Avian influenza — known informally as avian flu or bird flu — refers to “influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.” Most human contractions of the avian flu are a result of either handling dead infected birds or from contact with infected fluids.
Japan has suspended poultry imports from South Korea from Thursday after a suspected case of bird flu was found at a poultry farm in the southwest of the country, a Japanese Agriculture Ministry official said on Friday.
The Nha Trang Institute of Vaccines and Biological Products, Vietnam has announced that it has successfully produced 5,000 doses of a H5N1 vaccine for humans from chicken embryos, which is currently being validated by the Ministry of Health before possible human trials.
South Korea’s farm ministry said on Thursday it had discovered a suspected case of bird flu at a poultry farm in the southwest of the country, which could be the country’s first outbreak in about three years.
An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers led by professor Xiangming Xiao of the University of New Hampshire is taking a novel scientific approach in an attempt to understand the ecology of the avian influenza, develop better methods of predicting its spread, and provide an accurate early warning system.
Scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed an inexpensive “gene chip” test based on a single influenza virus gene that could allow scientists to quickly identify flu viruses, including avian influenza H5N1.
China has found no evidence of a new strain of H5N1 bird flu in its southern provinces and said on Thursday there was no need to share virus samples with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The World Health Organization criticized the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture officials for not informing the global community of the emergence of a new variant of the worrisome H5N1 avian flu virus – Fujian-like virus, and hoarding virus samples and for not doing enough to contain the spread of H5N1 in poultry.
The Ministry of Health in Egypt has confirmed the country?s seventh death from H5N1 avian influenza. The 39-year-old woman, whose infection was confirmed on 11 October, died on 30 October.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza has been detected in at least 55 countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa. This often fatal disease is of pressing concern because it can be transmitted from birds to humans, although such transmissions have been rare so far. Unfortunately, according to a Roundtable article in the November 2006 BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), critical information about incidence of the disease in wild birds–even the species of the infected bird–is often recorded inaccurately or not recorded at all. The deficiencies in data collection, the authors write, “can lead to unwarranted assumptions and conclusions that in turn affect public perceptions, practical control and management measures, and the disposition of resources.”
Scientists have detected a new strain of H5N1 bird flu virus in China and warned it might have started another wave of outbreaks in poultry in Southeast Asia and move deeper into Eurasia. The development of highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses in poultry in Eurasia accompanied with the increase in human infection in 2006 suggests that the virus has not been effectively contained and that the pandemic threat persists.