,"

Health experts worry that the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza
virus that re-emerged in Asia in 2003 and spread widely to more than 60
countries has now mutated and will spread between people, sparking a
human flu pandemic.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 300 people out of 600 known human
cases and ravaged poultry stocks.

The 1918-19 "Spanish influenza" pandemic -- the worst in living history
-- killed anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people. Half a
million died in the United States alone. (Source : Bird Flu News )

Last month, a Harvard University study published in The Lancet medical
journal said developing countries would bear the vast majority of the
62 million deaths in a similar pandemic.

Venkayya did not give a forecast of possible deaths in a pandemic --
which the World Health Organisation and other experts say is inevitable
and overdue -- but said the number of fatalities could be frightening.

"The bottom line is that they (U.S. government guesses about a toll)
are all very high and all very scary," Venkayya told a meeting attended
by government health and defence officials organi sed by a business
chamber in New Delhi.

The U.S. government says countries need to sharply step up vaccine
production capacity -- currently at around 350 million doses per year
for a global population of more than 6 billion people.

Venkayya also called for urgent efforts to try to utilise adjuvants --
substances that be delivered along with vaccines and that enhance the
immune response to a vaccine dose.

"So for every individual you are immunising, you can use a much smaller
dose of vaccine than you would have without the adjuvant which means
you can immunise many more people."

He said recent data from global drug firms such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc,
which were carrying out tests on adjuvants, suggested that if they
proved to be safe, they would allow countries to immunise more than 20
times more people from a single dose of vaccine.

"That is the single most promising thing on the vaccine side of the
equation, I believe."

However a group of medical experts who attended a national avian flu
conference last fall believe there is little chance the United States
will be able to manufacture and stockpile enough vaccine or antiviral
medication to stop a bird flu pandemic should the virus mutate into a
form that can be spread easily from human to human, according to a
survey led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The results of
the survey were published in the June 2006 issue of the journal Global
Public Health.

The 19 medical experts who attended the Pandefense 1.0 meeting in
November gave a median estimate of a less than 1 percent chance that
the U.S. will have adequate stockpiles of vaccines or antiviral drugs
to prevent a pandemic within the next three years. The same experts
gave a median estimate of 15 percent for the probability that the avian
flu virus will mutate into a strain that can spread efficiently by
human-to-human contact within that time. Their median worst-case
estimate of the number of people who would die, should that happen, was
6 million in the United States and 180 million worldwide. Their median
best-case estimates were 500,000 dead in the United States and 20
million worldwide.

"It surprised me that they thought it was going to be this bad," said
Wandi Bruine De Bruin, lead author of the study and research faculty
member in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie
Mellon.

The survey also included 17 non-medical experts from a variety of
fields who were more pessimistic about the likelihood of human-to-human
transmission, giving a median 60 percent chance that it would occur
within three years. They did, however, have more faith in medical
science, giving a median 15 percent chance of the United States having
enough vaccine and a 30 percent chance that the nation would have
enough antiviral medications to halt a pandemic.

"The medical experts' estimates suggest this is a bigger risk than
anything else we are facing," said Baruch Fischhoff, a study co-author
and the Howard Heinz University Professor of Social and Decision
Sciences and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon.

Both the medical and the non-medical experts agreed that the greatest
hope for mitigating the effects of an avian flu outbreak among humans
lies in heightened global surveillance and, should the virus become
pandemic, hand washing, mask wearing and social distancing.
Unfortunately, the efficacy of such strategies in preventing the spread
of infectious diseases has not been extensively studied, Bruine de
Bruin said. Although the federal government has expressed a commitment
to open communication about these risks, its messages have not yet been
scientifically evaluated, according to Fischhoff.

Tom Cruse writes articles for Only Health

 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Bird flu stops poultry movements [email protected] Air travel 0 January 22nd, 2007 08:31 PM
Tracking Aircraft Movements Frank Lodge Air travel 5 March 8th, 2005 04:31 PM
To choose 2 stops in the usa... PS USA & Canada 28 April 25th, 2004 03:37 AM
Vietnamese poultry vendors facing ruin ahead of Tet LIBERTY FLAME Asia 0 January 16th, 2004 02:23 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 11:56 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 TravelBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.