By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 24 2011 (IPS)

Veterinary experts in China and Vietnam are scrambling to produce a vaccine capable of beating a new strain of the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus, reports an official of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

“Every year vaccine producers in China review what type of AI strain should be addressed,” says Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional coordinator of the U.N. agency’s centre for trans-boundary animal disease. “The existing vaccines used in domestic poultry have been able to cover changes in the AI virus from 2004 till 2010.”

But detection of a “mutant strain” of the deadly virus in China and Vietnam has proved existing vaccines ineffective.

“They (existing vaccines) are unable to protect poultry from the new strain,” Wantanee told IPS. “Researchers in China and Vietnam are working on a new vaccine.”

Wantanee said the emergence of the mutant variety “confirms that the AI virus strain is changing, mixing and re-assorting.” She added that the virus was becoming “more virulent.”

The new strain has emerged despite inoculation efforts, mass culling of infected poultry and implementation of bio-security measures in chicken farms across Southeast Asia, the epicentre of the deadly virus that saw a drop in AI outbreaks in 2008.

Blame now falls on Vietnamese authorities who suspended the mass vaccination of poultry this spring in the country’s north and east, despite the bird flu being endemic in both regions.

“The reason forwarded by the government of Vietnam is that the vaccines currently available are not able to adequately protect against some of the newly emergent virus strains detected in the north and the east,” states the FAO’s Vietnam office.

“However, in 2011, Vietnam used a stock of 50 million doses of vaccine in the south, where this new virus strain has not been detected yet,” the statement went on to say.

The consequence of Vietnam’s breach was felt in poultry farms across the country’s north and eastern regions, where thousands of chickens died from the “mutant strain” of H5N1bird fly virus, identified as H5N1-2.3.2.1.

The suspension of Vietnam’s springtime vaccination campaign breached a fairly steady effort to inoculate poultry twice a year since it first adopted a vaccination policy against bird flu in 2005.

Vietnam’s suspension of poultry vaccination also sets it apart from the other bird flu-endemic countries – such as Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India and Indonesia – none of which halted ongoing vaccination campaigns.

While its animal health experts and researchers work on a new vaccine, Vietnam is yet to announce plans to resume vaccinating poultry in the coming months.

“The option to resume vaccination among poultry against (AI) is open to the government of Vietnam,” states the FAO. “However, no decision to resume vaccinations has been made yet for the next round, which normally would be due in October through November 2011.”

China is playing down concerns about a mutant strain of H5N1, stating that the current outbreak has been detected among the wild birds, but admits that “some mutations of the virus” have been detected in poultry.

“Agriculture and health authorities are constantly on high alert of potential bird flu epidemics among poultry and humans,” states Yu Kangzhen, the country’s top veterinarian, according to the English language ‘China Daily’ newspaper.

But the FAO is pursuing a different tack, making an appeal to countries in the region for better information exchange after the emergence of the new sub-strain in late August.

“We want countries to keep sharing virus information with the FAO,” says Wantanee. “Countries like Cambodia and Laos need support to monitor their poultry, including strengthening the surveillance mechanisms.”

It is a concern that has resonated with the region’s governments. Calls to protect the local poultry industry from the new AI sub-strain have triggered extra vigilance in the Philippines, which stands out as a bird flu-free country in a region considered endemic for the virus.

“The Philippines remains free from bird flu and we want to maintain that status,” Efren Nuestro, director of animal husbandry, told reporters in Manila after authorising, on Sep. 1, a quarantine order and a nationwide watch on imported poultry and wild birds,

“All undocumented poultry shipments will be automatically destroyed,” Nuestro was reported as saying. The measures will help the Philippines maintain its record of not having a single human case of AI since a deadly strain was detected in 2003.

In Indonesia, which has recorded 146 of the 331 deaths worldwide from the H5N1 bird flu virus, strengthening domestic surveillance and research to combat AI is now back on the national agenda.

“We still need more funds especially for research activities,” health minister Endang Rahayu Sedyanhingsih said on Sep. 14, at global health security meeting co-hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Indonesian government. “We should stay on guard.”

Thailand, where the virus was eliminated through culling and stringent bio-security measures, is now assessing inventories of Tamiflu, an influenza drug prescribed to patients. The country currently has 20 million doses in its national stockpile.

Vietnam has been the second worst hit country in the region after Indonesia, with 59 deaths out of a reported 119 people infected. The blow to the country’s poultry industry this year comes on top of the estimated 63 million chickens that have been culled since 2004.

Cambodia, an impoverished country with limited resources to monitor AI, provides a grim reminder of H5N1’s fatality. This year has seen eight people die from the AI, the most recent fatality being that of a six-year-old girl in August. Since 2005, Cambodia has recorded 15 deaths.

Excerpt:

By Ranjit Devraj
New Delhi, Jul 12 2010 (IPS)

At a time when the World Health Organisation (WHO) faces charges that it hyped up the swine flu pandemic to benefit pharmaceutical companies, India is sprucing up its indigenous capacity to manufacture vaccines against the H1N1 virus.

The privately-owned Serum Institute of India has launched ‘Nasovac’, a nasal spray, following clearance from the Drug Controller of India. The spray follows ‘Vaxiflu-S’, a single dose injectable manufactured by the Indian pharmaceutical major Zydus-Cadila, which has been on Indian drug store shelves since Jun. 3.

“With a large population (1.2 billion) spread over a vast country, we cannot depend on other countries for vaccines against a pandemic like swine flu,” India’s health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told IPS.

Since India recorded its first case of swine flu in May 2009, at least 32,000 people have contracted the virus and 1,540 people have died as a result, according to the union health ministry. Currently the virus is reported to be spreading primarily in the west coast states of Kerala and Maharashtra.

To contain the virus, the Indian government had imported 1.5 million doses of vaccines from Sanofi Pasteur in December 2009. Sanofi Pasteur is one of several vaccine manufacturers which is said to have close links with scientists and consultants on the World Health Organisation (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunisation, which advises the world body on vaccine policy.

GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Solvay, Baxter and MedImmune were also among vaccine manufacturers named in Danish news reports as having links with SAGE members in the form of massive research grants and consultancies. The scandal first came to light in December 2009 when ‘Information’, a Danish daily newspaper, scooped out documents which allegedly proved that a Finnish member of SAGE had received kickbacks worth 6.3 million euro (7.8 million dollars) in 2009 for a vaccine research programme from a drugs manufacturer.

Dinesh Trivedi, India’s junior minister for health, was among the first public figures to demand an inquiry into the alleged nexus between pharmaceutical companies and WHO to declare H1N1 flu a pandemic. Trivedi noted that his ministry had reservations right from the day WHO raised the level of the pandemic alert on Jun. 11, 2009.

Trivedi’s concerns were voiced by India’s topmost health bureaucrat K. Sujatha Rao at the executive board meeting of the WHO on Jan. 21, where she demanded that the body “effectively explain reports appearing in the media that the swine flu was a false pandemic.”

The worst indictment came from the Council of Europe which passed a resolution on Jan. 25 saying that in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, “pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.

“The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers,” the Council resolved while asking for investigations at national and international levels on a non-pandemic which was estimated to have cost the world 18 billion dollars.

WHO’s top influenza expert, Dr Keiji Fukuda, responded on Jan. 26 by stating that “the influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by the WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.”

The Jun. 3 edition of the reputed British Medical Journal (BMJ) carried an investigative feature which referred to conflicts of interest concerning WHO scientific advisors on the swine flu pandemic. It alleged that the advisers were doing paid work for pharmaceutical companies.

A separate BMJ editorial said that given the scale of public cost and private profit in declaring a swine flu pandemic, it was important to be assured that “key decisions made by WHO were free from commercial influence.”

WHO director-general Margaret Chan rejected BMJ’s charges in a statement Jun. 8 in which she said that the decision to raise the level of the pandemic alert was based on “clearly defined virological and epidemiological criteria.”

As a result of the media expose and the Council of Europe’s stand, several Western governments scampered to offload vast stockpiles of vaccines acquired as a reaction to WHO’s pandemic alert and the fears it spawned about vaccine shortages in developing countries.

Amit Sen Gupta, a doctor attached with the Delhi Science Forum, a major think tank, welcomed the Indian health ministry’s move to build indigenous capacity to manufacture vaccines given the pulls and pushes in the international market. “Western governments first created an artificial scarcity by buying up available stocks of H1N1 vaccines immediately after the WHO raised the pandemic alert, and now they are trying to dump their unwanted stocks. Developing countries suffer doubly — from inequities in access and from market manipulations,” he told IPS. Sen Gupta, however, added that rather than supporting private Indian manufacturers, it would be more advisable for the government to revive public-sector vaccine manufacturing to effectively counter exigencies of the type created by WHO’s allegedly hyped pandemic alert.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, Apr 1 2010 (IPS)

Government and international non-government organisations need to put as much effort in fighting the spread of complacency in the battle against the H5N1 virus as they do in curbing avian flu itself, experts say.

“If you reduce vigilance, then the problem will come back,” says David Nabarro, U.N. assistant secretary general and senior U.N. system coordinator for avian and human influenza, at a press briefing here Thursday.

He was speaking ahead of the International Ministerial Conference on Animal and Pandemic Influenza: The Way Forward, to be held on Apr. 19 to 21 in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. The seventh in a series of meetings since 2004, it will bring together agriculture or livestock and health ministers from all over the world, among others.

Seven years after the first H5N1 cases were reported in South-east Asia, Nabarro says that governments have been moving in the right direction in fighting the threat of a pandemic.

“But we’re also pleading with governments not to reduce the alerts and preparedness programmes,” he said, as the initial wide coverage in media, some of which bordered on panic and sensationalism, has also eased up.

Popularly known as avian influenza, the H5N1 virus is a subtype of the influenza A virus, which can cause illness in humans and other animal species.

Since 2003 when the first avian flu case was reported in South-east Asia, about 150 million poultry have either died or been slaughtered as part of safety measures.

There have also been cases of humans getting avian flu from sick poultry. As of Dec. 31, 2009, there were 467 confirmed human cases of H5N1 worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Criticised by some as being alarmist for predicting that an H5N1 pandemic could kill millions of people, Nabarro expressed concern about the dwindling coverage of the media about the virus. “We had 700 journalists that covered our meetings in Geneva about H5N1 five years ago because the world was quite worried about how the virus was causing havoc,” he pointed out.

Despite the decrease in coverage by and interest of the media, Nabarro reiterates that “a great deal of effort is still being put by governments and international non-government organisations” in response to a pandemic threat.

According to Vietnam’s deputy director in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Pham Ngoc Mau, the government is doing its best in containing avian flu in the country. “We acknowledge that Vietnam cannot do it alone and we need to cooperate with the International community,” said Mau.

As of March, Vietnam has had 59 H5N1-related deaths since 2003, second to Indonesia, which has had 135 deaths.

Due to the virus’ adverse impact on Vietnam – where eight of the 11 million households engaged in poultry businesses were badly hit by the H5N1 problem – the government issued a ‘Green Book’ that contains action plans to deal with avian flu.

Among its measures are free poultry vaccination programmes, especially in affected poor communities, and the provision of capital so that households can restart their businesses, says Pham Thi Hanh, another deputy director at the Vietnam’s agriculture ministry.

“We are now in the midst of preparing the 2010-2015 action plan and we are quite optimistic that we will meet our goals,” said Hanh.

Admitting that poultry smuggling continues along Vietnam’s borders with China, Cambodia and Laos, she says officials are working closely with police authorities to ensure that this would be better controlled.

Looking ahead to the Vietnam conference, Nabarro said he expects it to look back and see where governments, health and development experts might have been amiss in the past years.

“There are three things we need to put more effort on. One is to make sure the biosecurity measures are firmly in place, which reduces the risk of infection among poultry. We also need to have more efficient veterinary services,” he told IPS.

But apart from these health and scientific measures, he adds, as much attention needs to be given to improving risk communication.

This involves campaigns to let people know how to reduce avian flu risks in poultry, including keeping different animal species in different enclosures or areas. It also includes reminding people how to avoid getting avian flu themselves –by cleaning one’s hands and knowing the risks of close contact with birds — and what to do if they think they might have it.

“This is to enable people to better understand the risks associated with the virus and respond properly to that,” Nabarro added.

Although Asia’s high concentration of poultry – some countries have more small poultry farms in backyards while others like Thailand have huge commercial operations — makes it more vulnerable to H5N1, Nabarro says it has responded well to the threat.

Still, he cautions that it is better to be safe than sorry. “We shouldn’t let our guard down. We don’t want that rebound to occur to avian influenza and to slacken on pandemic preparedness,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Aug 15 2009 (IPS)

While the swine flu pandemic has not hit India too hard, it has sorely tested the country’s ailing health delivery system and its plans to remedy the situation through ‘private-public partnerships.’

Much of the drama is playing out in the western Indian city of Pune where the death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl, on Aug. 3, following misdiagnosis at a private hospital where she was being treated, has led to charges in the media that the government was not doing enough contain the spread of the A(H1N1) virus.

Health authorities reacted to the death of the schoolgirl, Reeda Shaikh, by asking people who develop flu-like symptoms to report to designated government facilities for testing. That quickly resulted in panic and chaos with public facilities being swamped by people with flu-like symptoms.

In Pune, which now accounts for 12 of the 21 deaths reported since the first case surfaced on May 13, there was frenzied buying of face masks and antivirals, with large numbers of people seen queuing up to catch flights out of the city.

Confusion continued to reign in Pune regarding testing and treatment at private facilities, with the government reversing its initial order and several private hospitals defensively refusing to attend to patients suspected to be suffering from swine flu.

What happened in Pune tended to be replicated across several of India’s cities – the sense of panic and confusion as well as shortages of antivirals like ‘Tamiflu,’ spread by terse reportage on India’s numerous television channels.

It was not long before the government began to be accused of creating artificial shortages of antivirals by restricting the sales of Tamiflu and playing into the hands of the manufacturers of generic drugs and testing kits.

“It should have been obvious to the government that a few designated facilities would not be able to cope with the demand for tests and treatment,” said Amit Das Gupta at the Delhi Science Forum, a non-profit public interest organisation that is engaged in issues related to science and technology. “Even in the U.S. those sick with the virus are being asked to stay at home unless they need special care.”

“To put the number of deaths and infected patients being reported in perspective, it would be well to remember that some 36,000 people die in the U.S. alone every year due to ordinary influenza and related complications. As far as India is concerned it is well established that 42 percent of all deaths in this country are caused by communicable diseases,” Das Gupta said.

Das Gupta also dismissed the government’s claim to have contained the spread of the disease through surveillance. “Effective surveillance depends on the existence of well-developed public health delivery systems, and in India these are in disarray as a result of shrinking budgets for public health spending,” Das Gupta told IPS.

India currently spends less than one percent of its GDP on public sector healthcare, forcing the majority of people to take recourse in private medical care. Leading public health experts have for years been warning that the allocation is woefully inadequate, and Jeffrey Sachs, chair of the international advisory panel of India’s National Rural Health Mission, has suggested that the figure should be raised to around five percent of GDP.

In such a scenario the capacity of the government to intervene effectively when faced with a rapidly spreading virus like the A(H1N1) is severely limited. Experts believe that more than the precautions the government has taken – such as screening airport arrivals – India’s sub-tropical conditions may have put the brakes on the virus.

“It would have been best to let the epidemic run its natural course. Of course, extra precautions may need to be taken as winter approaches when the northern temperate areas of the country could become more vulnerable,” Das Gupta said.

On Jun. 11, the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the pandemic alert level for swine flu to ‘Phase 6,’ indicating that community level outbreaks were occurring in different parts of the world. Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO, then admitted that it was not possible to contain or reverse the spread of the virus.

However, it was not until this week that authorities in India admitted that it was more important to contain the panic rather than the virus, which, in any case, has manifested itself as being not too different in symptoms and virulence from ordinary seasonal flu viruses.

“As the virus spreads it will slowly create immunity among people and the number of new cases will start to drop,” R.K. Srivastava, India’s director general of health services, said Thursday.

But the government’s failings were exposed by a group of independent public health specialists at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University through a note, calling for “greater clarity in the management of and treatment of A(H1N1) so that the public is informed regarding the aetiology, treatment and management of swine flu.”

“The hysteria created by the media and the knee-jerk reaction from the ministry of health and family welfare are not conducive to rational and well- informed management of the situation,” said the note signed by Dr. Mohan Rao, Prof. Rama Baru, Dr. Rajib Dasgupta, Prof. Sanghmitra Acharya, Prof. K.R. Nayar, Prof. Ramila Bisht and Dr. Ritu Priya.

The JNU experts said that treatment should continue to be limited to designated public hospitals and that the government needs to set out guidelines regarding the stage at which presumptive cases, and not just laboratory confirmed cases, will be treated with specific antivirals.

Equally, they said, there was no need for the government to open up testing and treatment in the private sector, especially when the situation was ripe for unnecessary – and expensive – testing for swine flu and unnecessary over- diagnosis and treatment. “This will not only lead to resistance to the only drugs we have but widespread exploitation of people wrongly diagnosed to have swine flu,” the experts said.

As for the government’s plans to seek partnerships with the private sector, India’s biggest private facility – the multi-billion dollar Apollo Hospital in the national capital – simply refused to obey a government directive for private hospitals to help out on the grounds that treating swine flu cases could put other patients at risk of cross-infections.

In a press release Apollo Hospital said: “We cannot put our patients, many of whom are immune-compromised, at risk by exposing them to the infections. We are therefore not in a position to provide facilities for H1N1 flu screening, sample collection and inpatient treatment in our campus for fear of cross- infection.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, May 14 2009 (IPS)

China is battling hard to contain the spread of the swine flu after stringent border checks and draconian quarantine measures of Mexican nationals failed to prevent the virus from entering the country.

Both China and Hong Kong confirmed their second cases of the virus, sending ripples of anxiety among a public that still remembers the scary days of the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

“Watching the news about the virus in Mexico I first worried that air-travel would become a big bother,” said Wang Yu who shuttles between Hong Kong and Beijing for his consultancy job, “but now I’m worried about being exposed to the flu and getting sick.”

Judging by the coverage of the virus on state television and print media, the spread of swine flu is nothing less than a top national priority for Chinese leaders.

After the first case was confirmed in China this week, state television aired President Hu Jintao ordering officials at all levels to take all emergency measures to prevent the disease from disseminating among the population. He urged them to “strengthen our leadership and maintain our vigilance… sparing no effort to stem the spread of the epidemic.”

China’s main worry is that its vast territory where many regions have regular bouts of bird flu could emerge as a breeding ground of a new strain of virus that would be much more lethal that the swine flu. The main threat lies with a possible “re-assortment” of two flu strains, Hans Troedsson, head of the Beijing office of the World Health Organisation (WHO), told the media earlier this year.

Bird flu has a high rate of mortality but it is very rarely transmitted between humans. Experts say that although very contagious, the swine flu is relatively benign and causes few deaths. But the mix of the two could result in a new virus that is unpredictable, and perhaps more lethal.

“The reason people are so worried about the ‘second wave’ of the H1N1 flu is because the virus’ global spread this time resembles the 1918 influenza epidemic that remains the most severe in modern history,” says Bi Jinglun, life scientist at Shanghai Fudan University.

In stark contrast to their attempts to cover up the 2003 SARS epidemic, this time around health authorities are at pains to drum up awareness of the health scare, making sure all anti-flu measures are widely broadcast and developments are regularly updated. Calling for national vigilance over the transmission of the virus, they have embarked on a manhunt for all people that had come in contact with the two confirmed carriers of swine flu.

A 30-year-old student surnamed Bao, who recently returned from the U.S., was the first to test positive for the flu. He had travelled from the U.S. via Tokyo to Beijing where he boarded a domestic flight to Chengdu, the provincial capital of the Sichuan province. He was taken to hospital with a fever upon his arrival.

Within 24 hours of his case being confirmed as swine flu, some eighty percent of the air travellers who had been with him on the flights from Tokyo and Beijing had been tracked down and quarantined.

The State Council – China’s cabinet – held an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss further precautionary measures. Beijing announced tightening of anti-flu measures requiring all domestic travellers who have come from or visited flu-affected regions to report their health at airports.

But the second confirmed case presents more difficulties for Beijing because the carrier travelled by train. A native of the eastern province of Shangdong, this 19-year-old student surnamed Lu had just returned from studying in Canada. He arrived in Beijing where he developed a sore throat and headache but nevertheless boarded the train to Jinan in Shangdong.

While on the train he reported his fever to the health authorities and upon arrival was immediately taken into quarantine. But, local media has reported that because of a lack of communication between health experts from the local disease control and prevention bureau and the railway authorities, the majority of passengers who shared a carriage with Lu are unaccounted for.

In the absence of a passengers list, health authorities are now left with the option of having to appeal publicly for those passengers to come forward.

“This is not simply an issue of lack of communication between government departments, it is dereliction of duty,” Xue Lan, dean of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing was quoted by the China Daily.

Beijing has already warned that it would punish any failures to monitor or report the spread of the disease. “An outbreak must be accurately reported to the higher authorities. Delays, cover-ups or overlooking [items] when reporting is strictly prohibited,” a statement issued after the urgent meeting by the State Council said.

Central authorities have allocated a 5 billion yuan (735 million U.S. dollar) war chest to prevent and control the disease – demanding that local government set aside special funds too to fight the epidemic.

Premier Wen Jiabao has also ordered that mainland health authorities work more closely with agencies in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan on information- sharing, scientific research and preventive measures.

Hong Kong reported its second swine flu patient this week – a local resident who had returned from San Francisco – and called on the U.S. to screen outgoing air passengers to avoid exporting the virus.

“As a responsible global citizen, we are mindful that every country has a duty to reduce as much as possible the probability of travellers spreading infectious pathogens as a result of our interconnectedness,” a letter sent by Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok to the U.S. health authorities said. “This is indeed the very spirit of the WHO International Health Regulations promulgated in 2005, of which your country is a signatory.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, May 5 2009 (IPS)

Rebuked in the past for its sluggish response and attempts to cover up the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), China’s measures to curb the spread of the swine flu virus are earning opposite marks of being extreme and "unjustified."

The country’s health authorities have been accused of discriminating against Mexican nationals by singling them out for forced isolation amid fears that the world’s most populous nation may be exposed to the spread of the flu. Beijing suspended flights with Mexico – the country hardest hit by the current outbreak of H1N1 flu – after health minister Chen Zhu warned the virus would very likely enter mainland China.

Beijing has now shifted into a defensive mode, attempting to stem the diplomatic row caused by its decision to quarantine more than 70 Mexicans across the country, even though many of them were not at risk for the virus.

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa has called China’s actions "unjustified" and has warned Mexicans against travelling to China.

China denied the charge and called on Mexico to "address the issue in an objective and calm manner." "The measures are not targeted at Mexican citizens and are not discriminatory. This is purely a question of health inspection and quarantine," said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.

Chinese health experts have also hit back reminding the international public that in 2003 during the outbreak of SARS – which originated in southern China – some parties demanded a ban on all Chinese flights and a full quarantine.

"We have the right to ask of other countries what was once demanded of us," Zeng Guang, chief scientist of China Disease Prevention and Control Centre told the Southern Weekend newspaper.

Zeng argued Mexico had a responsibility to the global community to curb the spread of the virus by quarantining all infected people and those who had been in touch with them even if they did not exhibit any symptoms. "Each country where the virus spreads should react in this way," he said.

A 25-year-old Mexican man who is now ill with human swine flu in Hong Kong travelled via Shanghai aboard an AeroMexico flight from Mexico. Chinese health officials have been rounding up all passengers who travelled on that flight, but also all Mexican passport holders whether or not they had been in Mexico.

On the Internet, the public has rallied in support of the quarantine measures, according to media reports. A survey conducted by major Internet portal Sina.com showed that more than 92 percent of 4,263 online users thought the quarantine was a "necessary preventive method" and had nothing to do with discrimination, the China Daily reported.

After coming under criticism for trying to cover up the extent of its SARS epidemic and thus allowing it to spread around the world, China has been at pains to demonstrate new openness and preparedness to fight future outbreaks.

The 2003 SARS epidemic resulted in some 700 deaths worldwide, more than 300 of them inside China. Beijing was one of the hardest hit places, and the city was gripped by a sort of hysteria after its stunned residents realised the extent of the danger they had been living with while the cover up lasted.

The fresh strains of flu viruses that sweep the world every winter are frequently traced to China. Scientists suspect the strains develop easily in China because of its huge population where some communities live in close proximity to livestock.

The virus that caused the 1918 influenza epidemic and killed millions of people is said to have originated in China. So also were the dangerous "Asian flu" outbreaks in 1957 and 1968.

But China begrudges its reputation as a breeding place for killer viruses. The government has battled accusations that the current flu originated in China, rejecting as "groundless" reports that dead pigs found in Fuqin in the eastern province of Fujian were the source of the outbreak in Mexico. The Ministry of Agriculture said the pigs had died of swine dysentery and dropsy, which it said was common among young pigs.

Suggestions by the World Organisation for Animal Health that the new disease be labelled "North American influenza" in keeping with a long tradition of naming pandemics for the regions where they were first identified were met with obvious discomfort.

Then commentators in the official press universally greeted the World Health Organisation’s decision to refrain from using any geographical pointers and change the name of the current streak of virus from "swine flu" to the scientific H1N1.

"What is in a name?" asked an editorial in the Beijing Youth Daily. "Nothing less than a promise that all quarrels between countries are avoided and that they work together to fight the common threat," it said.

China was the first country to offer aid to flu-stricken Mexico, dispatching four million dollars worth of medical supplies and offering one million dollars in cash.

Photos of Mexican president Felipe Calderon receiving the Air China chartered flight with supplies in person last week featured prominently on the front pages of mainland newspapers.

Beijing announced that it had reached an agreement with Mexico to exchange chartered flights to repatriate nationals stranded by the flu outbreak to their respective countries.

With the diplomatic row seemingly resolved, the government is beginning to focus on winning the public relations battle at home. Despite assurances to the fact that pigs are not to be blamed for the epidemic, sales and consumption of pork in China – the world’s largest breeder and consumer of live pigs – have dropped dramatically.

Media reports have spoken of the "bursting of the pig bubble" while agricultural experts have expressed concern about the fortunes of thousands of pig farmers who have seen their income steeply reduced.

A survey by the China Times newspaper in several provinces where pig-breeding is regarded as a pillar industry found that prices of pork have dropped by about a quarter this year.

Beijing worries that steep declines in pork prices could add to deflationary pressures and impede the country’s economic recovery. Two years ago, China experienced the opposite: the spread of blue ear disease among live pigs reduced the country’s reserves of pork, prices surged and led to a new round of food-driven inflation.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Apr 28 2009 (IPS)

The swine flu epidemic has dealt a new blow to the Mexican economy, already weakened by the global recession, hitting small and large companies alike.

But there are also a few winners: pharmaceutical laboratories, pharmacies, doctors and private medical clinics, as well as the home entertainment industry.

Projections issued prior to the outbreak of the epidemic last week indicated that Mexico’s GDP would shrink this year – by 3.7 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and by 2.8 percent according to the government.

But the epidemic will increase the fall by between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, observers say.

The longer the health emergency lasts, the greater the impact on the economy will be, economist Ángel Vega, a business consultant, told IPS.

The new flu strain that began to draw attention in Mexico last week has so far claimed 152 lives out of a total of around 2000 cases of people showing typical flu symptoms: high fever, joint paint and runny noses.

The epidemic has spread to several countries around the world, especially the United States, which has reported 64 cases so far. Confirmed and suspected cases have also been reported in Canada, Costa Rica, France, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Spain.

On Tuesday, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Gregory Hartl said that "If we have a confirmation (of human-to-human transmission of the virus) from the United States or Canada, we could move to phase 5."

On Monday, the WHO raised the alert from phase 3 (sporadic cases of animal or human-animal influenza virus) to phase 4 (sustained human-to-human transmission).

Phase 5 involves sustained human-to-human transmission and community-level outbreaks in two or more countries in one region. It also reflects a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent

The new strain of influenza is a combination of swine, avian, and human viruses that experts say may have originated in a pig before jumping to humans.

And although scientists have given assurances that the consumption of pork poses no risks, China banned imports of pigs and pork products from Mexico on Monday, and several other countries have followed suit, or are considering doing so.

In addition, tourism, one of Mexico’s main sources of revenue, after oil exports, has begun to feel the impact, with thousands of foreigners cancelling flights and tours to this country.

"Mexico may begin to face trade restrictions and a perception abroad that business should be done carefully in this country, or should be reconsidered," said Vega.

Ramiro Tovar, director of economic studies and economic regulation at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, told the local press that to judge by what happened five years ago in the case of bird flu in Asia, the impact of the new epidemic could mean an additional 1.5 percent contraction in GDP in Mexico.

"This reduction would not be the result of a one or two week suspension of activities" in Greater Mexico City, but of the effect that the epidemic will have on the behaviour of consumers and investors throughout the year, he said.

In the last two days, the stock and exchange markets in Mexico have reflected the negative impact that the epidemic could have, if it continues to grow.

After the health emergency was declared in Mexico on Apr. 23, the government of President Felipe Calderón ordered the closure of cinemas, theatres, stadiums, museums, schools and universities, to prevent people from gathering in crowds.

After that, shopping centres, bars, discotheques and restaurants began to shut their doors.

As of Tuesday, all restaurants in the capital were expressly banned from serving customers, although they can provide home delivery.

The ban is the "coup de grace" for restaurants in the capital, which have already been suffering the effects of the global crisis, Francisco Mijares, president of the National Chamber of the Food and Restaurant Industry (CANIRAC), said Tuesday.

The city government measure left 450,000 workers from around 35,000 restaurants – 95 percent of which are considered small or micro-businesses – temporarily out of work.

Street food stands have also felt the impact. Four different street vendors in the upscale Mexico City neighbourhood of Polanco complained to IPS, saying their sales had plunged by more than 50 percent in the past two days.

Many regular customers of the food stands have not been going to work, while others are being especially careful about what they eat, afraid of getting sick.

Corporations like Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble, Volvo, Monsanto, Johnson & Johnson and Philip Morris, some of which have offices in Polanco, instructed many of their executive level staff to work from home.

Other employees received permission to stay home to take care of their children, since all schools are closed.

By contrast with the blows received by many sectors of the economy, pharmacies around the country have done brisk business selling surgical-style face masks – the use of which has been recommended by health authorities – vitamins, anti-flu medication and disinfectants.

Pharmacies and their suppliers have reported higher-than-average earnings.

The high demand for face masks, which most businesses have run out of, has led some street vendors to start selling them at prices up to four times what they fetch on the formal market.

Also benefiting are doctors and private clinics, which have been overrun with people worried that they have flu symptoms.

Many people continue to turn to the private health sector even though public health centres have been instructed by the government to treat any person with influenza symptoms for free. The order also applies to clinics and hospitals that usually treat only members of the military or the social security system.

Higher-than-usual profits have also been reported by video and DVD rental stores, as more than 33 million students have found themselves without classes, and the government has recommended that people stay home as much as possible.

Some private schools sent emails to parents with homework instructions for their children.

Universities, meanwhile, urged their students to do projects and papers, according to instructions they will receive by means of public communiqués.

"The situation in Mexico because of the epidemic is unprecedented, in fact I would say the world is facing an unprecedented situation, and you don’t have to be an expert to predict that our country will have economic problems as a result," said Vega.

Finance Minister Agustín Carstens said Monday that the epidemic would have an impact on the economy, but not a permanent one, to judge by similar experiences in China, Canada and Hong Kong.

Carstens said the hardest-hit sectors would be theatres, cinemas, discotheques, hotels and restaurants. But he added that it is too early to gauge the extent of the impact on the Mexican economy.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 28 2009 (IPS)

When the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the influenza pandemic alert from phase three to an ominous phase four warning this week, it went beyond the alarm associated with the killer avian influenza virus in Asia.

The global health body’s warning came as the outbreak of a lethal strain of swine flu has killed more than 150 people in Mexico – the epicentre of the virus – and has also been detected in parts of the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The WHO warning for a possible global pandemic emerging from avian influenza always remained a “phase three alert,” says Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the WHO’s Western Pacific division. “The difference now is that we have raised the pandemic alert to phase four.”

“This is WHO’s way of saying [the lethal virus] has edged close to a pandemic situation,” he added during a telephone interview from Manila, where the WHO’s regional office is based. “It can spread internationally.”

A phase four alarm is often sounded when there are reports of “community- level outbreaks,” which has been the case with the recent strain of the H1N1 strain of the swine flu virus, but not so with the cases of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus across Asia.

According to the WHO, a phase five alert is sounded when there is human-to- human transmission of a deadly virus “into at least two countries in WHO region.” And the final phase six alert is declared when the virus enters the “pandemic phase,” where community level outbreaks are detected in “at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in phase five.”

It was fear of the avian influenza virus mutating and re-assorting itself with other viruses and emerging as a global pandemic that promoted the WHO to first sound the alarm in early 2004 that the world was on the brink of a public health crisis. At the time, grim pictures were painted, including mention of the 1918 “Spanish” flu pandemic that killed over 50 million people across the world.

But when and where such a lethal virus would emerge remained elusive.

“The current situation was, at least technically, what we were worried about at the height of the avian influenza scare,” says Cordingley. “It was a situation we were always worried about: the virus going through pigs – the mixing vessel – and emerging as a new virus, infecting humans.”

Such a scenario is behind the current lethal virus that is spreading between humans. “There has been a re-assortment of genes from poultry, swine and human virus strains,” says Subhash Morzaria, regional manager of the Bangkok-based emergency centre for trans-boundary animal diseases at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). “It has been confirmed that human and poultry viruses infected swine and got mixed.”

“This combination is not rare. Re-assortment of viruses in swine is frequent,” he told IPS. “But the re-assortment of the virus we have now is new; we have not seen this before.”

Worries that the new virus is more potent than the bird flu virus are not out of place. In the over six years since the H5N1 strain emerged in Asia and then spread to other corners of the world, there have been 257 reported deaths out of 421 cases. The worst affected country has been Indonesia, where 115 people have died out of the 141 infected.

Even the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which prompted concern in the region, did not trigger a pandemic alarm with the speed that the H1N1 virus has. SARS spread to humans from animals and was associated with flu-like symptoms, such as high fever, headaches and respiratory problems.

By the time it was contained, SARS had killed 774 people out of the 8,000 who had been infected in over 20 countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Yet as Asian countries take preventive measures to respond to the latest threat of a global pandemic, the region’s experience – having combated SARS and contained bird flu – sees it at a better level of readiness. The Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-member regional bloc, reflects this confidence.

“ASEAN member states are better prepared now following the experience from recent SARS and avian-influenza outbreaks,” states the regional grouping, which includes Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. “ASEAN has the existing mechanisms and networks for strengthening preparedness and response to a possible pandemic.”

Such resources include “500,000 courses of antivirals stockpiled in Singapore, while 500,000 more courses have already been distributed,” reports ‘The Nation’, an English-language daily in Thailand. There is equipment that “is readily available for ASEAN countries for rapid response and containment of outbreaks that may occur in the region.”

The picture is also true for most of Asia, confirms the WHO’s Cordingley. “Each country has committed resources to strengthen their health systems. Doctors and nurses have been trained and hospitals have been improved.”

“The health systems in Asia are vastly different than in 2003, when SARS struck,” he added. “Now they will have to monitor the virus. We don’t know what this virus will do.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Apr 27 2009 (IPS)

The deadly new influenza strain that originated in Mexico has led to the closure of schools, universities, museums, libraries, cinemas, theatres and churches here, while it continues to spread to other countries.

So far there is insufficient data to predict when the outbreak will ease or whether the measures adopted to fight its spread will be effective, experts say.

By Monday, four days after a health emergency was declared in Mexico, the number of people killed by the virus had climbed to 149, out of a total of around 2,600 cases, mainly in the capital.

The government of President Felipe Calderón expanded the closure of schools, which was only in effect in the capital and the states of Mexico and San Luis Potosí, to the entire country.

If the disease does not stop spreading, Mexico will close its borders, Health Minister José Córdova warned.

On the streets of Mexico City, the use of surgical face masks is becoming widespread, after news and alerts about the swine flu epidemic multiplied over the weekend. On the bus taken by IPS on Monday, most people were wearing masks, which were handed out for free by government employees at different points around the city.

“This is like a bad movie; God willing it will end soon,” said Marisol Menéndez, an office worker riding the bus.

“They should give us the day off; our kids are not in school and are home alone,” said her friend Margarita Ortiz.

The Mexican capital, a city of 20 million, was unusually quiet on Monday. Many restaurants were closed, and some offices were working at half-steam, in line with instructions from the Labour Ministry, which asked bosses and owners to be lax with regard to absenteeism, especially for workers who may have flu symptoms or who have to stay home to take care of their children.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that the epidemic that broke out in Mexico is a new subtype of swine influenza A/H1N1 “not previously detected in swine or humans,” with characteristics of avian and human flu viruses.

The WHO Emergency Committee meeting in Belgium reported Monday that it had raised its pandemic alert level from phase 3 (low risk of a pandemic) to phase 4 (person-to-person transmission in a limited geographical area), on a scale of 6.

The 15-member committee had planned to meet on Tuesday, but after the first case of swine flu was reported in Spain, it moved the meeting forward to Monday.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Brussels that “it is a rapidly evolving situation,” and WHO Director General Margaret Chan said it has “pandemic potential”.

The countries affected by the virus – but without any fatal cases – include the United States, with 40 confirmed cases, Canada with six cases and Brazil and Spain with one each. Suspected cases are also being tested in Colombia, France, Israel, Italy and the United Kingdom.

A number of countries are on the alert and are following disease prevention protocols.

It is too early to know whether the disease is still on an upward spiral, Dr. Mario Castellas, an infectious disease specialist at a private hospital in the capital, told IPS. He said two or more incubation periods (five to seven days in this case) are needed before any projections can be made.

“It’ll take time, around five or six more days, to know if we have managed to curb the epidemic at least in Mexico,” said Castellas.

Local health authorities say the new virus is not fatal if the patient receives treatment promptly, within 24 to 48 hours of the appearance of the first symptoms

Despite that clarification, rumours are spreading in Mexico City that the flu kills within five hours of infection.

Radio and TV stations are repeatedly broadcasting government messages urging people not to shake hands or greet each other with a kiss, and to wear face masks, seek medical treatment at the first sign of symptoms, and stay away from crowded places.

A 2008 Health Ministry report on Mexico’s response to a flu pandemic warned that the conditions were in place for a pandemic to occur at any time.

The report was drawn up to prepare the country for the hypothetical scenario of an influenza pandemic, but with the avian flu epidemic in mind.

The study says that in a moderate scenario, 15 percent of the population would fall sick and the outbreak would have a cost equivalent to 0.5 percent of GDP; in a moderately severe scenario, 25 percent of the population would be infected, at a cost of one percent of GDP; and in a severe scenario, 35 percent of the population would catch the disease, with an economic impact of 3.7 percent of GDP.

The origin of the new strain of swine flu is still unknown. Spokespersons for Veratect Corporation, a U.S. company that monitors disease outbreaks worldwide, told the Mexican newspaper Reforma that it was the first to detect the current outbreak, identifying the first case on Mar. 30 at a pig factory farm in a rural area near the town of Perote in the Gulf of Mexico state of Veracruz.

According to the source, the factory farm is owned by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods.

But company spokeswoman Jazmín Jiménez told IPS by telephone that the report was “totally false.”

“We have 970 employees, and not one of them, and none of their family members, have the flu or anything like it,” she told IPS.

Cases of respiratory infections, “but not the flu,” occurred in late March in La Gloria, a neighbourhood located eight km from the factory farms, but they were due to a lack of sanitation and clean water in the area “according to what the health authorities told us,” said the spokeswoman.

“There is nothing strange here, and we haven’t heard of anyone who is sick,” Irene Argüello, who works in a construction materials store in Perote, told IPS by phone. “I don’t know why they are saying the disease started here; we would be in a state of emergency if that were true.”

Health Minister Córdova said the virus may have emerged somewhere in Europe or Asia, “given that part of its genome matches the common pig,” before it mutated and transferred to humans.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 20 2009 (IPS)

Thailand’s plans to contain the spread of the deadly avian influenza virus must involve the tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers employed in this country’s poultry industry, say experts.

‘’They form the frontline of Thailand’s defence against the spread of bird flu,’’ Jasper Gross, research officer for the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), told IPS. ‘’The industry has to protect these migrant workers, give them proper information, equipment and provide a reporting mechanism.’’

The call for such a programme comes in the wake of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) attempting to drum up attention to help poultry workers and farmers in small and medium-sized chicken farms across South-east Asia. The Geneva-based body is pushing for workers to take on a greater role in detecting and stopping the spread of the deadly H5N1 virus.

‘’If these workers are properly trained, they can help reduce risk of avian influenza spreading,’’ says Tsuyoshi Kawakami, senior specialist on occupational health and safety at the ILO’s regional office in Bangkok. ‘’Workers have expressed some anxiety about how they will be affected. Slaughterhouse workers, meat-processing workers are worried.’’

‘’We cannot discriminate against migrant workers,’’ he told IPS on the sidelines of a meeting held here to share progress of the ILO’s work in Thailand since 2007 and at raising awareness on responding to avian influenza (AI) in the workplace and a possible human pandemic.

Labour rights activists reveal that the information available for Burmese migrant workers to cope with and respond to bird flu is limited to some material produced in Burma. What is missing, they say, are translations of information with Thai-specific situations that are available to Thai workers who handle poultry in the industry.

Currently, migrant workers from Burma make up the largest chunk of the estimated 100,000 people employed in factories across central Thailand and in areas around the capital Bangkok. The Burmese workers, along with those from Cambodia, account for up to 80 percent of the labour force in commercial food factories.

In some of the smaller factories, a few hundred Burmese workers dot the assembly line, performing monotonous tasks such as handling freshly killed chicken. In the larger ones, up to 8,000 workers may make up the labour force.

Thailand’s poultry sector is steadily regaining its health after taking a beating following the current outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus, which began in January 2004, affecting many countries in South-east Asia.

Before the current outbreak, the country was exporting 500,000 tonnes of cooked and raw chicken, earning 1.2 million U.S. dollars annually. The outbreak of avian influenza (AI), which resulted in millions of chickens culled and dying due to the virus, saw exports plummet to 27,000 tonnes.

Presently the Thai industry exports 400,000 tonnes of cooked chicken, accounting for one percent of the gross domestic product, according to the department of livestock development.

Burmese migrants working in the poultry sector are among the nearly two million registered and unregistered migrant workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia who work in Thailand. They labour in the food processing industry, in the agriculture, garments and construction sectors and are also employed as domestic workers.

Set against this lapse, however, is Thailand’s impressive record in containing the spread of the deadly virus through a range of public and private-sector initiatives. Consequently, the country has not recorded human cases over the past two years. Between January 2004 and August 2006 there were 25 reported human cases of AI, resulting in 17 deaths.

An army of village health volunteers – now running into 800,000 people – has been a key factor in the country’s containment drive.

‘’We have established a rapid disease reporting system using health volunteers and the 1,030-strong surveillance and rapid response teams,’’ says Darika Kingnate, deputy director of the emerging infectious disease control department at the public health ministry.

Such efforts are being praised by the U.N. arm created in response to the poultry virus that is threatening to become a pandemic, by acquiring the capability of being passed among humans, which could result in the deaths of millions of people across the globe.

‘’Thailand is the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that has preventive activity in all its 76 provinces,’’ says Koji Nabe, avian and human influenza regional officer of the United Nations Systems Influenza Coordinator.

‘’Actions have to take place at local levels. We cannot expect help from outside if a pandemic happens,’’ he adds. ‘’Individuals should know how to take care of themselves.’’

Thailand’s regional neighbour Vietnam has also benefited from a network of community groups to deal with the spread of the H5N1 virus, largely spread by ducks, in the Mekong Delta. Vietnam, which has recorded 52 human fatalities of 108 confirmed cases, had to deal with 34 reports of AI in poultry last year.

‘’We succeeded in eliminating the spread of avian influenza through awareness campaigns involving farmers in the Delta who are largely poor,’’ Hanh Tran Thi, head of research at the Can Tho Medical College, told IPS. ‘’We used the Self-control Groups in each village in the Delta to get this message out.’’

The ILO’s drive to target poultry workers in the region comes at a time when countries from China to India are grappling with more reported cases of bird flu. The worst affected country in the region is Indonesia, which accounts for 113 fatalities of the 247 people who have died from AI since the beginning of 2004.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 20 2008 (IPS)

New cases of avian influenza across Asia in recent weeks confirm warnings that the deadly virus still lurks in the region and raise questions of gaps in efforts to contain it in affected communities.

For now, the only comfort is the speed at which the cases are being reported for local authorities to respond, say experts. Tightening of the information flow from farms and chicken coops to veterinary officials was part of the programme implemented in the region since there was a major outbreak of bird flu in the winter of 2003.

Hong Kong is grappling with an outbreak of the H5N1 virus that struck chickens last week. The infected poultry, kept in a farm equipped with modern biosecurity measures, resulted in the culling of close to 80,000 chickens in nearby farms and even at a large market known for its wholesale trade of the birds.

Chinese authorities also confirmed this week that the virus has been reported in the eastern province of Jiangsu, resulting in the culling of over 350,000 chickens. In addition, local authorities have increased vaccinating poultry in local farms, state media reports.

Cambodia has turned its attention to infected chickens and ducks in an area south of Phnom Penh, the capital. Authorities have ordered poultry to be slaughtered in the infected smallholder farms, in addition to imposing a 30-day ban on the selling and transport of poultry to the Kandal province.

Cambodian authorities confirmed that a 19-year-old man from Kandal has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, the local media reported. He is the first person reported to have contracted the virus and the eighth Cambodian diagnosed with avian influenza since it struck one of South-east Asia’s poorest countries.

Last week, authorities in India’s West Bengal state announced the sealing of large sections of its border with Bangladesh after tests confirmed a new outbreak in Malda district, through which ducks and chickens are regularly smuggled in.

Outbreaks were reported, last month, from two other Indian states that shares borders with Bangladesh – Assam and Meghalaya.

Although no recent outbreaks have been reported from Bangladesh, that impoverished country was the victim of a major epidemic in 2007 when millions of birds were culled.

‘’Our analysis shows that this season is when we will get cases of avian influenza,’’ says Subash Morzaria, regional manger of the Bangkok-based emergency centre for trans-boundary animal diseases at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). ‘’Countries have to be prepared for bird flu outbreaks during the winter season.’’

The latest outbreaks follow a pattern that began in 2003 are still linked to causes that were singled out five years ago. ‘’The main reasons are still because of poor bio-security and the movement of birds due to trade,’’ Morzaria told IPS. ‘’Bio-security is still not adequate in some communities despite the high awareness for its need.’’

Such measures seek to keep poultry in a confined environment to limit contact with wild birds. Bigger farms have implemented bio-security measures on an industrial scale, where workers have to be sprayed with disinfectant and must also shower, shampoo and wear protective clothing before going into the long, low-rise sheds covered with black fabric where the poultry are raised.

Yet even such controlled environments failed to prevent the recent outbreaks in Hong Kong. It has also raised concerns about the vaccines being used to inoculate poultry from the H5N1 virus.

‘’The vaccine failure is something that they are investigating in Hong Kong,’’ says FAO’s Morzaria. ‘’Vaccines are a very important control option if delivered properly and at the right time.’’

The U.N. food agency sees better success in its awareness campaigns aimed at getting rural and urban communities to raise the alarm and secure prompt responses when there is an outbreak. ‘’We are getting more reports than before, and they are reporting it fairly early,’’ says Morzaria. ‘’The training at grassroots levels has contributed to this change.’’

The success of the international efforts to contain avian influenza is reflected in the number of countries that have managed to eliminate it, stated a global study released in October. ‘’The success of the control efforts (has been) reflected in the fact that 50 of the 63 countries affected by the virus have managed to eliminate it.’’

That is an improvement from December 2005, when an assessment was made at a major international meeting held in Beijing, added the global study, published by the World Bank, the FAO and the World Health Organisation (WHO), among other agencies. ‘’It was recognised that the world was unprepared for the rapid spread of the virus.’’

‘’H5N1 has already cost over 20 billion US dollars in economic losses,’’ the study revealed of the virus that began in China in the winter of 2003 and spread across South-east Asia and thereafter to Europe and Africa.

According to the WHO, 247 people have died from this strain of the virus out of 391 people infected since 2003. Indonesia tops the list of fatalities, with 113 deaths out of 139 confirmed cases, followed by Vietnam, with 52 deaths out of 106 confirmed cases.

Public health and animal health experts have been monitoring the virus to study signs of mutation, given concerns that if H5N1 acquires the capability to be passed between humans, it could result in a global pandemic, killing close to 180 million, according to some estimates.

Such projections are based on the 1918 Spanish Flu, which claimed 50 million human lives after a bird flu strain crossed over into the human population.

Indonesia’s lead has become central in the global efforts. Jakarta announced this week that intensive measures to curb the H5N1 virus between 2009 and 2011 will lay the foundation for the set goal of eradicating the virus by 2014.

‘’If all goes well, the nation will be free of the highly pathogenic bird flu virus by 2014,’’ Tjeppy D. Soedjana, a ranking official at Indonesia’s agriculture ministry, was quoted as having told the ‘Jakarta Post’ newspaper.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2008 (IPS)

A severe outbreak of flu could kill tens of millions of people and spur a “major global recession”, the World Bank is warning world leaders preoccupied with financial, food, and fuel crises.

The bank has drawn up a worst-case scenario in which a flu pandemic could kill as many as 71 million people, cost some three trillion dollars, and cut global gross domestic product (GDP) by “almost 5 percent, constituting a major global recession.”

Some experts have said the death toll could exceed 180 million people.

The threat of a pandemic stems from the H5N1 bird flu virus, which surfaced in 2003, is entrenched in parts of Asia and Africa, and has killed hundreds of people while causing billions of dollars in losses. This is nothing compared to the massive outbreak among humans that would follow the emergence of a new strain of influenza to which almost no one would have natural immunity, experts say.

Similar events have already unfolded: The Spanish Flu of 1918, which may have killed some 50 million people, is thought to have begun when another strain of bird flu crossed over into the human population.

“Because such a pandemic would spread very quickly, substantial efforts need to be put into place to develop effective strategies and contingency plans that could be enacted at short notice,” says the bank.

In June 2006, the agency anticipated costs of 3.1 percent of global GDP or about two trillion dollars. Its more calamitous assessment, completed in recent weeks, comes ahead of international talks to be held in Egypt next week.

Poorer nations face the greatest risk.

“Generally speaking, developing countries would be hardest hit, because higher population densities and poverty accentuate the economic impacts,” bank economists Andrew Burns, Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, and Hans Timmer write in the latest estimate.

In their current estimation, a “mild” pandemic, like the Hong Kong Flu of 1968, could kill some 1.4 million people and cut global GDP by 0.7 percent in the first year. A “moderate” pandemic, similar to the Asian Flu of 1957, could claim 14.2 million lives and cut global economic output by 2 percent in the first year. The “severe” worst case, in which 71 million or more could die, would slash global GDP by 4.8 percent.

Some of the loss would result from deaths and infections, which could affect 35 percent of the population and would prompt absences from work. However, says the bank, ”people’s efforts to avoid infection are five times more important than mortality and more than twice as important as illness.”

Most of the cost would arise because people would change their behaviour in hopes of avoiding infection, it says.

The bank assumes that fears of contracting disease in the close confines of an airplane would push down air travel by 20 percent during the first year of a severe pandemic, with similar declines in tourism, mass transport, and restaurants.

“The assumed 20 percent declines are well below the peak decline of 75 percent in air travel to Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic and an average decline of 50-60 percent during the four-month period the outbreak was active,” the report says.

Since it is virtually impossible to say when and to what extent a pandemic will sweep the globe, the bank cautions that its latest scenarios are “purely illustrative”.

“They provide a sense of the overall magnitude of potential costs. Actual costs, both in terms of human lives and economic losses, may be very different,” it says.

Participants in the Oct. 24-26 Sixth International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza will be confronted with the bank’s estimates and asked to commit some 500 million dollars, the annual amount the United Nations says is needed to fend off and prepare for a potentially ruinous outbreak.

International donors have pledged 2.7 billion dollars – and delivered 1.5 billion dollars – to buttress affected and at-risk countries’ own spending on the fight against bird flu in the five years since the highly pathogenic disease broke out in Southeast Asia and spread across Asia, Europe and Africa, according to a joint World Bank-U.N. report prepared for next week’s talks.

Vaccines have been developed, poultry has been slaughtered from Hong Kong to Britain, public awareness has been raised, and health personnel are being trained to distinguish bird flu among humans from other ailments with similar symptoms.

As a result, so far this year the world has seen “fewer outbreaks in poultry, fewer newly infected countries, fewer human cases, and fewer deaths compared to the same period in 2006 and 2007,” says the “Fourth Global Progress Report on Responses to Avian Influenza and Pandemic Readiness.”

More than 50 of the 61 countries that have suffered outbreaks of H5N1 have succeeded in eliminating the disease but “the virus remains entrenched in several countries and the threat of further outbreaks…in poultry (and sporadic cases in humans) persists,” the report says.

However, it warns: “Even with such efforts, an eventual human pandemic at some unknown point in the future is virtually inevitable.”

Since December 2007, according to the bank, new outbreaks have been confirmed in Bangladesh, Benin, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam. The disease has affected chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks.

Other animal viruses that have afflicted and killed humans include SARS, HIV, Ebola, and West Nile.

Seasonal flu epidemics result in 250,000-500,000 deaths a year, mostly among the elderly, according to the World Health Organisation.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MANILA, Oct 7 2008 (IPS)

So where is the pandemic? This is a question most often asked of health experts years after they warned about a pandemic influenza that could infect up to 35 percent of the world’s population.

The experts had say that pandemics are recurring events and that one was due anytime. They said a pandemic today, given the large volume of international travel, could reach all continents in less than three months and that the world’s medical facilities will have difficulty coping with the huge number of sick people.

They also pinpointed avian flu as the possible cause of the next pandemic.

However, there has been little news about avian influenza lately, compared to the highly publicised cases just a year ago. This development might be considered by some as a good thing, but it could also lull the public into a false sense of security, something that has left the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) worried.

An official of the WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office headquartered in Manila said people may be growing apathetic to the avian flu problem and could be letting their guard down in protecting themselves against the disease.

“I have observed ‘avian influenza fatigue’ or apathy among the people,” said Dr. Takeshi Kasai, regional adviser on communicable disease surveillance and response. “They think they have already done enough, and that is our worry in the WHO,” he told IPS.

The first known case of avian influenza infection among humans was reported in 1997. The virus, the H5N1 strain in particular, crossed the species barrier and was transmitted from birds to humans through direct contact with infected poultry or surfaces contaminated by droppings.

According to the WHO, there have been a total of 387 avian flu cases among humans, with 245 fatalities. Most of the cases occurred in rural areas where poultry roam freely in homes and backyards. Countries with the most cases are Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt and China.

The most recent case was confirmed last September: a man in Indonesia who developed avian flu symptoms in July.

Health experts have been closely monitoring the H5N1 strain because it has already met two of three conditions that could spark an influenza pandemic (global epidemic). It is a new influenza virus subtype and it infects humans, causing serious illness. The third condition is that the virus spreads easily on a sustained basis among humans. If the H5N1 evolves into a form that is as contagious as normal influenza, it could start a pandemic.

“The risk that avian influenza could cause the next pandemic remains the same. It has not changed at all since 2003,” Kasai said.

He said the avian flu virus continues to mutate. “In 1997 there was only one strain, now there are more than 10 groups,” he said. “We have already seen changes in the virus.”

As long as opportunities for human infections occur, the risk that the H5N1 virus will acquire the ability to cause an influenza pandemic will persist, the WHO said. And these opportunities will remain as long as the virus circulates in birds.

The WHO is concerned that the H5N1 virus is now entrenched in many Asian countries, bringing with it the risk that more human cases will occur. And each new case gives the virus the opportunity to become more transmissible in humans.

Although the outbreak of avian flu in birds continues, the number of cases is still limited in humans, a development that Kasai sees as “good news.” He said health education and information programmes could have contributed to the low infection rate among humans.

Delegates at a WHO regional meeting in Manila late September noted the considerable progress already made to improve “country-level” readiness for avian flu. Because of their strengthened capacity for surveillance and response, countries affected by the disease have been rapidly responding to human infections of the virus and gained the confidence of the public, the delegates noted.

The WHO has assisted countries in testing and validating their pandemic preparedness plans. Laos conducted rapid containment exercises in November 2007, followed by the Philippines in March 2008. Lessons learnt from these exercises will help develop programmes for pandemic influenza containment operations.

Several countries have also strengthened their infection control, laboratory bio-safety and field epidemiology training.

Acknowledging the WHO’s contributions in containing avian flu in his country, Vietnamese health minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu pledged increased international cooperation in the public health sector.

Bird flu has infected 105 people in Vietnam and killed at least 51 of them since it first appeared in the country in late 2003. This year bird flu outbreaks were detected in 26 Vietnamese provinces, killing five people and forcing authorities to cull more than 60,000 ducks.

Although it is not known what H5N1 strain will cause the next pandemic or if it would be caused by the H5N1 virus at all, an H5N1 pandemic is still an important possibility. As such the development of an avian flu vaccine remains a crucial part of the global strategy for pandemic preparedness.

At present the available vaccines act only against a single strain of the virus. Large-scale commercial production of a vaccine against a pandemic virus can only start until the new virus has emerged and a pandemic declared.

According to Kasai, a number of countries have already stockpiled vaccines against the prevalent strain in their areas. But because the virus mutates quickly, it is important to further develop the vaccines.

Kasai said there are ongoing trials to determine whether receiving a vaccine against a single strain would increase one’s chances of protection against other strains. “There is a theory that once your body has a memory against [one strain], it could boost your immunity against the other [strains],” he explained.

Kasai said countries must prepare for a pandemic because it will surely develop.

“We think we’ve been very lucky,” said Kasai, that there has been no influenza pandemic yet. “But we have a responsibility to tell the public that they should not stop preparing for it.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
CAN THO, Vietnam, Jun 30 2008 (IPS)

The bustling city of Can Tho is the capital of southern Vietnam’s fertile Mekong Delta and one of the country’s two main rice baskets. Good food in abundance makes it an ideal place to raise ducks and chickens, but this also means it is also one of the most high-risk areas in the country for bird flu.

While new outbreaks of the disease threaten the entire country, as harvest season gets underway officials are urging farmers in the Delta to be particularly vigilant.

"This is the time of the year when the whole of the Mekong Delta should keep our wits about bird flu," Nguyen Trong, a senior official in Can Tho’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and a member of the local Bird Flu Control and Prevention Office, said in an interview.

Three new outbreaks of bird flu have already been recorded in the Delta since early May.

Vietnam has recorded some significant results in its battle with the deadly bird flu virus. A prototype vaccine for the H5N1 virus is currently being tested and could be ready for local use by next year.

Bui Ba Bong, deputy minister of agriculture and rural development, told the National Steering Committee for Prevention and Control of Bird Flu in Hanoi that despite the good news, "bird flu epidemics from poultry remain a threat" often due to inadequate preventative measures.

Since January, the Ministry of Health has been training rapid-response teams throughout Vietnam and provided them with H5N1 virus-proof masks and protective suits.

"The human factor remains a key issue," Bong said. "A new relapse of bird flu is only possible if authorities neglect their responsibility."

Local media across the country have reported truckloads of poultry passing unchecked at quarantine stations. Dead fowl have also been found thrown carelessly into rice fields and waterways at the first sign of outbreaks.

"Some farmers have become so reckless that they refuse to vaccinate their fowl," said Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Department for Preventive Medicine and Environment in the Ministry of Health in Hanoi.

As the harvest seasons gets into full swing, Nga believes it is especially important for authorities in the Mekong Delta to keep a close eye on potential outbreaks of avian influenza. "The situation could become worse during harvest season when poultry flocks are released into crop fields for food," he said.

Most farmers throughout the Mekong Delta use natural methods to raise ducks. Large quantities of ducks are released into newly harvested fields to pick at left over grains. Chickens are allowed to roam free in gardens. Farmers also drive large flocks of ducks from province to province to sell at big cities.

"The reality is that recent bird flu outbreaks in the Mekong River Delta were found among illegally incubated chicken and ducks that had not been vaccinated [against bird flu]," said Trong.

"For a long time we forgot about bird flu, and thus were taken by surprise when there were new outbreaks," said Dang Hanh, a farmer in Thot Not commune, Can Tho province. He said he had had to cull nearly 500 ducks and chickens due to recent outbreaks of the disease.

Many other villagers in the Delta reported a similar slackening in regard to preventive measures aimed at preventing bird flu.

Another part of the problem is the lack of attention paid by officials in the past to small-scale farmers. "Vaccinating teams do not come to our homes to vaccinate because we have not got many ducks and chickens," said Hanh. "If you want your birds to get vaccinated you must carry them to veterinary stations. This is an expensive and time consuming process small farmers like us want to avoid."

In response, Can Tho’s Bird Flu Control and Prevention Office has set up inter-provincial quarantine stations to tighten security, particularly in relation to small farms.

Many large-scale poultry farms in the Delta have been spared from the recent spread of avian flu due to a new method of raising birds developed by a Thai company, CP. Chickens are kept in self-contained coops equipped with cooling systems to provide a regulated temperature. These are adjusted according to each type and age of chicken.

"The fresh living environment shelters chickens from pathogens such as the H5N1 virus and thus protects them from the epidemic," said Vo Van Thach, owner of the biggest poultry farm in Can Tho province – worth 1.2 billion Vietnamese dong (71,000 U.S. dollars).

Each province in the Mekong Delta now has between 100,000 and 450,000 chickens being raised according to this model, and there are plans to expand it.

"I also want my poultry to be raised like that, but there will be too much investment for me," Hanh from Thot Not commune said. For the time being, breeding fowls in the traditional way remains the sole option for small farmers, making them the first to be affected by bird flu when there is an outbreak.

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
HO CHI MINH CITY, Jun 3 2008 (IPS)

Vietnamese researchers have announced significant progress in their effort to develop a prototype vaccine for the H5N1 avian influenza, despite criticism from some scientists that their methods are "unorthodox".

Vietnam is hoping to develop a vaccine that could prevent humans from contracting bird flu and have it available on the local market at a reasonable price by late 2009.

Researchers from the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) began a trial of the H5N1 influenza vaccine on 10 volunteers in March this year.

Encouraged by good results, researchers from the Vaccine and Bio-Technology Products Company (Vabiotech), affiliated to the NIHE, obtained permission in early April from the Ministry of Health to inject a shot of the experimental vaccine to 30 volunteer medical students from the Military Medical Academy.

"Good results from their blood samples allowed us to inject them a second shot on April 19," Dr Nguyen Thu Van, director of Vabiotech, said in an interview.

Dr Van said a larger-scale human testing process involving volunteers from the Military Medical Academy will be in two stages – the first will involve 30 volunteers, and the second 240.

During the first stage of testing, volunteers will be closely observed and their blood tested three times in order to evaluate the levels of antibodies created by the vaccine and any side effects.

Dr Doan Huy Hong, director of the Epidemiology Department at the Military Medical Academy, said his department would cooperate with Vabiotech. "The second stage will see how well the vaccine generates immunity in human bodies," Hong said.

"Once the vaccine’s stability has been proven, we could consider mass production," said Dr Van added optimistically.

She hopes to introduce the vaccine under the label of FLUVAX in late 2009. One injection of FLUVAX could bring up one-year immunity, and would be priced at 1.87 U.S. dollars.

Vietnam has recorded the second highest number of human cases of avian flu from 2003 to date, with 52 deaths out of 106 laboratory-confirmed cases after Indonesia’s 108 deaths from 133 reported cases, according to data from the World Health Organisation.

The vaccine that Vietnam is developing is specifically designed to combat the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 known as VN1194. Vabiotech commenced its study in 2004 and started its tests on chicken and mice in January 2005.

Vietnam is one of only a few countries working successfully on the production of H5N1 vaccines, Dr Van said.

The research uses cell culture technology, which involves taking a deactivated or weakened form of the H5N1 virus from a patient who has died of bird flu. The sample is then cultivated in monkey kidney cells, a process the Vabiotech says can produce the best results within the shortest time.

"After effective results with mice and chicken in January 2005, we experimented on monkeys," said Dr Van. "We injected vaccine into some monkeys and found out they remained in good health three weeks after. This shows the vaccine is safe."

"Vaccine using monkey kidney cells will be more productive, cheaper and safer than a vaccine using the culture on embryonic chicken eggs currently being developed by other countries," he claimed.

Some international experts disagree, and have called the method used by Vietnamese scientists "highly unorthodox".

In an article in the Jun. 13 2005 edition of ‘Time’ magazine, a WHO expert warned that Vietnam’s vaccine could itself make people sick or even set off a pandemic.

The expert said that while the Vietnamese developers say they have followed international procedures to ensure that the virus has not mutated, they have not opened all their records or allowed an inspection of their labs.

"The danger is very unlikely," the magazine quoted Michael Perdue, a WHO virus expert who has consulted with Vietnam as saying. "But you just don't want to play with fire."

The deputy head of the NIHE, Pham Ngoc Dinh, said Vietnam was aware of WHO’s advice to countries not to jump into production of a vaccine specifically against the H5N1 strain because the virus could mutate, rendering any vaccine largely ineffective.

"Similar to other countries, we take this advice, but it does not mean that we will stop our research," he said.

"There could be some H5N1 mutations," countered Dr Van, "but NIHE scientists have already handy a technology that could provide a new vaccine whenever the virus mutates."

Sean Tobin, an official from WHO’s Hanoi office, told journalists in early May that while his office was not directly involved in Vietnam‘s development of a human vaccine for the H5N1 virus, it was satisfied that health authorities had rigorous guidelines for quality control.

"Certainly there would be some extra level of scrutiny required if they were to try and use this vaccine in other countries," he added. "But because the Vietnamese vaccine is intended only for domestic consumption, international authorities would not be involved in supervising the trials."

"But Vabiotech do have a lot of experience with other kinds of vaccines using monkey kidney cell technology, the government here (in Vietnam) feels quite confident in those vaccines," Tobin said.

"Vietnam has received support from international experts and the University of Japan, the leading country involved in research on vaccine production, to ensure the safety of the project," Van said.

Many Vietnamese experts support Van’s optimism, saying that any vaccine production process will lay down the necessary infrastructure so that the time used to make an eventual pandemic vaccine, anywhere between four to six months after a pandemic begins, can be shortened.

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DHAKA, May 24 2008 (IPS)

Authorities here have stepped up surveillance against avian influenza after the case of a 16-month-old boy, who took ill in January, was diagnosed as one of infection with the deadly H5N1 virus.

Culling operations gainst bird flu outside Dhaka. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

Since 2003, when bird flu first surfaced, 15 countries have reported a total of 382 human cases, with 241 of them turning fatal. WHO has now confirmed human cases in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Burma, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Prof. Mahmudur Rahman, a director at Bangladesh’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told IPS that although the boy was totally cured well before the confirmation, surveillance has been stepped up across the country.

Since the H5N1 virus was first detected in Bangladesh, at a state-run poultry farm on the outskirts of the capital, authorities have culled more than two million birds, causing losses estimated at 700 million US dollars.

With 47 of Bangladesh’s 64 districts affected, the poultry industry, introduced two decades ago to help this impoverished country, is now facing its biggest ever challenge. Affected are more than 1.5 million people employed in one of the world’s largest poultry industries that produces producing 220 million chickens and 37 million ducks annually.

According to the South Asia Enterprise Development Facility, a multi-donor facility managed by the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group, the poultry sector supports five million people directly or indirectly through 150,000 poultry farms, constituting 1.6 percent of Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP).

In recent years, the poultry industry has been growing at an annual rate of about 20 percent, recording a turnover of 25 -1.5 billion dollars in 2006. Analysts say the figures for 2007 may fall below that mark thanks to drastic culling.

Battered by the culling, monsoon floods and a devastating cyclone in November, the country’s once booming poultry industry is now seriously threatened. Businessmen say the outbreak has already caused the closure of more than a third of the country’s poultry farms.

As the virus spread, the state-owned Bangladesh TV and a dozen or so private cable TV channels often broadcast programmes on avian influenza making people aware of the deadly virus, but observers said impact is minimal.

‘’Street vendors are still selling live chickens in Dhaka, although the city corporation authority has imposed a ban on selling live chickens in the open,’’ said Dhaka school teacher Sharif Ahmed.

Without disclosing the identity of the affected boy, Rahman said he lived in a crowded slum in Dhaka. His parents had bought a live chicken from a nearby market which they kept in their house for some days before slaughtering it for a meal.

The boy was among the more than 3,000 people suspected of being infected with bird flu in Bangladesh, but his was the only case that tested positive, a health department official said.

After the Bangladesh government was informed of the test results by the WHO, the national advisory committee on avian influenza met on Thursday to step up measures.

Rahman said IEDCR was already conducting surveillance measures in the districts affected by bird flu and that people who were in direct contact with poultry birds and products were being kept under observation by epidemiologists. As part of the new measures, Bangladesh will set up isolation units in all public hospitals, he said.

“Right now everything is under control. We have trained doctors and readied hospitals to tackle any new detection,” Rahman said. ‘’We also have trained volunteers in the villages.’’

Bangladesh, which has a population of nearly 150 million, is the world’s most densely populated country with nearly 1,000 people per sq km. With poultry farms set up everywhere in the country the risk of the virus spreading fast is high.

Earlier this year, India’s West Bengal state which shares a long border with Bangladesh suffered the neighbouring country’s worst outbreak of the virus among poultry. But no human cases of bird flu have been reported in India, which has also carried out massive poultry culling.

Bird flu was thought only to infect birds until the first human cases were detected in Hong Kong in 1997. Though rare, humans catch the disease through close contact with infected birds.

Experts consider vigilance and speedy action such as isolation of human cases important because of a fear that the H5N1 strain could mutate to become capable of human-to-human transmission and set off a deadly pandemic. Densely populated countries like Bangladesh, where people live in close proximity to backyard poultry or keep birds in their homes, are seen as particularly risky.

Excerpt:

By Elizabeth Eames Roebling
DAJABON, Feb 4 2008 (IPS)

In a display of national sovereignty, Haiti is continuing an embargo against the importation of all poultry products from the Dominican Republic, prompting some Dominicans to boycott border markets in northwest Dajabon province.

The border crossing at Dajabon market. Credit: Cesareo Guillermo/PADF

It remains in place despite two official Dominican delegation visits to Haiti and one official inspection visit of Dominican poultry sites by Haitian agricultural and health officials.

Embargos on imports from nations affected by avian flu are common internationally. The United States has in place an embargo on the importation of poultry products from 37 countries, including parts of France and England. Yet all of these nations had outbreaks of the most virulent strain of the virus, H5N1. The strain of flu found in the Dominican birds was H5N2, which has never crossed between birds and humans. Imports from the Dominican Republic are not under United States embargo.

The outbreak of the avian flu H5N2 in two discrete areas inside the Dominican Republic was first detected on Dec. 10, 2007 following a routine inspection of fighting cocks being exported to Colombia. Dominican authorities slaughtered the 114 affected birds and notified the international authorities, OIE (Organisation Internationale des Epizootes) on Dec. 12, and the Pan American Health Organisation on Dec. 21 after confirmation of the flu at laboratories in the United States.

Imports of live poultry and poultry products from the Dominican Republic were quickly banned by Puerto Rico, Colombia, Guyana, the Turks and Caicos, St. Martin and neighbouring Haiti. The embargo by Puerto Rico has since been lifted.

On the OIE website, the avian flu outbreak in the Dominican Republic is listed as ongoing.

In 1982, an outbreak of swine flu inside the Dominican Republic led the United States to pressure the Haitian government to slaughter all of its indigenous small Creole pigs, the backbone of the Haitian economy. This episode marked a swift descent into deeper poverty and malnutrition in Haiti.

A recent 10-hour long call-in radio programme in the Dominican border town of Dajabon aired the traditional hostilities between these two nations. Relations are particularly sore between Ouanaminthe, Haiti and Dajabon, site of the 1937 massacre of tens of thousands of Haitians under Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the confiscation of fertile farming land of the Maribaux plain for the Dominican Groupo M free trade zone, and continued forced deportations of undocumented Haitians.

According to a report issued by the Jesuit Society on Immigration, Dominican exports to Haiti had already fallen almost 8 percent in the first half of last year, with Haiti falling from the number three importer of Dominican products to sixth place. However, Haiti has been the receiver of 52 percent of the Dominican egg production, commerce that reaches into the millions of dollars annually.

Dominican poultry and egg producers have taken extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of their poultry, including washing all trucks entering and leaving their facilities and having their workers change clothes upon entering work.

Dominican authorities had no fears that the flu would infect their own domestic production and assured the local population that plenty of chickens would be available for the traditional Christmas dinner.

Because the Haitian embargo included not only live birds and eggs but all products made from chickens, including soup and salami, and since the avian flu virus is not transmitted in properly cooked eggs or poultry, Dominicans suspect that the embargo has more to do with trade than health.

Asked whether the embargo is to show the strength of the Haitian state vis-à-vis the Dominican Republic, rather than a matter of health, Jean Baptiste Bien-Aime, Haitian Consul in Dajabon, told IPS: “This is not what we are looking for in Haiti. We took this decision to protect both the human and poultry population. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are both members of the OMSA (Organisation Mundial por la Sanidad Animal) (World Organisation for Animal Health) and they have both signed international agreements in which the OIE under the OMSA is the only organisation which can certify that this virus is under control.”

He said that OMSA had done so on Jan. 7, but that “the final clearance has not come through”.

“I hope that this resolves itself quickly. This has not done much good either in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. On the contrary, in Haiti, neither chickens nor eggs are being eaten since we are not sure where they come from. Haiti has more interest than the Dominican Republic in having this issue resolved,” he said.

Answering a question about the Dajabon-Ouanaminthe market, which is held twice weekly on the Dominican side, Bien-Aime said: “It would be better if it were held one day a week in Haiti and one day a week here. That is more just.”

Dominican merchants carried out a threat to boycott Haitian goods at the market Monday. Thirty to 40 percent of all trade between these two nations passes through this northern boundary, according to Haroldo Dilla Alfonso in the newly released book, “Ciudades en la Frontera” (Santo Domingo, 2008).

However, Monday is Carnival in the north of Haiti so that not much trade would be expected.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PESHAWAR, Jan 24 2008 (IPS)

Although genetic sequencing tests conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of samples from a man who died of H5N1 avian influenza do not confirm human-to-human transmission, authorities in this region, bordering Afghanistan, are taking no chances.

Ilyas, 28, a livestock official was admitted to the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) on Nov. 22 with symptoms of bird flu and died on Nov. 22. But when it became known that his brother, Idrees, 22, had developed similar symptoms and died four days earlier it sent alarm bells ringing through the community and health officialdom.

On Dec. 28, WHO’s headquarters in Geneva announced that a case of human-to-human virus transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but a later statement on Jan. 3 said that a ”preliminary risk assessment found no evidence of sustained or community human-to-human transmission”.

Meanwhile, KTH had received another three brothers and one cousin; all were tested positive for carrying H5N1 strain of virus.

Initially, the Ministry of Health, Islamabad dragged its feet on the result of the death of Ilyas, despite its confirmation by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad. The ministry was cautious, fearing that it would cause panic among the people, and pilgrims could face delay in flights to Saudi Arabia for Hajj.

Now it has issued an alert and started training doctors and health workers on the management of bird flu in the province. It has established two respiratory isolation units (RIUs) to cope with an emergency.

“The WHO is assisting the health department to establish two RIUs, one each at Peshawar and Abbottabad where six cases and three cases respectively of H5N1 were found,” said WHO’s Dr Saeed Akbar Khan.

In addition, the world health agency has agreed to establish two wards each at KTH and Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbotabad in NWFP, at an estimated cost of 500,000 dollars, Dr Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi, a pulmonologist and focal person for bird flu told IPS.

The WHO has urged the health and agriculture departments in the NWFP to coordinate efforts because an estimated 35 percent of the population could be at risk. In case of a pandemic, thousands of people could die, and hospitals, which together have roughly 9,000 beds, would be unable to meet the challenge.

“About 14 private rooms designated as the isolation ward are not up to the standard of the world health agency. There is no ventilation and investigation facility, such as x-rays, etc., due to which the affected patients had to be shifted to and from the ward,” Dr. Saeed Akbar Khan told IPS.

The global health agency believes the world is closer to another influenza pandemic than at any time since 1968. Last month, its experts flew into Pakistan and visited Peshawar and Abbottabad districts of NWFP where some 200,000 poultry have been culled.

Two teams collected data on the nine bird flu cases reported from the two districts in effort to determine the epidemiological link between them. While one patient died, the rest have recovered.

Dr Khalife Mahmud Bile, WHO’s country chief, said the visiting teams had validated the findings of the NIH.

Global health experts fear the virus – which has killed 211 people out of 343 infections reported since 2003 – could mutate into a form that spreads easily from one person to another, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.

WHO teams in Pakistan also investigated the possibility of human-to-human transmission in the reported cases. Since 2005, the government has confirmed the deaths of five people from bird flu.

“Stocks of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug used for influenza virus, have been rushed to the affected districts to meet any eventuality,” said Bile.

Concerned officials warn there is a need to educate ordinary people and health professionals about the risks. Most doctors are afraid of coming into contact with patients infected by the avian influenza.

According to Dr Khalid Khan of the NWFP’s livestock department, the virus flourishes in zero temperature. “There is a need to inform the people, especially those associated with the poultry businesses, about the preventive steps,” he added.

Up to December, Pakistan reported 79 outbreaks of bird flu, the last on Nov. 29 in Murree, Punjab province. Of these, 53 outbreaks involved commercial and backyard poultry.

The NWFP, which houses 85 percent of the country’s poultry farms, is introducing a law aimed at protecting people from bird flu, confirmed Shah Rukh Khan, secretary agriculture and livestock department.

Under the proposed legislation the sale of poultry would be permitted only in designated places. Poultry farms not be allowed in residential areas and poultry waste would be compulsorily buried in deep ditches.

Bird flu has crippled the provincial government. An estimated two million dollars has been paid in compensation to poultry owners who have suffered losses.

Excerpt:

By Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA, Jan 23 2008 (IPS)

When nine out West Bengal state’s 19 districts were declared on Wednesday to be in the grip of a bird flu outbreak, it belied Chief Minister Buddhadeb Battacharya’s assertions, earlier in the week, that the spread of the deadly H5N1 virus was well under control.

Seven days after the outbreak was first reported in the Birbhum and South Dinajpur districts, the virus had spread through half of West Bengal which has a population of 80 million people. Culling operations were reported to be sluggish, amidst concerns voiced for the socio-economic impact on farmers and impoverished villagers who count backyard poultry among their valuables.

“There was a delay of nearly a week’s time for notices to be sent to us, but now things have been put on track,” union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters in New Delhi on Tuesday.

At least 100,000 birds had died of the virus before help was sought from the centre and from other states to handle culling operations and possible spread to human beings.

Officials in West Bengal admit that the outbreak could have been handled better. “We have a total of nine districts in the grip of bird flu. With northern Cooch Behar and southern Hooghly districts added on Wednesday, we can say that the virus has wreaked havoc through the length and breadth of the state,” state animal resources development minister Anisur Rahman said.

West Bengal must cull over 2.1 million birds, mostly backyard poultry, in the next few days if the virus is to be stopped from spreading beyond the nine districts that include Murshidabad, Burdwan, Nadia, Malda and Bankura.

But estimates released officially say that only 300,000 birds have been slaughtered so far. Even that figure is being challenged by journalists and others who toured the affected districts.

Officials in Malda, about 350 km from Kolkata, confirmed on Wednesday that culling could not even start in the district because of lack of staff and infrastructure and the absence of a pre-culling awareness campaign in the villages.

Reports from other districts said the efforts were ham-handed and marred by various factors in a state where 72 percent of the 80 million people live in rural areas and raise their poultry as part of the family.

It does not help that West Bengal shares a long and porous border with Bangladesh where there have been several outbreaks already. Authorities have now ordered the border sealed with paramilitary troops charged with ensuring that birds are not smuggled in.

Nepal, which lies to the north of West Bengal, has banned the import of poultry from India.

While the federal government has openly criticised West Bengal for failing to act in a timely manner, provincial authorities speak of practical difficulties. ‘’To convince people to hand over backyard poultry in the villages is not easy,” Rahman said.

In India, an outbreak of bird flu was first reported in the Nandurbar district of western Maharashtra in 2006. But that outbreak could be dealt with swiftly and a million birds were slaughtered with no resistance because it had occurred in a poultry farm. Another outbreak in the north-eastern state of Manipur last year was also quickly contained.

In West Bengal, when the men in masks and protective gear first reached the affected areas, they appeared like aliens to villagers who were unaware of what was happening in their state.

Many were unconvinced of the dangers. “We cooked and ate our chickens when we heard they would be killed by the government officials anyway. We have not heard much about the symptoms or the disease,” said Lakhu Sheikh of Tentulia village in Birbhum district.

Tentulia is one of the villages in the worst-hit Birbhum district where people resisted culling operations. Many even managed to smuggle out their poultry, health workers said.

However, in many other areas people quietly brought in hens, ducks and eggs and collected compensation slips.

The outbreak of bird flu has cast an ominous shadow on the state’s socio-economic fabric. Reports said that 28-year-old Ananda Haldar of Malda district, a poultry dealer, committed suicide on Sunday by jumping in front of an advancing train.

Ananda had not sold a single bird in the past five days and was depressed, his elder brother Prabhat said.

According to the West Bengal poultry welfare association president, Sheikh Nazrul Islam, the industry has suffered losses worth 25 million dollars over the past week.

“Culling is slow. The police is harassing us by intercepting our consignments and even demanding bribes on the one hand and on the other the adverse campaign has seriously affected the business,’’ Islam said.

“In rural areas the government itself had given one woman member in each family a brood of ten hens. Now when they are demanding them back for culling, the families are not forthcoming,” Islam said. ‘’The 125 million dollar industry has suffered its worst ever setback.’’

The only good news is that, so far, human beings have been spared. West Bengal’s health minister Surya Kanta Misra said all five samples taken from humans, suspected to be infected, have come back from top government laboratories showing negative for avian influenza. ‘’There is no cause for panic,’’ he said.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 3 2008 (IPS)

An outbreak of bird flu virus among poultry in Burma’s eastern Shan State, close to the Thai border, is being greeted with a mix of concern and relief.

The cause for relief stems from the flow of information in the military-ruled country that triggered the alarm following the death of nearly 1,000 chickens, 20 ducks and a few geese infected by the H5N1 strain of the virus in late December. Farmers in the affected areas notified local animal and public health authorities as soon as they spotted dead birds in their backyards.

‘’That was a good sign. It is very important for local communities to act this way if we are to curb the spread of avian influenza (AI),’’ says Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional coordinator for the AI project in Asia for the Asia and Pacific regional office of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). ‘’Farmers who have backyard poultry have to be part of the solution.’’

Such a lead taken by the farmers follows the education and awareness campaigns that have been conducted in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. U.N. agencies like the FAO and the staff of the South-east Asian nation’s animal and public health departments are among those heading this information campaign. ‘’There have been extensive education and awareness programmes that have targeted farmers,’’ Wantanee told IPS. ‘’It is gradually making a difference, like the recent case in the Shan State, where the farmers were the first to report the AI outbreak.’’

The Shan State, in fact, has been the focus of such education campaigns. After all, it is where AI outbreaks have been documented by the Burma’s livestock breeding and veterinary department on at least two occasions – in October and November 2007- prior to the recent outbreak, in late December.

In the first week of December, there were two training programmes, with one attracting some 800 participants, a sizeable number of who were farmers, according to the FAO. These sessions, conducted in local languages, included information on how infected poultry could be identified, what should be done if the largely backyard chickens start dying, how people should protect themselves and which authorities should be notified.

This attempt by Burma’s junta to permit the public to be involved in curtailing the spread of AI stands in contrast to the initial response of the military leaders when the deadly virus first reared its head in March 2006 near the central city of Mandalay. Burma’s citizens were denied information in the local state-owned media for the first four days after the outbreak.

But as recent reports from Vietnam reveal, AI continues to be a formidable threat even in countries that have won praise for mounting education and awareness campaigns that have been in place for a longer period and over a wider area than Burma. In late December, two farms in southern Vietnam were hit by bird flu, leading to the slaughter of hundreds of geese, according to the animal health department.

Vietnam was one of the South-east Asian nations badly affected by AI when the current outbreak began in the winter of 2003. By the end of 2005, 42 of its people had had died out of 93 who had been infected by the virus. In addition, some 44 million birds, nearly 17 percent of the country’s poultry population, had died or been slaughtered by December 2005.

But an intensive education, vaccination and culling programme was launched towards the end of 2005 to stall this deadly trend. The drive to change public behaviour also forced the closure of the country’s ubiquitous wet markets, where live or freshly killed chickens are sold. And it paid off during most of 2006, with the country not having a single reported case of AI among poultry.

However, last year saw Vietnam battling AI outbreaks from the beginning of 2007. The largest slice of the dead birds were free-range ducks, which had been frequently described as ‘’silent carriers’’ of the H5N1 strain of the virus by experts, rather than getting quickly infected and dying from the disease like chickens.

The return of the bird flu virus to Vietnam and its continued presence in the worst affected country in the region, Indonesia, confirmed a belief that has worried both animal and public health experts. ‘’In Asia, the virus is actively circulating in some hotspots,’’ the FAO said in a mid-December update about the global trends in AI’s spread.

Over 60 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa have been affected by H5N1 since the beginning of the epidemic in animals in the winter of 2003, it added. ‘’Of these, 28 have experienced outbreaks during 2007, five of them for the first time: Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Togo.’’

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 215 people have died of disease out of 348 who have been infected since 2003. In 2007, there were 50 fatal cases out of 77 people who fell ill. The fatalities were in Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Nigeria and Vietnam. Indonesia has seen 94 people die out of 116 reported cases since 2004.

In November last year, Burma recorded its first human case of bird flu, a seven-year-old girl from a village in the Shan State. She was infected following an outbreak of AI among the poultry in her village.

Public health experts fear that the H5N1 strain of the virus could mutate into a flu that could be easily passed between humans, triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions. This fear is rooted in the fact that the human immune system lacks the strength to fight infections caused by the H5N1 strain of the AI virus.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Nov 30 2007 (IPS)

As the temperature drops and another cool season approaches, attention is turning to Vietnam’s duck population, suspected to have become vulnerable to the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus.

The deaths of large numbers of free-range ducks through November appears to confirm the view that they are no more ‘’silent carriers’’ of the H5N1 virus, as was thought to be the case after the current outbreak of AI began in the winter of 2003. In the Cao Bang province, in the northern mountains of the country, 60 ducks from a flock of 82, and 12 chickens from a flock of 17, died over a five-day period, this month.

‘’Free range ducks didn’t show signs of the virus unlike chickens, which were getting infected and dying,’’ says Jeffery Gilbert, senior technical advisor on AI for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). ‘’Free-range ducks were considered silent carriers of H5N1 up to two-and-a-half years ago.’’

But the high mortality rate among ducks during the two main AI outbreaks in the South-east Asian country this year has forced animal health experts into a rethink. ‘’Nearly three-fourths of the cases reported in Vietnam in 2007 have been free range ducks,’’ Gilbert said during a telephone interview from Ho Chi Minh City. ‘’They are difficult to vaccinate and are left to roam over a three- or four-hectare area at times.’’

The U.N. agency estimates that there are some 60 million free range ducks, many of them part of small flocks owned by farmers in the southern Mekong Delta region. The ducks are often let to roam in the rice fields where they play a useful role, particularly during the harvest season, by eating snails, pests and insects attracted to the paddy ready to be reaped.

But the ducks are also found along roads and pathways, which can contribute to the spread of the virus, since it can be borne on the tyres or parts of vehicles or by people coming into contact with the infected ducks. ‘’The ducks also mix regularly with wild birds in some areas or migratory birds,’’ added Gilbert.

Concerns about Vietnam’s duck population – which was the theme of a two-day meeting held this week in Ho Chi Minh City – also brings to the fore another troubling feature about the H5N1 strain of the virus. It continues to be a threat in some countries even if no poultry deaths are reported over a long period due to successful containment programmes.

Vietnam, in fact, helps to illustrate this reality. It succeeded in having no bird flu outbreaks through most of 2006, largely due to a national programme that included culling of poultry, vaccinating the chickens, shutting down open chicken markets and an awareness campaign to end local habits that could help spread virus. Last year also saw the country not record a single human case of the deadly virus.

But a new wave of H5N1 infections recorded in the poultry and duck populations shortly after Christmas in 2006 lasted till the end of January. Another wave of infections began in mid-May and has continued without abating. According to the department of animal health, 34 provinces in the country have been hit by H5N1.

Consequently, it has also impacted humans, with seven cases record this year, of which four turned fatal. That brought to 46 the number of deaths in Vietnam to H5N1, making it the second worst hit country.

Neighbouring Indonesia tops the list of human fatalities, with 91 deaths out of 113 people who fell ill with the bird flu virus since 2005. There have been 33 deaths recorded this year out of 38 people infected with the virus. Thailand, the region’s other country that has been hit, has witnessed 17 deaths out of 25 cases since 2004, but none of them were recorded this year.

Globally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recorded 206 deaths out of 335 who were infected with H5N1 in 12 countries, which span Central Asia, Africa, North-east Asia and South-east Asia.

The current outbreak of bird flu has spread to 60 countries, the United Nations and the World Bank revealed in a report released at the world body’s New York headquarters on Thursday. Of that, the virus is entrenched in at least six countries, of which Vietnam and Indonesia are two.

Over a three-year period, H5N1 has spread beyond East Asia, where the current outbreak was first reported, to North and West Africa, in central Europe and as far west as England, reveals the report, ‘Responses to Avian Influenza and State of Pandemic Readiness’, which will be taken up for discussion during ministerial-level international meeting on bird flu to be held from Dec. 4-6 in New Delhi.

‘’We have some major anxieties about the extent to which countries’ pandemic preparedness plans are really capable of being operationalised,’’ Dr. David Nabarro, the senior U.N. official coordinating the global campaign against AI, was quoted in a media statement. ‘’When the pandemic strikes, viruses will not understand borders, and they will spread to all countries and all people of the world will be at risk.’’

The new report, which studied the AI and pandemic preparedness in 143 countries, adds to the call that has been made since 2004 that countries must strengthen efforts to deal with the threat of the H5N1 virus mutating into a form that will rapidly spread among humans. Were that to happen, the WHO has warned, millions of people could die.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, Nov 6 2007 (IPS)

It may look like everything is going against them but with a little bit of luck, lots of hard work and creativity, small poultry farmers who have been affected by avian flu outbreaks have a good chance of economic survival, say experts here.

One of the biggest myths is the widespread belief that the onset of avian flu – which has often been blamed on open and backyard farming – means that large-scale and commercial poultry production is the only way to go in the coming years, Samuel Jutzi of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in an interview at the end of a global conference here Tuesday.

“There is still a place for the local supply of poultry, particularly in developing countries,” Jutzi, the director of FAO’s animal production and health division, told the conference entitled ‘Poultry in the 21st Century: Avian Influenza and Beyond’ here.

“We are still seeing a substantial production at the village levels of poultry products and there is a continuing demand for variety in terms of production,” he explained.

Attended by commercial and small-scale producers, traders, research and development partners, the FAO conference aims to “explore and advise on the best scenarios for the future of the poultry sector”, especially in expanding and meeting global demand for poultry products.

Small-scale poultry industry, including backyard farming, suffered a double-whammy following the bird flu outbreak that started in 2003 in Asia, and spread to Europe and elsewhere. Many of these businesses closed down after their flocks were suspected of having the H5N1 virus, thus pushing up demand for poultry products worldwide. The rising cost of feed and stringent biosecurity measures have also become scourges for these smallholders.

Jutzi says that small-scale producers have been marginalised to a large extent in the development of the poultry sector. “However, these producers surface again in the shape of organic production, lifestyle choice production where families, all of a sudden, have a few chickens not out of economic need but to satisfy specific requirements and demands,” he added.

He cautions, however, that one has to be careful in assessing the situation, especially when it involves economies where there are very rapid growth rates and thus leave the smallholders’ opportunities “rather squeezed”.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Dr Clare Narrod, key changes poultry production in the world – such as high demand, population growth and urbanisation – put a lot of pressure on the smallholders.

“For instance, the increased demand for ensuring delivery of animal sourced food has a negative effect on smallholders,” she said. “They may not be able to pass or meet import and production requirements, and not have enough marketing channels due to low trust level among the clients.”

To be able to compete, they need to have better and new feed, have access to temperature-controlled housing and be trained in how to better manage disease control measures.

But large-scale poultry farmers and smallholders need to get their act together, with the help of the government and the private sector, if they want to meet future challenges, many participants explained.

“Historically, poultry production has been used as a tool for development and have had lots of support. Now, more than ever, support perhaps can come in the form of assistance of organisations to producers in accessing markets, more than in terms of technologies. There is a need to organise women and farmers’ groups to produce sufficient quantities of poultry products. The management of wet markets via an organised community is also necessary,” said Jutzi.

In China, for instance, Beijing’s Chinese Poultry Science Society president Dr Yijun Han predicts that demand for poultry products will continue to rise and that meat consumption will double in 2020. “From 77 billion yuan (10 billion US dollars) in 1995, the government has increased its budget for poultry production development to 300 billion yuan (40 billion dollars) in 2005,” he said.

FAO senior officer Anni McLeod lauds Thailand for having adapted well to such changes and challenges. Before avian flu struck the country in 2003, Thailand was fifth among the world’s largest poultry exporters, exporting 70 percent of local poultry stocks.

“It is also seriously looking at compartmentalisation, which determines disease-free zones, and was probably the only country that conducted ‘x-ray surveys’, where they visited every house to determine the extent of the damage brought by the outbreak,” she added.

Jutzi urges governments to develop opportunities for small-scale farmers and realise that commercial-scale operations “may not be as useful for the development of the regions”.

“In rural development, poultry has something to contribute” and this is where small-scale operations common in homes and rural areas in wide area of Asia can be useful. “In some conditions where the economy is growing very fast, smallholders don’t have a chance at this point,” Jutzi pointed out. “Only those who know how to adjust can survive.”

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
CHIANG RAI, Thailand, Oct 16 2007 (IPS)

Four years after the first outbreak of avian flu, experts say many key questions hover around the disease: what kind of contact between fowl and humans leads to its transmission to people, and how effective can poultry vaccination really be.

The H5N1 strain of avian flu, which has led to the culling of millions of birds and poultry with compensation payments to farmers running into millions of dollars, is now adjudged to be endemic in places like Indonesia and Vietnam.

In truth, “there are still huge gaps in our knowledge of the virus”, explained Richard Brown, public health specialist from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Bangkok.

“The outbreak has gone on for a long time (since 2003), but there are no breaking developments in the research of the virus,” he said at a discussion on the cross-border challenges of avian flu at a workshop for journalists in the Mekong region here recently.

As of Oct. 12, 2007, 331 human cases of avian flu in 12 countries in East Asia, Europe and Africa have been reported to the WHO. Of these, 203 have resulted in deaths. Indonesia has been the worst-hit with 87 deaths out of 109 cases, or a mortality rate of 80 percent.

Unresolved questions include at exactly what stage do humans get infected with avian flu – on handling the sick birds, or from eating birds that were sick and died?

There is not enough knowledge about individual human cases of avian flu which have occurred at different times of the year and in different places, Brown explained. Not even the incubation period among humans – which WHO officials put at between two to 10 days – is certain.

Media reports focus on what might happen if the virus mutates to become freely transmittable to and among humans, and many predict huge numbers of deaths if this happens.

In terms of death statistics so far, human avian influenza is not a huge public health issue. As Brown put it, there are 40 million people living with HIV around the world. More people die of traffic accidents in Vietnam than of avian flu.

But a mix of fear, disaster and the unknown makes avian flu a topic of concern. Other factors add to this – that avian flu marks the arrival of a new emerging infection has a large impact on the poultry industry, a high mortality rate, and the potential to cross national boundaries.

“There was a perception of a dangerous virus moving with ease through the region, and predictions of gloom and doom rapidly made the outbreak news,” Brown said. “The prediction of a pandemic created a fertile ground for speculation and rumours.”

In the case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03, after the initial panic there was soon a lot of information to identify risk factors linked to it. But this has not happened with avian flu, added Brown, who was also involved in addressing SARS in China.

Brown emphasised the importance of the availability of reliable information, likening the spread of rumours to a pandemic. “The truth becomes distorted and, like a virus, becomes mutated,” he said.

There also remain different views on key aspects of the avian flu issue, such as the role of wild birds and the impact of vaccination of poultry against avian flu.

While Brown said that wild birds are unlikely to have a big role in spreading avian flu, Parntep Ratanakorn of Mahidol University said at the same seminar that he thought otherwise.

Different countries have also chosen different responses to avian flu. The fact that Thailand’s neighbours, China and Vietnam, vaccinate their poultry has put this country’s ban on vaccination under closer scrutiny.

Thailand has avoided vacciantion, largely because it is among the largest exporters of poultry products – and vaccinated products cannot be exported. Over 90 percent of Thai poultry exports go to the European Union. The country earns some one billion dollars a year from exporting more than 300,000 tonnes of cooked and semi-cooked chicken meat.

The stagnation in research can be traced to countries’ unwillingness to share information, especially when they see themselves as losing face if an outbreak occurs.

In previous outbreaks in Thailand, some blamed neighbouring Laos for being the source of avian flu. At one point, this led to a postponement of a senior officials’ meeting to discuss bird flu.

The vaccination question is not a black-and-white issue, explained Christine Ahlers, animal production officer from the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Parntep added that the decision to use vaccination entails not just the actual use of vaccines on birds, but monitoring its use well, deciding and controlling in which outbreak areas to use them.

If a country can do all these things, apart from undertaking bio-safety measures in poultry farms, then it can be a viable option, he explained.

“Vaccination is not the final solution to controlling avian flu,” Ahlers said. “By vaccinating you prevent them from getting sick, but not from carrying the virus.” This is why vaccinated poultry meat is unexportable, because the virus can still be spread through such meat.

Vaccination is a “useful tool to control avian flu in areas where it is endemic,” but it alone cannot eradicate the virus, she explained. She believes that if outbreaks of avian flu are sporadic, eradication is still the best option.

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 3 2007 (IPS)

The search for answers to the spread of the deadly bird flu virus is calling into question a long-held practice in science where recognition is given to positive test results, say experts meeting in the Thai capital.

It stems from lack of clear evidence to link wild birds to the cases of avian influenza (AI) that have infected poultry populations across countries and continents, they add. Yet this view has not taken flight because of ‘’a bias in science’’ against ‘’negative test results’’.

”Science by its nature is about discovery, about finding something positive and concrete. But there is a problem with science when studies offer a negative result that reveals so much,’’ says William Karesh, head of the Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS). ‘’There is no provision in science to prove that a negative outcome may be correct.’’

And when faced with repeated negative results on tests, scientists ‘’don’t publish that information in a journal,’’ Karesh explained to IPS, adding that there is only a provision in science for publishing the outcome of ‘’positive results’’ or ‘’new discoveries’’ from tests.

‘’It is an interesting paradigm that we are faced with,’’ adds Scott Newman, international wildlife coordinator for AI at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), in an interview. ‘’Positive results from a test are important to understand the ecology of the disease (AI). But in this case, negative results are contributing as much in providing an understanding of this disease.’’

This is a picture that is proving too hard to ignore, the experts admitted on the first day of a three-day conference aiming to share information about the role of wild birds in the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus in poultry. Representatives from 12 countries in the Asian region, the continent worst hit by bird flu, are attending a mix of scientific and non-scientific sessions.

‘’The reports of negative findings from the countries participating has been fascinating,’’ says Karesh, who is also the director of the field veterinary programme for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a nature lobby based in New York. ‘’But little of that will be published in scientific journals.’’

Nor, adds the U.N. food agency, would the results of the tests carried out in wild birds for the H5N1 virus. ‘’Over 350,000 samples from healthy wild birds sampled in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas during 2005-2007 have been negative for (the) H5N1 virus,’’ a FAO background note revealed. ‘’Only a few studies have reported healthy wild birds to be positive for the virus (sparrows, one grebe and a few ducks) in one location.’’

‘’We have done lot in the last three years globally through wildlife surveillance,’’ Newman said at a press conference. ‘’But we have not found a wild bird reservoir for this disease.’’

What is more, there is increasing evidence to suggest that ‘’wild birds are actually the victims,’’ he added, referring to cases where migrant birds have got infected from the spill-over from poultry farms. ‘’The virus can enter the wild birds this way, a case of poultry infecting the wild birds.’’

Free ranging birds that have died from the H5N1 virus are divided into three categories, states the FAO. They are migratory water bird species; bridge species, ‘’which may be non-migratory’’ but can ‘’play a role in transporting (the) disease from poultry to wildlife:’’ and predatory birds that ‘’most likely acquired (the) disease from depredating or scavenging sick or dead birds.’’

The experts hope that such a reality will challenge the view that has gained ground since the current outbreak of AI began in South-east Asia in the winter of 2003 that wild birds, such as migrant water fowl, are to blame for AI’s spread in poultry populations. Governments in the region have gone on record to target wild birds whenever there is a new outbreak of bird flu, often causing concern to nature and wildlife enthusiasts.

‘’We should not be targeting wild birds, killing wild birds to stop avian influenza,’’ says Newman. ‘’FAO believes that the management of this disease has to be concentrated at the level of agriculture and poultry.’’

This strengthens the argument of the FAO that the current spread of AI can be traced to the movement of poultry and poultry products in an open and unregulated manner, both within a country and across international boundaries. Poor bio-security measures in poultry farms across Asia have also been identified as another route for the virus spreading.

Since the current outbreak of AI, some 150 million ducks and poultry have been culled in Asia in response to the virus, states the FAO. Its impact on people has resulted in 320 cases reported in 12 countries, of which 193 people have died. The worst affected has been Indonesia.

The strain of the virus in poultry in the region remains largely the same as the one detected when AI swept through Asian countries in 2003.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
IMPHAL, Manipur, Aug 7 2007 (IPS)

For the past fortnight, the menu on the Manipur state government’s table has changed from the staple of fighting HIV infections to stamping out an outbreak of avian influenza.

That effort has paid off. On Monday the state, which shares a 1,600 km-long border with Burma, was confident enough to lift a ban on the import of poultry feed.

With a population of 2.2 million people Manipur already has and estimated 15,000 HIV positive people and 800 full-blown AIDS cases keeping the health department on a high alert. The state government additionally grapples with a long-standing armed separatist insurgency.

Eleven days after the bird flu outbreak was made public, around 350,000 birds, including some of the state governor’s imported ducks, had been slaughtered and stamping out operations carried out. Around 30,000 eggs and 23,000 bags of chicken feed were also destroyed.

Nearly 1,700 state health and veterinary personnel divided into 74 Rapid Response Teams (RRT) mounted a surveillance programme covering 60,000 households (300,000 people) across 86 villages within a five km-radius of the focus of the outbreak, Chingmeirong village outside Imphal. Over 40,000 households have been covered by the surveillance teams till date.

Participating are 34 RRTs of the state veterinary and animal husbandry services and another 40 run by the health department, each comprising one medical officer, three health supervisors and 30 health workers.

The possible presence of the virus came to the notice of the state veterinary and animal husbandry services department on Jul. 10 when a poultry farmer, Sagolsem Irananda, reported the death of about 132 chickens within a span of six days in his farm at Chingmeirong.

A fortnight later, on Jul. 25, the Manipur government declared the outbreak of the disease after samples sent to the high security animal disease laboratory in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) and the National Institute of Virology, Pune (Maharashtra) were found carrying the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

Action to control the spread of the virus drew from the experience of an outbreak in western Maharashtra state last year. The state animal husbandry department had already released an action plan to tackle a possible outbreak by November 2006.

Following confirmation, both the state and central government swung into action. The central government quickly sanctioned Rs four million (99,000 US dollars) for immediate relief and two respiratory ventilators were flown into Imphal from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), located in the national capital of New Delhi.

The prestigious Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) hospital here already has seven such ventilators but requests were made to the central government for eight more as a precautionary step.

Apart from officials of the central government, health personnel from the neighbouring states of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura, West Bengal as well as Maharashtra joined the surveillance teams.

The first phase of culling within the five km-radius of Chingmeirong was completed on Aug. 1 and stamping out operation began the next day. “The culling will continue for another ten days, while the monitoring will continue for three months from the day the outbreak was detected,” state health secretary P. Vaiphei told IPS.

“The culling process is taking time because we have to focus not only on poultry farms but also on backyard poultry through house-to-house surveys,” Vaiphei added.

Delays were also caused by poultry farmers and some non-government organisations (NGOs) protesting against inadequate compensation. The state government is paying Rs 30 per broiler (75 cents), although the market rate per kg is two dollars.

“We’re ruined, all the chicks are gone,” said Irananda (one name) in whose farm the virus was first detected. His entire family had been heavily dependent on the poultry farm which has no insurance cover. Other poultry farmers around Imphal who had taken loans to run poultry farms were also affected.

Estimates made by the Northeastern Poultry and Egg Federation (NEPEF), the poultry sector in Manipur state, worth 250 million dollars, has suffered losses of 165 million dollars. Despite the economic loss, Manipur health services minister Pheiroijam Parijat was satisfied that the situation was ‘’well under control’’.

Meanwhile, authorities are yet to discover the source of the outbreak although neighbouring Burma and Bangladesh were strong suspects.

“It’s hard to find out the source as yet,’’ said Dr Dorendra, director, state veterinary and animal husbandry department. Dorendra, who has been supervising the entire culling and stamping out processes, said: ‘’It might have come across the porous Indo-Burma border.”

Burma first reported an outbreak in March 2006. Fresh outbreaks were identified in the country early this year too, the latest being in July on a farm northwest of the commercial capital of Rangoon around the same time as the outbreak in Manipur.

Following the outbreak in Burma the state government banned poultry products from the country as early as March. But poultry traders in Imphal confided that around a hundred chickens and quantities of eggs continued to be brought over the border ‘routinely’ every day.

One question that has come up is if the H5N1 bird flu-causing virus mutates into a variety that is able to be transmitted easily between humans, could it cause a pandemic of disastrous proportions in Manipur where there are large numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS and having compromised immunity?

Though the H5N1 strain remains largely a bird virus, experts are apprehensive that its mutating ability might spark off an influenza pandemic in which millions could die. The virus is known to have infected at least 319 people worldwide since 2003 and has killed at least 192, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Manipur health secretary Vaiphei however ruled out any report of human transmission in the state. “There have been very few cases of human infection all over the world. We have been conducting health monitoring surveillance too. The clinical samples of four persons who were earlier suspected of having contracted bird flu and were quarantined have been declared negative for avian influenza virus by RT-PCR (Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction) test,” he said.

A 2005 BBC news report cited well-known virologist Dr Robert Webster of St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis as saying that bird flu could readily mutate into a pandemic form if it infects people with AIDS. He said it was possible that people with AIDS who have depressed immune systems could harbour the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

When contacted recently on e-mail Webster however clarified that ‘’the issue of the vulnerability of people with HIV/AIDS at this time is theoretical. We know that humans on immunosuppressant drugs can shed influenza viruses for prolonged periods. However, if those persons with HIV/AIDS are infected with H5N1, they could be more vulnerable’’.

Dr Priyokumar, who is in charge of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) at the state-run JN Hospital says, “What you have to basically realise is that bird flu will affect a healthy person and a person with HIV/AIDS in the same way.’’

Vaiphei adds, “Bird flu does not spread from human to human in the same way as HIV/AIDS. When the virus was detected in Maharashtra earlier, there was no human infection. So it would be rather premature to speculate on that (the vulnerability of HIV/AIDS infected people to bird flu). Even if human infections do occur, it doesn’t spread from man to man. So we can take comfort on that. The infection may be restricted and controlled. There is no cause for alarm or panic.”

Rajkumar Tiken, secretary general of the Social Awareness Service Organisation (SASO), a leading voluntary agency that works with HIV positive people, explained: “Being HIV positive doesn’t always mean that your immune system is weak. The strength or weakness of your immune system will be shown by your CD4 count.”

According to WHO guidelines when the CD4 count falls below 200, the patient is to be put on ART. Normal CD4 counts in adults range from 500 to 1,500 cells per cubic mm of blood. The CD4 count also shows how far AIDS disease has advanced (the stage of the disease), and helps predict the risk of complications and debilitating infections.

“Yes, there are a host of opportunistic infections which an HIV positive person has to guard against. But we are not aware of any link or greater susceptibility to bird flu,” Tiken said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, Apr 15 2007 (IPS)

Grade 7 student Sakulrathna Muadkum says she knows what avian influenza is. “I saw posters of it and I will simply not eat chicken that died of the flu,” the pupil at Watnuannoradit School, here in Thai capital, said nonchalantly.

Over in Ranong in southern Thailand, a shy Htet Htet said in his native Burmese: “My teacher told us to wash our hands often so we don’t get sick. I will also not eat chicken if I think it died of bird flu.”

The 12-year-old student of Victoria Learning Centre in Ranong, a southern Thai province on the border with Burma, added that he has seen colourful posters about bird flu in his community.

Efforts like these to reach young people and inform them about how to prevent the H5N1 strain of avian influenza from affecting their communities and transmission to humans are underway, whether or not bird flu is in the news headlines or not.

Prevention is the key word, according to 2.1 million US dollar nationwide campaign in Thailand, led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), to spread awareness about the H5N1 virus among schoolchildren.

Via two million each of colourful posters and pamphlets being distributed to 40,000 schools in Thailand, children as young as four or five years are taught simple and easy steps about avian flu and how to avoid catching the disease from dead or ill fowl.

In early February, the World Health Organisation released a study pointing to evidence that young people are more susceptible to the H5N1 avian influenza virus and are more likely to die of it than older people. The report, examining the 256 confirmed bird flu cases in 10 countries from Nov. 25, 2003 to Nov. 24, 2006, showed that the death rate was highest among the below 20- age group.

The cases of 65 children under 10 and in the 10-19 age group were recorded. Of the 60 percent case fatality rate for all age groups, 44 percent was recorded for those under five years of age, 49 percent for 5 to 9-year-olds, and 76 percent for those in the 10-19 age group.

Outbreaks of the H5N1 strain in Thailand, the world’s fourth largest poultry producer, have been occurring since 2004. In recent years, this avian flu strain has also been passed on from infected chickens and birds to human beings, raising fears of a possible pandemic. Seventeen people out of 25 human cases of avian flu have died from it in Thailand since 2004. Thirty Thai provinces have had outbreaks of avian flu from three years ago.

The message in the education material on bird flu is for young people to report dead poultry to proper authorities, to know that dead birds must be separated from healthy and live ones, to adopt frequent hand-washing and employ safe poultry cooking practices, explained Mark Thomas, UNICEF communications officer for Thailand.

Thirteen-year-old Thitima Kaowjang says she has seen the posters and is ready to follow the ministry of public health’s instructions. “I am fully aware of the dangers of bird flu and the ways to prevent its spread such as frequent washing of the hands,” she said.

“We made sure that these posters and pamphlets were simple and easy enough for any kid to understand,” Thomas explained. The materials ranged from cartoon-type illustrations of children washing hands to photos of dead chicken.

At the same time there are other organisations engaged in promoting knowledge of the right information about avian flu.

“There were people who went to our school three times and taught us about bird flu,” said 13-year-old Lin Tun, referring to World Vision staff who visited the Victoria Learning Centre in Ranong to train students about bird flu prevention.

A few schools in Bangkok, however, have yet to see a sign of these campaign materials.

“I’ve never read information about bird flu, nor have I been given advice on the issue in the school. But my students know about the issue as we’ve had discussions in class about it,” said Nick James who teaches high school students at the ThewPaingarm school.

“There is a lack of basic information right now on what to do in case bird flu strikes. I’d probably recognise the symptoms (of the disease) but I wouldn’t know how to prevent it. I don’t even know what number to call,” James explained.

Nantaporn Poungkaew, a teacher at Sri Satri Wittaya School, also has not seen any poster or pamphlet in the school. “But my students know very well about this and they talk and report about this in class. They can also get information from the Internet,” said Nantaporn who has been teaching for almost 30 years.

She, however, noted the lack of bird flu information in the media. “Kids watch a lot of TV and it’s a pity that they don’t get necessary information about bird flu there,” she said.

Apart from posters and pamphlets, UNICEF with the help of Thailand’s ministry of education is looking at integrating bird flu awareness in school curricula. UNICEF’s Katherine Imhof said that five kinds of curriculum have been designed for the kindergarten level.

Imhof says that 2.98 million posters and booklets have been distributed in schools nationwide. There are plans to develop material in languages such as Burmese and Karen in order to reach those living in refugee camps as well as migrant communities.

Among border communities, Thomas said that 10,500 pamphlets in the Burmese language and 5,500 posters in English, Karen and Burmese are being distributed. This is apart from the 30,000 health kits containing, among other things, 10 bars of soap, one washcloth, two nail clippers, four nail brushes. One household gets one kit.

Thomas said that word-of-mouth remains the most effective way to get children’s attention to the perils of avian influenza. “It’s kids communicating with kids that get the message across. They’re encouraged to ask questions among themselves and they listen to their peers.”

(*This story was written for the Avian Flu Series in the Mekong region, which appears on www.newsmekong.org. It is coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific under its Imaging Our Mekong programme.)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Apr 7 2007 (IPS)

Just two months remain before the international community is scheduled to take a critical step forward in addressing global health threats, marked by the entry into force of the updated ‘International Health Regulations’.

Described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a “key milestone in public health”, the beefed up rules will give both the WHO and states party to the regulations greater responsibilities for monitoring and responding to national health threats that have the potential to become global emergencies. The ‘International Health Regulations (2005)’ – or ‘IHR(2005)’ – revises the 1969 version of the IHR, and is the first legally binding agreement of its kind.

But while IHR(2005) looks good on paper, can it realistically be implemented in countries such as Kenya, which are already struggling to meet public health needs?

Health experts interviewed by IPS agreed that the limited resources and facilities of the East African country would present a challenge concerning the new regulations.

“We are required to report cases of diseases immediately (but) we do not have adequate laboratories. When there is a real need to get results out quickly, we cannot,” said Ahmed Ogwell, head of international health relations at the Ministry of Health.

“But that does not mean that we do not strive to meet the stipulations of IHR(2005), because the cost of not doing it is a lot higher than our cost of stretching resources. So we are stretching our resources to meet the regulations, which Kenya has signed up to.”

Information from the WHO country office in Kenya shows government has increased the national health budget from about 217 million dollars in 2001/2 to some 333 million dollars in 2006/7.

Nonetheless, certain departments that are considered critical for controlling the spread of illnesses remain underfunded, noted Ogwell. These include the port health authority, which lacks sufficient facilities to place in isolation people who have contracted infectious diseases, upon their entry into Kenya. “We have not adequately funded port health; we need three times what we have,” Ogwell said.

Shortages of staff for both public and veterinary health departments – and constraints on employing more personnel – aggravate matters.

“We have skilled personnel who are well trained. The problem is that they are old and are soon retiring and…we have not recruited any new persons for over ten years,” said Simon Kimani, chief veterinary field officer at the Department of Veterinary Services in the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development.

The dangers of this situation have been highlighted by the outbreak of avian influenza that began in south-east Asia four years ago, showing anew the need for governments to maintain their ability to monitor health threats.

Millions of chickens have been culled in an attempt to contain the H5N1 virus that is responsible for this epidemic – and which has also claimed a number of human lives. There are fears that the virus could mutate into a form that is very infectious for humans.

Kenyan authorities have responded by training farmers to be on the look out for signs of avian influenza.

“We have encouraged farmers to report any dead bird or unusual happenings on farms, for example an unusual number of birds dying en masse. Farmers have also been told how to handle dead birds,” Kimani said.

To date, no cases of avian influenza have been reported in Kenya. Hundreds of birds were found dead in Kasarani on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, last year; however, the birds were later diagnosed as having died from Newcastle disease, a highly contagious illness that is also fatal.

The African country currently in the front lines of the avian influenza epidemic is Egypt, where the number of people testing positive for the virus reportedly stood at 33 this week. Thirteen Egyptians are said to have died from bird flu since it was first detected in the country last year. The North African state reportedly also has the highest number of confirmed bird flu cases amongst humans outside of Asia.

The cross-border health threats that Kenya is grappling with also include polio, this after the country’s northern neighbour – Somalia – became re-infected with the virus in 2005.

Three cases of polio were reported recently in Eastleigh, a suburb of eastern Nairobi that is home to thousands of Somalis, many of whom remain in contact with relatives in their homeland. Each of the cases was traced back to Somalia, according to government.

Renewed conflict in Somalia has undermined efforts to halt the march of polio. A transitional government for the Horn of Africa state was inaugurated in 2004 in a bid to end more than a decade of lawlessness sparked by the toppling of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre; however, this administration has since become embroiled in a power struggle with an Islamic grouping.

“Every time war breaks out in Somalia, we have to conduct a polio campaign to ensure that children below the age of five are immunised to keep them safe,” said Ogwell. But, the “conflict in Somalia complicates our ability to respond”.

The particular risk posed by global health threats is in the spotlight this week with World Health Day (Apr. 7), which is focusing on the need for international cooperation to deal with these threats under the theme ‘Invest in health, build a safer future’.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 11 2007 (IPS)

A spell of good fortune that South-east Asia’s poorest country enjoyed for three years ran out this month. Laos has become the 11th country in the world to record a human death from the bird flu virus.

The reaction from Vientiane, soon after the death of a 15-year-old girl from a suburb of the Laotian capital, suggests that this fatality may not be the last, since the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus is reported in four areas, and spreading.

”The government is enforcing immediate and stringent interventions such as culling of all infected poultry, strengthening hospital surveillance and carrying out intensive information campaigns to educate people,” Health Minister Dr. Ponmek Dalaloy said Thursday.

To achieve that, the government in the one-party communist state announced a list of preventive measures. It urged the public to wash hands regularly with soap, eat properly cooked chicken meat and avoid ‘’any contact with sick or dead poultry” and report ‘’any sick or dead poultry to local authorities.”

‘’The virus is really unpredictable. The government is doing all it can to ensure the country’s health system is prepared,” Dida Connor, spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Laos and Vietnam office, told IPS from Vientiane. ‘’The existing public awareness campaigns have to be intensified.”

The teenage victim who had been hospitalised in the Thai town of Nong Khai, located on the Thai-Laos border and across Vientiane, was living in a suburb of the Laotian capital where the deadly virus had infected the poultry population in January. She died on Mar. 7 after being hospitalised for 19 days.

Tests are continuing to confirm if the death of a 42-year-old Laotian woman last week was also linked to avian influenza. But while they wait for answers, public health authorities in Thai provinces that border Laos have sounded the alarm for greater vigilance, since the border is porous and is separated in some parts by the waters of the Mekong river.

‘’Preventive measures along the Thai-Lao border need strengthening,” Dr. Itthipol Sungkhaeng, Nong Khai’s public health chief, told the state-run Thai News Agency this week. ‘’All hospitals and health centres along the border have been instructed to closely watch their patients.”

He called for extra precautions, since the prevailing dry season in this region results in the Mekong’s water level becoming ‘’shallower and hence more convenient for informal boat crossings.”

The other regions in land-locked Laos where the H5N1 strain of the virus have been reported include Suwanna Khet and Champasak, both towns located close to the Thai and Cambodian border. Laos is surrounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west.

To date, 168 people have died due to bird flu and 275 have been infected by the virus. Till this month’s death, Laos had remained a mystery in a region that was combating a virus spreading far and wide and leading to mounting human fatalities. Vietnam has recorded 42 deaths, Thailand 17 deaths and Cambodia has seen six deaths from bird flu. South-east Asian giant Indonesia has been the worst hit with 63 human fatalities from avian influenza virus out of 81 reported cases.

Over 50 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe have had poultry populations affected by the virus since the current outbreak began in the winter of 2003.

Concerns about poverty-stricken countries like Laos having difficulty to cope with the challenges posed by this deadly virus have dogged international public and animal health experts since South-east Asia emerged as the epicentre of the H5N1 strain. After all, the WHO had warned that the virus could mutate into a flu that is easily passed between humans, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.

These uncertainties were addressed at a major international donor conference in Beijing in January last year, where countries led by the United States pledged 1.9 billion US dollars to combat the spread of bird flu across the globe. The amounts promised by Washington, 330 million dollars, and the European Union, over 250 million dollars, bettered the expectations of the World Bank, which had asked donors for 1.5 billion dollars to wage a global campaign to defeat the virus.

Laos was guaranteed 5.5 million dollars of that purse for one- and three-year projects, of which 1.5 million dollars have been spent. ‘’The funds were needed because animal health services had not enjoyed the support they required,” says Robyn Alders, technical advisor at the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Asia-Pacific regional office. ‘’The country lacked trained veterinary staff.”

The injection of international aid has helped to train local veterinarians to build urgently needed surveillance systems and laboratories to track the virus, she added in an interview. ‘’The government has responded quickly to these new challenges.”

The long run of luck that Laos had enjoyed stemmed from the communities in a country with a 5.4 million population being spread out over a vast rural area and having limited contact, according to the food agency. It had one bird flu outbreak in March 2004 and a second one in July 2006.

The outbreak that began in January confirms a pattern in Laos in which sick poultry are detected in places with large concentrations of people.

‘’The recent outbreaks have spread along roads and in urban areas, where you have a high concentration of people and poultry,” says Alders. ‘’Both free-range chickens and poultry at commercial sites have been affected.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JAKARTA, Feb 24 2007 (IPS)

Not content with the government’s public awareness campaign against bird flu, a group of parents in Bekasi regency has taken the initiative in educating the poor and the marginalised about the deadly disease.

”The government’s campaign against bird flu does not reach the people at the grassroots level,” said Rulie Bambang, head of the Jami’iyyah Communication Forum, an association of parents of some 8,000 children studying in 10 prominent Al-Azhar Islamic schools in Bekasi, West Java province.

Earlier this month, the forum organised a talk show on avian influenza featuring Lula Kamal, a medical doctor and actress with the Indonesia National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (Komnas FBPI). The audience included female members of the association, school drivers, students and teachers.

”We hope to share with our neighbours the knowledge that we have so that there would be no more bird flu deaths,” said Antari Loemaksono, one of the parents attending the talk show.

Before the four-hour talk show began at the school in Kemang Pratama, the audience watched the film titled, ‘Race against the Killer Flu.’ The film, in English, carried subtitles in the Bahasa Indonesia language.

The talk show addressed basic information about avian influenza. Kamal, for instance, explained to the audience that the H5NI is a highly pathogenic strain of the avian influenza virus, which causes disease in birds, and cats. In rare cases, she added, the virus can also spread to humans.

She also instructed the audience not to touch sick or dying poultry. If they do, they should immediately wash their hands with soap and seek medical help if they develop a fever with flu-like symptoms.

”Chicken and eggs are safe to eat, but should be cooked well,” she said, advising the audience to pass on the message to their maids and cooks. Kamal also described the clinical symptoms of the disease in birds and in humans.

After Kamal did her slide presentation, she was bombarded questions.

”Why is bird flu present in Indonesia, but not in other countries?” asked a student. “Which part of our body is affected by the H5N1 virus?” asked another. “What is the difference between H5N1 virus and HIV?” one student wanted to know.

”Can vaccination alone stop the outbreak of the virus among birds?” asked a housewife. “How do humans get infected with the H5N1 virus?” asked another woman.

According to the mothers who attended the forum, the government’s current bird flu public awareness campaign falls short in educating the poor who usually keep poultry in their homes.

“The government relies too much on television campaigns, when in fact not all people in the villages have a television set,” Rulie argued. “But even if they do, Indonesian viewers switch to other channels during commercial breaks.”

In September 2006, the Indonesian government launched a four-month bird flu awareness campaign. Using television and radio spots, flyers and billboards, the campaign focused on four messages: – do not touch sick or dying birds, wash hands and utensils with soap before eating or cooking. – separate poultry from humans. – go immediately to a health clinic in case fever with flu-like symptoms.

However, the government campaign is considered ineffective and no other country has counted more human deaths than Indonesia. The problem is exacerbated by the refusal of many local governments to carry out mass culling and the country’s limited resources to compensate farmers.

Across Asia the bird flu virus has been met with the mass slaughter of millions of birds since it first surfaced late 2003 causing hardship for those that depend poultry rearing for a livelihood. It has also caused 167 human deaths worldwide.

By inviting mostly mothers and school drivers to the talk show, the forum hoped that it would be able to help prevent the spread of avian influenza in the country. The Al-Azhar schools in Bekasi regency and municipality currently have around 100 drivers who pick up students in the morning and drop them home in the afternoon.

“Mothers can help disseminate information about bird flu prevention,” Rulie said. Members of her organisation hold a meeting every Wednesday to follow up on weekly social service programmes, including efforts to combat bird flu.

The talk show, according to Rulie, was only the first step in her association’s stride towards fighting bird flu.

“After the talk show, we will orient garbage collectors and street vendors about bird flu. They are our first targets because they get in touch with a lot of people. Besides, most of them live in areas where many people keep birds and chicken,” she said.

Bayu Krisnamurthi, chief executive of Komnas FBPI, a ministry-level committee that coordinates actions aimed at controlling bird flu, acknowledged that the government still has more work to do and needs to reach out to more people in its fight against bird flu. “The war continues. We will work to improve all of our bird flu control and pandemic preparedness programmes, including public awareness,” Krisnamurthi said.

Indonesia reported its first case of H5N1 infection in poultry in August 2003 in Pekalongan, West Java and in Tangerang, Banten province. In July 2005, the first human case was found in Tangerang.

On Feb. 11, a 20-year-old woman and a 9-year-old boy were reported to have died of bird flu in Garut regency, West Java. In Bekasi alone, 19 people were declared to have died of bird flu, prompting health authorities to consider the regency as vulnerable to a bird flu pandemic.

The ministry of health has recorded 83 bird flu cases nationwide. Bird flu cases have been found in 30 of Indonesia’s 33 provinces, prompting experts to raise concerns over a possible avian influenza pandemic in the fourth most populous country in the world.

“More people will die if public awareness about the disease is lacking,” said Sabaruddin Djamal, head of the Waqaf Al Muhajirien Foundation, which is in charge of Al-Azhar Islamic Schools of Jakapermai and Kemang Pratama in Bekasi.

According to health official Nyoman Kandun, the government is having a hard time convincing people of the dangers of keeping poultry in their homes. “Our fear is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus could mutate or obtain new genetic material, allowing it to spread more easily among humans and potentially spark a global pandemic,” he said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JAKARTA, Feb 22 2007 (IPS)

A ban on backyard poultry, ordered earlier this month to contain the spread of the bird flu virus, has hit many of the Indonesian capital’s 12 million residents hard since they depend on keeping chickens and ducks for a living.

In the South Jakarta suburb of Cipulir, Nurhayati – or Ibu Yati as she likes to be called – said she has been forced to look for other means to supplement her household income because of the backyard poultry ban. She now cleans and packs bean sprouts in one-kg packets, earning 2,000 rupiahs (22 US cents) for every packet she sends to the market.

”It’s long and tedious work and I’ll be lucky if I can pack at least four plastic bags a day,’’ the mother of six told IPS. ‘’I miss my chickens,’’ she lamented.

Ibu Yati’s 20 odd chickens used to earn her about 25,000 rupiahs (2.75 US dollars) a day in eggs. ‘’Occasionally I’ll sell a chicken or two and get 60,000 to 70,000 rupiahs (6.60 to 7.70 U.S. dollars) for each- that’ll help pay my children’s school expenses,’’ adding that the money made ends meet because her husband earned very little as an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver.

Before the ban was enforced, Ibu Yati gave her chickens away to friends. ‘’I couldn’t bear the thought that they would be killed by strangers. I’d rather give them away free of charge,’’ she said pointing to the empty cages at the back of her house.

Jakarta is on the front line in the fight against bird flu, that according to WHO figures has killed 63 Indonesians to date – the highest in the world. The citywide ban on backyard poultry that came into effect on Feb. 1 gives Jakarta health officials the right to carry out door-to-door checks and cull poultry with no compensation paid to their owners. The ban covers chickens, ducks, swans, pigeons and quails.

With a high population density and an area covering 18,000 square kilometres, efforts to immediately curb the spread of the H5N1 virus that is responsible for bird flu or avian influenza is very necessary, Central Jakarta Mayor Muhayat said in a statement made available to the media.

‘’Today bird flu infection has nearly reached the third stage, namely from poultry to people. Jakarta will face a big disaster if bird flu infection is in its fourth stage, namely, from humans to humans,’’ he added.

World health officials indicate the H5N1 avian influenza virus may touch off a lethal pandemic capable of killing millions if it mutates to become as infectious to humans as seasonal flu.

But Nursamaha, a mother of four, has decided to defy the poultry ban out of desperation.

‘’Days before the ban came into effect I sold all my 20 chickens out of fear that they will be killed by the authorities,’’ she said in an interview at her residence in the South Jakarta suburb of Petukangan Selatan.

‘’But two weeks later, I’m starting to experience hardship. I used to get about 35,000 rupiahs (3.86 U.S. dollars) daily selling eggs. But now it’s all gone,’’ she added. ‘’That money was used for my family’s daily expenses. Now I’m really finding it so difficult, so much so that I have to borrow money from the neighbours just to get by for the day.’’

‘’My husband only works periodically doing odd jobs because he’s sick and our only source of income is from our backyard chickens,’’ she said.

That has prompted Nursamaha to bite the bullet and defy the ban.

‘’Just a couple of days ago I bought seven free-range chickens to keep in my backyard. I can’t bear to see the empty cages and moreover my family needs to eat. My youngest daughter is only two,’’ Nursamaha stated emphatically.

For many Jakarta residents keeping a few chickens in their backyard is a way of life, said PM Laksono, a sociologist at Indonesia’s Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta.

‘’They provide a kind of nutritional safety net for when things get tough, or a way to earn a little extra money for many families,’’ he told IPS in a phone interview. ‘’For the poorest families, the money from selling poultry or eggs pays for basic costs like school fees.’’

But the deep-rooted tradition of Indonesians living near their poultry is a cause of strong concern for Dr I Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable diseases at the Health Ministry. ‘’In stopping the spread of the avian influenza virus from birds to humans, our message is still the same: keep poultry as far away as possible from people and homes,’’ he said.

The ban on raising poultry in the city and its suburbs has also spooked many residents to lay off eating chicken.

Thata Sutardi, in the East Jakarta suburb of Jatinegara, said since the announcement of the ban she and her children have not set their eyes on poultry meat.

‘’Chicken in Jakarta have bird flu and for that reason people are not allowed to keep them,’’ she said.

When reminded that well-cooked chicken is safe to eat, she replied: ‘’I do not trust that. I’m still afraid.’’

Thata said the protein intake of her five children now consists of tempeh (Indonesian version of fermented tofu) and salted fish.

‘’My youngest child is only four and I don’t want him falling sick. That’s why I don’t feed my kids chicken,’’ she said sternly.

But the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is deeply worried about this sudden change in the diet of Jakarta residents.

‘’FAO is concerned about the impact that the citywide ban on poultry in Jakarta may have on the nutritional needs of the city’s residents,’’ said James McGrane, FAO team leader of the avian influenza control programme in Indonesia, in a statement.

‘’People should not abandon a valuable source of nutrition just because they have been forbidden to raise poultry of their own. Healthy poultry is perfectly safe if simple hygiene procedures are followed,’’ he added.

Excerpt:

By Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 20 2007 (IPS)

Factory farms are responsible for both the bird flu and emissions of greenhouse gases that now top those of cars and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), according to a report released Monday.

Sixty percent of global livestock production, including chicken and pig “confined animal feedlot operations” (CAFOs), now occur in the developing world. Unregulated zoning and subsidies that encourage these CAFOs or factory farms are moving closer to major urban areas in China, Bangladesh, India, and many countries in Africa, said the report, “Vital Signs 2007-2008” by the Worldwatch Institute.

Although there is no definitive scientific proof, those farms are very likely where avian or bird flu started and will continue to be responsible for new outbreaks, said the author of the report, Danielle Nierenberg, a Worldwatch research associate.

In Laos, 42 of the 45 outbreaks of avian flu in the spring of 2004 occurred on factory farms, and 38 were in the capital, Vientiane. In Nigeria, the first cases of avian flu were found in an industrial broiler operation. It spread from that 46,000-bird farm to 30 other factory farms, then quickly to neighbouring backyard flocks, forcing already poor farmers to kill their chickens, Nierenberg writes in the report.

“The growth in factory farms in the developing world is being driven by the fact that there are more people in cities and they have more money to buy meat,” she told IPS in an interview.

Rising incomes, populations and demand for meat has resulted in the global poultry population quadrupling since the 1960s to about 18 billion birds today. Once mostly raised under free-range conditions or in backyards by very small producers, most poultry are now kept in large flocks numbering several hundred thousand.

Cramming 100,000 chickens into a single facility to produce low-cost meat also creates the perfect atmosphere for the spread of disease. For that very reason intensive livestock production systems in Europe and North America feed large volumes of antibiotics to chickens, pigs and cows to control diseases. This widespread use of antibiotics has created bacteria that are now resistant to antibiotics and pose yet another human health threat.

Avian flu is a virus, but one that has long been present in wild and domestic birds and is normally harmless to humans. In 2003, a deadly strain called H5N1 evolved, and has now killed 167 people, according to the World Health Organisation.

Last month, England experienced its first outbreak of H5N1 at a huge turkey farm with 160,000 birds and a meat processing facility. Infected turkey meat believed to have been shipped in from the company’s factory farms in Hungary is thought to be the original source of the disease, according to British officials.

On Monday, Russian health officials confirmed an H5N1 strain outbreak in five different regions around Moscow. Officials there blamed migrating wild birds even though it is the middle of winter in Russia. Russia’s Novosti news agency said scientists traced the source of the virus to a pet market in Moscow.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome and the WHO have also blamed wild birds and backyard flocks for the spread of the virus. As a result, at least 15 nations have restricted or banned free-range and backyard production of birds.

But that may do more harm than good, said Nierenberg.

“Many of the world’s estimated 800 million urban farmers, who raise crops and animals for food, transportation, and income in back yards and on rooftops, have been targeted unfairly,” she said in a statement. “The socioeconomic importance of livestock to the world’s poor cannot be overstated.”

There is mounting evidence that there are other vectors of the disease. No wild birds have been detected with the virus in Europe or Africa this winter, yet there have been outbreaks in Nigeria, Egypt and Europe. Illegal and improper trade in poultry is thought to be the reason for these outbreaks.

“Our research shows that the global poultry trade and migratory birds are involved in the spread of H5N1,” said Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York and an expert on the spread of disease in wildlife.

The combination of large numbers of birds being raised together, the international trade in poultry and migratory birds are a perfect receipt for the global spread of disease, Daszak said in an interview.

However, there is a “bit of blame game going on” as some cite factory farms and others migratory birds as the source of H5N1.

“New diseases are one of the costs of development and growth,” he said.

Daszak and colleagues have documented the rise of various diseases such as Ebola, BSE, CJD, HIV/AIDS, and H5N1 bird flu, and believe they are the result of environmental change, which is almost always caused by humans. Because humans share so many pathogens with animals, humans’ impact in driving wildlife diseases in turn threatens public health.

“Many of us at the outset underestimated the role of trade,” Samuel Jutzi, director of Animal Production and Health at the FAO, told the International Herald Tribune last week.

“The poultry sector is the most globalised in agriculture,” Jutzi said. “There is incredible movement of chicks and other products.”

The pathogenic H5N1 form of avian flu does not usually develop in wild birds or backyard poultry because their populations are too spread out and diverse, said Cathy Holtslander, project organiser for the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, a Canadian NGO.

Concentrating huge numbers of animals in small spaces, feeding them the cheapest food possible, centralising and speeding up processing, and distributing the product widely around the world is the perfect recipe for spreading disease, Holtslander told IPS.

The growing numbers of livestock around the world are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent), according to the FAO. It’s not just methane and manure – the FAO shows that land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilisers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

Already surpassing emissions from the world’s transportation sector, livestock numbers are rising fast.

“The world’s poor probably need more meat, but we in North America and Europe should eat a lot less meat,” said Nierenberg.

And it would be better and healthier to get meat from small-scale, localised production systems. Factory farms provide cheap meat only because the real costs in terms of air and water pollution, terrible conditions for workers and animals and so on are not factored in, she said.

“The U.S. infrastructure can barely handle the problems caused by factory farms,” Nierenberg said. “I don’t know how they can address these in the developing world.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TAY NINH, Vietnam, Feb 12 2007 (IPS)

On a rough, earthen road flanked by green rice paddies, Phan Anh Tam throws unhusked rice, mixed with mash and dried fish, to thousands of white ducks waddling around his thin legs.

For 15 years now, Tam has been raising ducks in the Ben Cau district of the south-western Vietnamese province of Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border. But these days he is worried by a temporary ban of duck-raising to contain the spread of avian influenza.

“If I’m not allowed to raise ducks (in Vietnam) anymore, I must keep going on, but in Cambodia,” Tam says, making himself heard above the quacking.

Tam prefers Cambodia, should the government crack down on his business, because it is near his hometown and because the adjacent country has more lax laws on breeding ducks.

The Vietnamese government’s temporary ban on duck breeding was based on the belief that waterfowl are less resistant to infection compared to other kinds of poultry.

Three waves of outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza led to the culling of some 50 million birds between late 2003 and 2005 across Vietnam. In that period 42 fatal human infections were also reported.

But after each outbreak eased, farmers stealthily resumed their poultry production. In Tam’s town alone, more than 100,000 ducks, accounting for 95 percent of the total duck population, were hatched in 2006, according to local statistics.

Reports of fresh outbreaks in some provinces in the Mekong delta – after one year of having kept it under control – proved that most of the infected birds in Vietnam were newly hatched and unvaccinated.

With farmers reluctant to abandon their livelihood, local authorities in Ben Cau moved to impose harsher preventive measures in this particular border district. Provincial officials say they hope the measures will not only protect local poultry from the H5N1 virus but also domestic fowl around southern border crossings.

Two of the latest human deaths from bird flu occurred in Cambodian provinces along the border, sparking new fears of infected ducks from making their way into Vietnam.

“We know nothing until the waterfowl are grown up and raised in open-air places,” Huynh Van Nau, head of the district’s Animal Health Division, said of the late detection of illegally hatched ducks. “Even though it’s against the regulations to raise ducks, we can’t mass cull mass domestic fowl during an outbreak-free period – that would kill farmers’ livelihoods in the absence of an imminent threat,” he said.

After losing 100 million Vietnamese dong (6,250 US dollars) when the government culled 4,000 of his ducks during the 2003 outbreak of avian influenza, Tam actually quit his business. But having neither the knowledge nor the cash to switch careers, he restocked and went back to breeding ducks in late 2005.

Tam recognises that his farming practices do not comply with government rules, but maintains he cannot give up his means of living. “If they want to kill them, they’ll be killing my children, because these (ducks) are my means of feeding them,” the father of five said.

He has, however, altered his farming methods. In 2006, Tam ceased letting his ducks range freely in the paddy fields. Now, his fowl are confined to a fenced area on a section of a local canal for at least 10 days before they are moved to another place. This is in keeping with experts’ advice to watch where animals stay and live, to prevent them mixing with wild birds, and to separate different animal species from one another.

The 43-year-old farmer has also gone to the extent of living out of a canvas tent several km from his home, so he can monitor the ducks more closely.

“This farming model costs us more money and time, because I have to buy feed for the ducks,” Tam explained. “They used to eat only snails and insects when they were allowed to roam free. But if I didn’t change this, I wouldn’t be allowed to raise ducks.”

Like most farmers in Vietnam and South-east Asia, Ben Cau residents have traditionally raised poultry on a small scale in their backyards, so they are unused to virus prevention measures like vaccination, bio-safety measures or epidemic surveillance.

Under a mass vaccination campaign of poultry, local officials require farmers, by law, to inoculate their ducks against the H5N1 virus – in contrast to neighbouring countries that have avoided making vaccinations official policy.

While vaccinations are free-of-charge for legal breeders, those found raising fowl illegally must pay 1,000 dong (6 cents) per shot.

Nau, from the animal health division, explained: “Most farmers have to obey, otherwise we don’t grant them the certificates that allow them to sell their ducks in the markets.” After each vaccination, local officials collect serum samples to test for the virus.

At first, Nau recalls, many farmers refused to inoculate their ducks out of fear that vaccines could hamper the growth of their poultry stock. “But they were told to either lose a small amount of profit, or live with the risk of becoming penniless,” he pointed out.

Learning from the high cost of the 2003 outbreak here, efforts by poultry farmers and local authorities are paying off – Ben Cau has not reported an outbreak of avian flu for more than three years.

But recent bird flu outbreaks in seven provinces and one city in the Cuu Long (Mekong) delta underscore the importance of prevention. “In the long run, I think we must restructure our farming model to eradicate the virus,” explained Nau.

Central authorities and international experts are now working on healthier, more hygienic ways to raise poultry. Most of Vietnam’s estimated 60 million ducks are free-range animals, which always carry a higher risk of bird flu contamination from migratory birds.

Nguyen Nang Vang, head of the ministry of agriculture and rural development’s livestock production department, said: “It’s easy to adopt preventive measures against epidemics at industrial and closed duck farms, but the Cuu Long Delta has (an unknown) number of small-scale farms that are hard to keep track of.”

Vang also acknowledges that a steady demand for duck meat drives many farmers to earn their profits illegally.

The ban on breeding poultry “has not been very effective” says Jeffrey Gilbert, avian influenza senior technical coordinator with the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Vietnam. “In fact, to my knowledge the duck population has only dropped by five percent since the ban was brought in,” he said.

‘’It is very difficult to enforce, mainly because it affects people’s livelihoods, especially in the case of duck farmers,” Gilbert added.

Vietnamese agriculture officials have mapped out a draft plan to adopt bio-safety measures in waterfowl breeding ahead of the planned lifting of the duck-breeding ban on Feb. 28.

Vang and his colleagues agree that while the ministry is unable to ban free-range birds, the government should provide financial aid to poor farmers who need to change jobs due to avian influenza.

“We could offer billions of dong that the government puts into bird flu prevention every year to the farmers with interest-free loans in three years,” argued the deputy head of livestock production department, Nguyen Thanh Son.

This way, farmers could earn enough money to practise safe farming measures, instead of hiding their ducks from the government. Officials hope to increase the vaccination rate and intend to mete out strict punishment to those who break the rules.

But farmers like Tam remain sceptical that duck farming can remain viable, given fluctuating market prices and the possibility of future bird flu outbreaks. ‘’If I could sell it all and find other work, I would,” Tam said, herding his ducks back into their cage.

(*Ngo Thi Thu Phuong of the ‘Vietnam News’ newspaper wrote this article under the ‘Imaging Our Mekong’ media fellowship programme, coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific and Probe Media Foundation Inc.)

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By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Feb 8 2007 (IPS)

A decision by the Indonesian government to be selective about sending local samples of the bird flu virus to the World Health Organisation (WHO) reflects fears harboured by developing countries of being marginalised in the race to find a vaccine for this deadly disease.

Jakarta’s plan was confirmed this week, prompting the WHO to express ”concern.” Indonesia wants to work in tandem with the U.S.-based Baxter Healthcare to develop a vaccine to inoculate its nationals from bird flu and secure additional benefits that would emerge from such treatment.

This route towards a vaccine is expected to rattle the prevailing global system to identify strains of flu for developing new vaccines. It was a system designed by the Geneva-based health agency with the backing of its 193 members and had been sustained through a spirit of cooperation.

”Indonesia has tossed the latest salvo into a debate that has been simmering under the surface for a long time,” says Basil Rodriques, regional immunisation officer for the East Asia and Pacific division of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). ”It is an issue of relevance that the world needs to come to grips with.”

Indonesia’s decision forces public health officials to ask ”what is best for the public good,” he explained to IPS. ”Right now the world does not have the capacity to produce seasonal flu vaccines for everyone.”

Indonesia’s move is winning some sympathy among public health officials in Thailand who say that the WHO-established system – expecting countries to share information about virus samples isolated from among their nationals – is positive if the benefits are evenly shared.

But the reality is otherwise, they add, because developed countries gain more from the vaccines produced from virus samples collected from the developing world.

”Indonesia has a point in expressing concern to take care of the health of its people first. Any country will respond to its domestic needs first before looking at problems that concern other countries,” a senior Thai public health official in the country’s department of disease control told IPS on condition of anonymity. ”The WHO should address this new challenge from a global security point of view.”

Signs of such thinking among developing countries have emerged in the past months, most noticeably at a WHO meeting in January. On that occasion, representatives of developing nations expressed concern that their people are seeing only limited benefits from the current arrangement to develop vaccines, despite supplying the virus samples.

Late last year, Chinese authorities limited the amount of bird flu virus samples they were prepared to share with the WHO, leading to a clash between Beijing and the health body at a time when there was concern about a possible new “Fujian-like” strain, spreading through parts of southern China.

Indonesia’s decision takes on added weight because the country is the epicentre of the H5N1 virus, with a death toll of 63 people out of 83 who were infected.

Other South-east Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia have had human fatalities too, placing the region on the frontline in ongoing efforts to curb an infection that threatens to mutate into one that could trigger a global flu pandemic, potentially killing millions.

So far, 160 people have died out of the total 270 cases of infection stemming from contact with poultry infected by the H5N1 strain of the virus. Human cases have been recorded in 11 countries out of the more than 50 nations across Asia, Africa and Europe where the virus has been reported.

The latest outbreak of bird flu, which began in the winter of 2003 in South-east Asia and has kept reappearing in an unpredictable manner, also triggered concern by developing countries in 2005 when there was a race to purchase limited stocks of Tamiflu. This drug was identified at the time as being the only one potent enough to respond to the spread of avian influenza.

Developed countries like the United States, Britain, France and Norway placed large orders of the drug from its producer, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, despite being free of any bird flu cases. South-east Asian countries that were more in need of the drug were forced to the back of the purchasing line.

”The U.S. and Western countries are gobbling up the drug and denying access to developing countries that need it most,” Philippines’ health secretary, Francois Duque, said in protest at the time. ”The poor countries once again have been excluded from the arena.”

Indonesia’s decision this week comes at a time when there is rising concern about a possible spike in bird flu cases following one of the worst floods the country’s capital, Jakarta, has experienced. The poorer neighbourhoods of this sprawling city, which were inundated by rising waters over the weekend, have also been under the watch of animal health officials for possible bird flu outbreaks.

The floods, which followed heavy rains, submerged close to 80 percent of Jakarta’s 44 districts, with some places going under three metres of water. The floods killed more than 30 people and forced 340,000 from their homes.

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By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 31 2007 (IPS)

Women from ethnic communities in the hilly, northern part of Laos have, for over a decade, been drawn into poultry breeding as a means of combating poverty.

However, this initiative has come up against a daunting challenge in the shape of the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus which has flared up in many parts of South-east Asia in the new year. To counter this, the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), which is backing this project, is again turning to women as the best defenders of their communities.

”Giving women the knowledge and tools to stop the spread of avian influenza is absolutely imperative,” Manoshi Mitra, senior social development specialist at the AsDB, told IPS from the bank’s office in Manila. ‘’They will be taught how to identify the disease and equipped with first aid kits, too.”

”We have to convince them that they are the ones who will lose if there is an outbreak. It will impact them directly,” she added. ‘’We want to employ one female poultry worker for every community.”

The AsDB project, which gets underway in February, is geared to help poverty-stricken ethnic families that are already disadvantaged because they speak a language that is different from the Lao that is spoken by the majority. An estimated 17,000 households in 400 villages are expected to gain from this initiative.

Across the rest of land-locked Laos, breeding poultry has become the mainstay of village economies. ‘’It is evident that every family has backyard poultry – between 10 to 30 chickens per household,” Abdulai KaiKai, project officer at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office in Laos, said in an interview from Vientiane. ‘’The income from the sale of eggs and chicken helps supplement the family income.”

Since July 2006, UNICEF has been leading an awareness campaign in the provinces to stem the spread of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. ‘’There have been puppet shows and dramas with a bird flu theme that tells people what they should do to stay safe,” added KaiKai. ‘’About a fifth of the villages have been covered through this.”

Laos, which is South-east Asia’s poorest country, has proved a mystery since the deadly strain of avian influenza first appeared in the winter of 2003 in this region and kept reappearing subsequently as temperatures dropped during the northern winters. It has had very few bird flu outbreaks in its poultry population and none of the country’s 5.4 million people have fallen ill.

By contrast, all of its immediate neighbours – China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia – have been hit by the virus, affecting both humans and poultry. Vietnam and Thailand are currently grappling with a new outbreak of bird flu. Since the winter of 2003, 42 people have died in Vietnam out of the 93 reported cases, while 17 people have died in Thailand out of the 25 reported cases and Cambodia has recorded six deaths from six cases.

There was a minor bird flu outbreak in March 2004, with a bulk of the 46 poultry farms hit being near Vientiane, the capital, and a second outbreak in July 2006. ‘’There has been no evidence since December 2003 that suggests H5N1 is raging through the villages,” Tony Williams, avian influenza team leader at the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) office in Laos, told IPS. ‘’Laos has escaped the worst of bird flu.”

What has helped, according to the food agency, is the relative distance of rural communities from each other. ‘’The relative isolation of villages has been a positive factor in safeguarding the communities from the spread of AI,” says Williams.

According to the FAO, transporting poultry without proper safeguards has been a key feature in fuelling the spread of the virus, with Indonesia, the worst affected country illustrative of this trend. By the end of January, Indonesia had reported 63 deaths out of 81 cases of infection.

‘’Wild birds are less responsible for the spread of the virus in the current outbreak,” says Hiroyuki Konuma, deputy head of FAO’s Asia-Pacific office. ‘’Poultry trade and the movement of live birds have played a role in spreading the virus.”

Since the beginning of the year, FAO had recorded new bird flu cases in China, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. It equals the same number of countries – then all in North-east and South-east Asia – that had recorded AI outbreaks in 2003. During the 2005-2006 period, the virus took wing, spreading beyond Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Till the current cycle of outbreaks, now in its fourth winter season, poultry breeding was promoted as an option for women in rural communities for additional income. ‘’It was seen as a way for women to start a business and take the first step out of poverty,” Anni McLeod, senior livestock policy officer at FAO, told IPS. ‘’It required very little investment, that could be managed by women and the turnover was very fast.”

Bangladesh, which has over 60 million people living in poverty, had emerged as a celebrated example of this development model before the latest bird flu outbreak. According to the AsDB, poultry breeding by some 500,000 people, most of them women, had helped transform many poor communities.

They were able to ‘’put more food on the table, educate their children, and even save enough to lease or buy agricultural land, thanks to an innovative livestock project,” says an AsDB officer. ‘’The project (trained) women in raising chicks as well as local hens and ducks, managing poultry production and sales, and providing veterinary care.”

The regional financial institution hopes to replicate in Laos the successes in Bangladesh. ‘’Bangladesh represented a real success story,” says Mitra. ‘’It demonstrated the importance of poultry breeding in lifting women and their families out of poverty.”

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By IPS Correspondents
KANCHANABURI, Thailand, Jan 21 2007 (IPS)

The upsurge in bird flu outbreaks in South-east Asia has raised a paradoxical question: does high community awareness of the disease, that at the start of the new year killed thousands of ducks and chickens in the region and five Indonesians, lead to behaviour change that could prevent the spread of the H5N1 virus globally?

Not necessarily, says new research into bird flu or avian influenza prevention in Cambodia, one of the virus’s past hot spots.

A paper – written by scientists from the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Cambodian and U.N. agencies – published in the January edition of the ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’ edited by the U.S.-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is an eye-opener.

Cambodia recorded its first bird flu outbreaks caused by the H5N1 virus in poultry in 2004. It had four human cases in 2005 and two last year; all six victims died. International experts fear the H5N1 virus may mutate into a form that could spread easily between humans and potentially kill millions around the world.

The researchers surveyed 460 Cambodian villagers in two provinces judged to be at high risk for H5N1 flu.

Ninety-seven percent of the 269 households where the villagers lived kept chickens, while 39 percent also raised ducks. And 81 percent of the households had learned about avian flu and flu prevention from announcements on television; 78 percent had heard similar messages on the radio.

‘’Thirty-one percent of respondents were able to describe AI (avian influenza) symptoms in humans, and 72 percent believed that it is a fatal disease among poultry that can be transmitted to humans,’’ wrote the paper’s authors.

‘’Most respondents believed it is unsafe to touch sick or dead poultry with bare hands, eat wild birds, let children touch sick or dead birds with bare hands, and eat meat or eggs that are not fully cooked,’’ they added.

But large proportions of the villagers admitted doing things they had been cautioned against. Seventy-five percent acknowledged touching sick or dead poultry barehanded; 45 percent ate poultry that had died from illness; 33 percent ate wild birds; and 8 percent collected and ate dead wild birds.

In addition, the research revealed, though half of the participants agreed on the importance of reporting poultry deaths to authorities, many did not report – 41 percent because they did not know how, 31 percent because they had not done so in the past, and 18 percent because they believed it would hurt sales of their surviving birds.

‘’ General media reports about avian influenza through radio and television broadcasts appear to have been effective at reaching rural people. However, despite high awareness and widespread knowledge about AI and personal protection measures, most rural Cambodians still often practice at-risk poultry handling,’’ concluded the researchers.

While one might argue that Cambodia could be an isolated case, public health officials in Thailand and Indonesia however have expressed similar frustrations.

‘’Villagers know about bird flu and risky behaviour but many times we’ve found out that they’ve done dangerous things like eating sick or dead chickens,’’ Phrathom Khamhorm, a public health official at the Phanom Thuan sub-district health centre in Kanchanaburi province, 150 kilometres from the capital Bangkok, told IPS.

Three Thais died in Phanom Thuan from bird flu between 2004 and 2005. So far there have been 17 human deaths in Thailand.

‘’When questioned, these villagers said they knew about bird flu from television. When asked why they ate sick chickens, they said they saw their neighbours eat them and they didn’t fall ill,’’ said a frustrated Phrathom.

Thailand reported fresh H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in the past month. About 2,100 poultry were culled in the northern Thai province of Phitsanulok to control the spread of the H5N1, the Agricultural Ministry’s Avian Influenza Control Center said on Jan. 15.

Four family members in Phitsanulok are suspected to be infected with avian influenza after they ate a dead duck from their farm, Thai local media reported last week.

In Indonesia, too, similar frustration and anger have been expressed when a 14-year-old boy died from bird flu near the capital Jakarta on Jan. 9.

Rohana Manggala, the assistant for public welfare to the Jakarta governor, talking to IPS over the phone, said that instead of reporting or burning a dead duck, a resident threw it into a river in the densely populated Kalideres area of West Jakarta, where the 14-year-old boy resided.

‘’People still don’t understand how to deal with this disease despite the government’s public information campaign. Mind you, this area is near Jakarta where people watch TV all the time,’’ she said angrily.

On Saturday an Indonesian woman died of bird flu, raising the country’s death toll to 62 – the highest in the world. The woman’s death is the fifth human bird flu fatality in the country since Jan. 9. Before that, Indonesia had not recorded any cases for six weeks – a lull that led some Indonesian officials to say they were succeeding in beating the disease.

Initiated by the National Commission for Bird Flu Control and Influenza Pandemic Prevention, a nationwide campaign, ‘Beat Bird Flu’, was launched in September.

A communications officer from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Iwan Hasan, who was involved in an October survey to check on the efficacy of the campaign, told journalists in Jakarta it was too early to conclude that it had failed as it had only been underway for three months.

‘’Our survey shows that 97 percent of 508 respondents in Greater Jakarta and Garut in West Java are at least aware of the TV campaign,’’ he told reporters, adding that an AC Nielsen survey found that 120 million people had seen the TV advertisements.

‘’Behavioral change takes time,’’ he said, while pointing out that the survey had also recommended more direct approaches to poultry breeders.

But authors of the research paper published by the Centers for Disease Control argue that behavior change ‘’involves comprehensive and multidisciplinary intervention, which combines risk perception communication and feasible and practical recommendations, including economic considerations’’.

‘’We observed difficulties and frustrations among farmers whose flocks underwent culling after identification of H5N1 viruses in their flocks because compensation has not yet been approved by the government of Cambodia,’’ they concluded.

In Indonesia, the government’s move to cull poultry populations infected with H5N1 by just offering a paltry compensation of 1.50 U.S. dollars per chicken has angered the Association of Indonesian Poultry Farmers.

‘’Many traditional poultry farms will go out of business as a result of this mass culling,’’ said the association’s chairman M. Ali Abubakar said in Cirebon, West Java.

The culling policy with minimal compensation, he told the ‘Jakarta Post’, showed the government was trying to shift responsibility over the spread of bird flu from itself to the people. (

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