Avian Flu - What we need to know

Avian flu skepticism from AEI

Here is their latest brief.  One of the common fallacies it repeats is the following:

Today, we have a large armamentarium of broad-spectrum antibiotics with which we would have been able to treat most or all of those infections, possibly preventing a good portion of those deaths.

Shall we take bets on how available such antibiotics would be and how quickly they would be properly distributed?  As written, the sentence puts a great deal of weight on the word "possibly."  That being said, many other parts of the analysis are on the mark, most of all the discussion of risk communication and its importance.

The avian flu skeptics

Here is a good article summarizing their points of view. Addendum: The link is no longer free.

Chinese official on the difficulty of detecting bird flu

China's health minister defended the government on Wednesday against accusations of a cover-up of bird flu cases, saying doctors in rural areas might be too ill-equipped and ill-trained even to detect avian flu infections.

"I am not worried about governments at various levels covering up an epidemic," Gao Qiang told a news conference.

"But I am worried about the inability of our medical and quarantine personnel at the local level to diagnose and discover epidemics in a timely fashion due to their low abilities and relatively backward equipment," Gao added.

Source. Today China announced the country's 30th avian flu outbreak of the year.

The latest human cases

A 25-year-old Indonesian woman who died has tested positive for bird flu, a senior researcher at the health ministry said on Wednesday.

Endang Mamahit said the woman had been treated at the Sulianto Saroso hospital, Jakarta's hospital for treating bird flu patients. She died on Tuesday.

From Reuters. Another human case is reported in Vietnam:

A 51-year-old man from Vietnam`s northern Thanh Hoa province has been hospitalized after exhibiting bird flu symptoms, local newspaper Vietnam Agriculture reported on Wednesday.

The man named Le Truong Hong is under treatment at the Thanh Hoa General Hospital, the hospital`s director Hoang Sy Binh said, adding that he still had high fever and breathing difficulties on Tuesday afternoon.

The patient`s specimens are being tested for bird flu viruses, Binh said, adding the man bought two ducks, slaughtered and ate them before he fell ill several days ago.

Upcoming World Bank discussion on avian flu

Here is the link. The discussion will take place on Monday, December 5 at 10am EST. The mediators are Milan Brahmbhatt, senior economist with the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region, and Fadia Sadaah, World Bank sector manager for health in East Asia. Here is the World Bank's avian flu page. Hat tip to Jeff McCoy.

UN urges countries not to cull wild birds

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) issued the warning after reports that wild birds were being killed in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam as a precautionary measure.

"This is unlikely to make any significant contribution to the protection of humans against avian influenza,"said Juan Lubroth, a FAO official with responsibility for infectious animal diseases.

"There are other, much more important measures to be considered that deserve priority attention. Fighting the disease in poultry must remain the main focus of attention," he added.

Source.

Study: vaccines can stop the spread of bird flu

Vaccination is one of the main weapons in the fight against bird flu. However, scientists did not know if vaccination protected only treated birds or had wider benefits.

"Our conclusion is that vaccination of poultry can prevent a major outbreak of highly pathogenic avian flu viruses," scientist Jeanet Van der Goot told Reuters.

Van der Goot and fellow researchers say that vaccination reduces the infectiousness of chickens with avian flu and also the susceptibility of healthy chickens to the virus.

However, they said it could take two weeks after vaccination before transmission to other birds was completely blocked.

Source. China started a massive poultry vaccination campaign and intends to export some three million doses to Indonesia.

China reports two new outbreaks

China reported two new outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in poultry, bringing the number of cases to 29 in the country this year.

Yongzhou city in central Hunan province reported 402 poultry died on Nov. 18, and Shanshan County in western Xinjiang province reported 288 poultry died on Nov. 22, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement on its Web site. China's National Avian Flu Reference Laboratory confirmed the birds were infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus, the ministry said.

Authorities in Hunan culled 13,481 birds within a three- kilometer (1.9-mile) radius of the infection site, the statement said. Authorities in Xinjiang culled 52,162 birds, it said.

Read the full story here.

Gary Becker and Richard Posner on avian flu

This is economic analysis of what is going wrong.  Here is Richard Posner, here is Nobel Laureate Gary Becker.

WHO starts seroprevalence survey in Indonesian village

Read the story at Effect Measure.