Another Bird Flu Death In Indonesia

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Bird flu has claimed another victim in Indonesia bringing the country's death toll from the deadly virus to 89.

The latest case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu was in a four-year-old girl who died on Monday after being admitted to hospital two days earlier.

A health ministry official says the child was from Tangerang, west of the capital Jakarta, and had been suffering from a fever; she died after being transferred to Persahabatan hospital in Jakarta.

Health officials are investigating the case, and reports from the health ministry's bird flu centre say four chickens had previously died in the child's neighbourhood.

Almost all cases of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu have been the result of contact with sick fowl and the virus is endemic in the bird populations in most parts of Indonesia.

Millions of Indonesians keep chickens in their backyards which live in close proximity with humans.

Authorities have struggled to impart the most basic precautionary measures to rural areas in particular where people are often reluctant to disclose or cull infected birds.

The vast archipelago has suffered 110 confirmed cases of the disease in humans, with more fatalities than any other country.

According to the World Health Organisation to date there have been 204 deaths and 332 cases globally since 2003.

Experts fear that if a mutation takes place in the virus enabling it to pass between humans, a pandemic affecting millions could be triggered and Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, at present appears the ideal location for that to happen.

The more the virus infects humans the more likely it is to mutate.

New test to detect bird flu 4 times faster

www.todayonline.com

Tan Hui Leng

ANOTHER made-in-Singapore bird flu detection device has been announced: Claimed as able to identify the deadly H5N1 strain in less than 30 minutes, or 440 per cent faster than other commercially available tests.

The device, conceived at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, can be used together with commercially available H5N1 kits.

"There is a difference between 'kits' and 'devices'," said research scientist Juergen Pipper, who headed the project. The invention was announced in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Kits contain biochemicals only (while) devices are hardware only. That means, kits alone are not enough; they have to be combined with devices to test for infectious diseases."

IBN's device works by testing genetic material obtained from a throat-swab of humans, and is described as a "lab-on-a-chip". Dr Pipper also said the device would be between "2,000 to 5,000 per cent cheaper" than commercially available kits.

Two other Singapore companies that has made news in the last few years for their rapid test kits include Veredus and Rockeby.

The significance of such products is that people can be screened quickly at points of outbreak and migratory checkpoints such as airports.

Endemic among poultry in the region, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has infected 328 humans worldwide, of whom 200 have died.

Health experts are worried that the virus would evolve into a strain that is transmissible from human to human, sparking a flu pandemic that would kill millions.

Beyond H5N1, the technique used in IBN's device can detect other viruses such as those causing Aids, Hepatitis B and Sars. It could take five to 10 years to commercialise the handheld device whose size and weight has been described as "comparable to that of a fine Japanese Fuji apple".

Scientists create device to detect H5N1

Russia: H5N1 Bird Flu Found in Chickens

www.chron.com

MOSCOW — The H5N1 strain of avian flu, which can be fatal to humans, has been detected in chickens at a farm in southern Russia, the country's veterinary watchdog agency said Tuesday.

The agency, Rosselkhoznadzor, said the outbreak was at a farm in the Krasnodar region. It said 410 chickens died of the disease and authorities slaughtered another 414 to prevent the disease's spread.

Bird flu can be transmitted between humans

seattletimes.nwsource.com

Local researchers have now proven that bird flu has finally mutated and can be transmitted from person to person. The outbreak occurred in 2006 in Indonesia.

Experts at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research center in Seattle used statistical analysis and a computerized disease-transmission model to show the disease spread between a small number of people in one family.

The chain of infection involved a 10-year-old boy who likely caught the virus from his 37-year-old aunt who had been exposed to dead poultry and chicken feces.

Researchers say the boy then probably passed the virus to his father.

All but one of the flu victims died. All of those who contracted the disease had long, close contact with other ill family members prior to getting sick.

Health authorities eventually placed more than 50 surviving relatives and close contacts under quarantine in an attempt to contain the spread.

One of the authors of the study says that containment came late, so it was lucky the virus didn't spread any further.

"It went two generations and then just stopped, but it could have gotten out of control," said biostatistician Ira Longini, co-author of the study. "The world really may have dodged a bullet with that one, and the next time we might not be so lucky."

Longini says that if bird flu develops enough to cause sustained human-to-human contact, it could spread worldwide faster before enough vaccine could be made available.

The researchers estimate the rate of one infected person passing bird flu to another in Indonesia is 29 percent. That's similar to the spread of seasonal flu in the United States.

Researchers also say another bird flu case in eastern Turkey in 2006 that killed four people was probably spread person-to-person, but there wasn't enough statistical data to support the theory.

The study will be published Sept. 1 in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deadly bird flu found in German poultry farm

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An outbreak of deadly bird flu has been identified in a southern German poultry farm, a spokeswoman for Bavaria's environment ministry said on Saturday.

The spokeswoman said dead ducks from the farm in Wachenroth in Bavaria's Erlangen-Hoechstadt area had tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be lethal for people living in close contact with birds.

All 160,000 birds in the farm would be culled, the ministry spokeswoman said. The farm has been sealed off.

Local authorities had earlier said the farm contained some 44,000 birds. Officials discovered the infection after more than 400 ducks at the farm died over a short period of time.

Germany identified several cases of the deadly H5N1 strain in wild birds in Bavaria in June. A string of bird flu infections were also registered in Germany last year.

Earlier this week, Russia banned poultry imports from Italy to prevent the spread of bird flu after outbreaks there.

Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed 195 people out of 322 known cases, according to the World Health Organization. Hundreds of millions of birds have died or been slaughtered.

The vast majority of bird flu deaths have been in Asia. No deaths have yet been registered in the European Union.