The recently concluded Intergovernmental Meeting on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (IGM-PIP), which tackled the sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines, came to a deadlock-end.
Health officials failed to reach agreement on a new system to ensure developing countries benefit more from sharing bird flu virus samples used to develop vaccines, the World Health Organization said.
Sharing virus samples among countries is important in virus strain surveillance, as well as in vaccine development. These issues were discussed during the 3-day meeting held from November 20-23, 2007 at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We must have equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of viruses through a fair, transparent and equitable mechanism. It is the moral thing to do,” Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari of Indonesia said. Indonesia has the highest death toll – 91 people – from bird flu.
Indonesia proposed that commercial use of a virus sample would require consent from the country providing it, and that the country should be given affordable access to vaccine stockpiles.
However, John Lange, U.S. special representative for avian and pandemic influenza, said that research and development of vaccines was “very risky, time-consuming and extremely expensive” and it was critical to protect patents to ensure their continued development.
News from Reuters
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Flu is a common disease nowadays, with most people having developed the antibodies to fight against the disease. So the mention of “flu” doesn’t really create any alarm. However, say “bird flu” and there’s likely to be a pandemonium.
Bird flu, or avian influenza, is a highly pathogenic virus of 15 types. The virus spreads to poultry through direct or close contact with nasal secretions, saliva and feces of infected birds. What is alarming about this virus is that it has the ability to rapidly mutate into different forms that can affect human beings. Believed to be worse than the SARS outbreak, the bird flu outbreak brought millions of dead birds worldwide and at least 70 people dead in Asia.
From a not-so-harmful H5N2 virus strain, it can mutate into a killer virus with a low spread rate once the virus is transmitted to a bird. The virus has an incubation period of six to nine months before it becomes a full-blown, deadly pathogen. A bird that has been infected with the virus but has survived the disease continues to carry the virus in its body for more than week. When this happens, the bird passes on the disease to other birds that come in close contact with its secretions, saliva and feces.
Bird flu and ordinary human flu have the almost the same symptoms. These symptoms are fever, muscle pains and cough. This is the reason that a person who is actually infected with bird flu may be mistakenly diagnosed as simply having ordinary flu. However, bird flu symptoms can escalate into several life-threatening conditions. Some of these life-threatening conditions are lung inflammation, eye infections and pneumonia.
Because of the severity of symptoms of bird flu infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) is in the midst of a widespread effort to prevent the virus from infecting humans, particularly those whose who depend on poultry and livestock as their livelihood.
Bird flu virus and its subtypes can easily mutate into other forms. For example, the virus that was transferred from one animal to another is the H5N2 strain. However, the virus mutated into the H5N1 strain, which has been responsible for the death of at least 50 people. It is a very surprising discovery how these viruses can mutate itself from pathogens that can harm humans as it had started with birds.
In Asia, the countries plagued by the avian flu are Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Russia, Thailand. In Europe, Turkey, Romania and Croatia are the hardest hit by the disease.
WHO has issued a warning to travelers to these countries to avoid going to live poultry markets, getting close contact to any farms and having direct exposure to feathers, feces or droppings, eggs and poultry meat products. Travelers need to know that most contamination occurs during the slaughtering of poultry and being in direct contact with fecal matter.
No travel advisory has been issued restricting anyone from going to countries with the H5N2 strain. Travelers coming from afflicted countries are also not being screened. However, precautionary measures are in place, particularly in the media. Information is being disseminated in order to make people aware of the bird flu, its effects and what to do to avoid getting infected.
To date, no vaccines have been developed or available to fight the illness. However, anti-viral medicines are being used as alternatives in helping alleviate the severity of symptoms on those infected. While M2 inhibitors would be helpful, the body tends to develop resistance to those, diminishing the efficiency and effectivity of inhibitors.
The bird flu problem is both a government and global issue. Governments are in charge of making reliable declarations, initiating studies and putting objective measures in place. There is no reason to panic if the virus has not reached your area yet. The best thing you can do is to take practical steps in taking of your body and helping it build resistance to any kind of illnesses.
DEFRA?s first epidemiological report into the recent H5N1 avian flu outbreak in Suffolk indicates the outbreak has been confined to one index case, but fails to “categorically identify the source of the outbreak?.
The report cites ?poor biosecurity? and the location of the free range poultry unit ? just meters away from an ornamental lake which was inhabited by wild birds – as significant findings, and does not rule out wild birds as the source of infection.
Only one of the five dangerous contact (DC) premises, culled by DEFRA as a result of birds being tended by the same stockmen who employed poor biosecurity measures on the first premises, have so far tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
According to the investigation, workers traveled between units without changing overalls, foot wear and, in some cases, without even washing their hands.
Extensive surveillance of both wild and domestic birds in the area continues, however preliminary findings suggest the infection failed to spread beyond the initial infected premises.
(Source)
Deuteronomy 28:15
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you…
Israel has been suffering from the “bird flu” for years, as a consequence of NATIONAL SIN (Daniel 9:11). Now it’s coming to it conclusion since the Israeli people have rejected Kahane (the biblical ideals he represented) for Arafat and his Amalekite heirs: Israel is about to be slaughtered, having been sold out to EU interests by chickens, doves, turkeys and hawks (who prey upon their own people – not against Arab enemies).
The bloody vulture Shimon Peres must be caged, quarantined at least, since his unclean kind – symptoms of Israel’s disease – have unleashed this sickness upon the Jewish homeland.
The Israeli sins are coming home to roost and the treacherous leaders who have prostituted themselves, who have sold out Israel, who imagine themselves immune from the EU plague, will soon suffer and die for it too.
Isaiah 28:14-15
14 Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers
who rule this people in Jerusalem.
15 You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death,
with the grave we have made an agreement.
When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by,
it cannot touch us,
for we have made a lie our refuge
and falsehood our hiding place.”
Will the Israelis undergo a cleansing coup and experience a heartfelt NATIONAL REPENTANCE? Will the Jews get rid of the filth in their lives and cull the foul leaders that pollute the nest and imperil the land? Will the Israelis insist upon Europe’s new crusade to bring them to their knees and encourage them to clean up their act?
2 Chronicles 7:14 14…If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
The virus that causes bird flu appears to be versatile and resilient. Scientists are working on a new vaccine that would be effective against the new strain of the virus that causes Bird flu. There are different subtypes and strains of the virus that causes bird flu, and some cause more severe disease than others. Results of the examinations for the H5N1 virus that causes bird flu are be announced later on Sunday, officials said.
Certainly the virus that causes bird flu could mutate so that it could be transmitted from human to human.
A new type of a virus that causes bird flu appeared in Japan, Reuters announced.
Do not assume that any form of bird flu killed the ducks or geese, because these birds can die from many other causes.
The poultry industry tests continuously to make sure the virus that causes Asian bird flu doesn’t get a foothold in commercial poultry flocks. At present, the virus that causes Asian bird flu does not easily infect humans. The H5N1 virus which causes bird flu struck a human being for the first time in 1997. It appears that the H5N1 bird-flu virus causes a massive immunological response against the virus in those with the strongest immune systems.
An influenza outbreak among birds occurs when the virus causes serious illness or death and is spread from bird to bird. Migratory water fowl, and ducks in particular, carry the virus that causes bird flu. This bird flu strain mutates rapidly, easily mixes with viruses from other species and causes severe disease in humans. The Bird Flu virus causes severe flu-like symptoms in people and may result in death.
Proper cooking kills the virus that causes bird flu. An 18-year-old man became the ninth person in Vietnam to die after contracting the H5N1 virus, which causes bird flu.
Turkish health ministry officials confirmed that in seven cases of ill individuals, the virus identified was the one that causes bird flu. For three reasons: 1.They don’t change because unlike humans birds don’t have immunity towards influenza which causes them no reason to mutate.
Infection with bird flu viruses in domestic poultry causes two main forms of disease that are distinguished by low and high extremes of virulence.