LONDON (Reuters) - It could infect 20 percent of the world's population, kill many millions and create an economic crisis but scientists say not enough is being done to combat a bird flu virus that could trigger a global pandemic.
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The Asian H5N1 virus that first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.

Global health officials fear it could mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 and 40 million people.

"Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, Wednesday in a special section of the journal Nature devoted to avian flu.

"There is a critical need for comprehensive medical and non-medical pandemic planning at the ground level that goes beyond what has been considered so far," he added.

Scientists believe the next pandemic, which many believe is overdue, will probably originate in poultry in Asia. To become a pandemic strain, H5N1 will have to adapt sufficiently on its own, or mix its genetic material with a human virus to become highly infectious in humans, who have no protection against it.

Although this strain of bird flu has been circulating in Asia for years, Albert Osterhaus and virologists at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam in the Netherlands said research into outbreaks in Asia has been patchy and uncoordinated.

They believe more is needed.

"We propose establishing a permanent global task force to control a flu pandemic, in which relevant agencies would work together with leading research groups from different disciplines," they said in the journal.

The scientists estimate that the task force, which would consist of specialists in human and animal diseases, as well as pathologists, ecologists and agricultural experts, would cost less than $1.5 million a year.

HUMAN AND BIRD VACCINES

Developing countries are now stockpiling Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu against the threat of an human flu pandemic. The drug made by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant will be the first line of defense while scientists prepare an effective vaccine, which could take months to develop.

Although Roche has quadrupled its production capacity for the drug, experts believe global stockpiles will not be enough if a pandemic develops. The drug will not prevent a pandemic but it can reduce the duration of flu symptoms.

So far about 50 countries have drawn up plans to deal with a pandemic but only a few are in Asia where it is likely to start.

Other experts believe too little attention has been focused on a global strategy to prevent a pandemic at its source -- in animals and particularly poultry.

Hong Kong destroyed 1.5 million birds in 1997 when the H5N1 virus appeared. It also introduced surveillance and movement restrictions for poultry. Other nations decided to vaccinate animals or opted for surveillance programs.

Scientists are already testing the safety of an inactivated H5N1 virus made by Sanofi-Aventis . A contract to produce 2 million doses as a stockpile has also been signed.

"This effort will ensure that, should the need arise, the manufacturing techniques, procedures, and conditions for large-scale production are already in place," said Dr Anthony Fauci of the
National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Unlike other pandemics, scientists now have the knowledge and technology to develop countermeasures against the disease.

"However, unless we improve our capacity to produce such countermeasures, we may experience again the devastation of past pandemics," Fauci added.

"Fears of Flu Pandemic Spurring Preparations"
Baltimore Sun (06/12/05) P. 1A; Roylance, Frank D.

Public health officials at the federal, state, and local level are devising preparedness plans in anticipation of an expected influenza pandemic sparked by the H5N1 bird flu strain circulating in parts of Asia. Health experts are predicting that the disease could spread worldwide and infect millions of people if it mutates into a form that is easily spread among humans. U.S. officials are especially focusing on vaccine development, production capacity, and administration of vaccines and antiviral medicines in the case of a domestic outbreak. The National Vaccine Program Office is expected to finalize its Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan this summer, and states are asked to follow suit by September. Once a pandemic strain of the disease is identified, it will take six to eight months to develop an effective vaccine. U.S. authorities have invested $41 million in Sanofi Pasteur's Swiftwater, Pa., plant--the nation's only flu vaccine plant--to boost domestic production capacity. Sanofi Pasteur is also working to develop a new vaccine production technique that will use human cells instead of chicken eggs, a method scientists hope will reduce production time and increase capacity. Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has spent $13.9 million toward the manufacture of 2 million doses of an experimental H5N1 vaccine that would be stockpiled for emergency use, and officials are trying to encourage more Americans to receive an annual flu shot in order to keep both immunity and production capacity high.

Avian Flu: A State of Unreadiness
Mike Davis

Avian influenza is a viral asteroid on a collision course with humanity. Since the horrific autumn of 1918, when a novel influenza killed more than 2 percent of humanity in a few months, scientists have dreaded the reappearance of a wild flu strain totally new to the human immune system.

The flu subtype known as H5N1, which claimed its first victims in Hong Kong in 1997, is that nightmare come true. Now endemic in waterfowl and poultry throughout East Asia, it is the most lethal strain of influenza ever seen, killing chickens, people and even tigers with terrifying ease.

Although avian flu officially has taken fewer than 100 human lives so far (mainly farmers and their children in daily contact with poultry), most experts believe that H5N1 is on the verge of acquiring the new genes or amino acids that would enable it to travel at pandemic velocity across a densely urbanized world, with the potential, warns the World Health Organization, to cause 20 million deaths.

Since early spring, moreover, all the biological weather vanes have been pointing in the direction of imminent pandemic. In Vietnam the virus has suddenly increased its transmissibility, with several likely human-to-human cases. In China, where officials now admit that more than 1,000 migratory birds have died, there are unofficial Internet reports--strongly denied by Beijing--of 120 related human fatalities. In an unprecedented collaboration to sound the tocsin, Nature and Foreign Affairs have recently devoted special issues to the "plausible scenario" of a pandemic that kills millions and wrecks the global economy.

Governments have had ample warning, unlike the surprise of HIV/AIDS, that a new plague is coming. Indeed, Washington has had almost nine years to heed the advice of top influenza experts and mobilize the nation's resources to battle H5N1 in Asia and at home. The Bush Administration's failure to do so makes "homeland security" into a sick joke whose punch line may be a repetition of the 1918 catastrophe.

This past December 3, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tommy Thompson held a press conference to announce his resignation. His tenure ended with a note of frankness rare in the Bush era. Unlike the previous seven Cabinet members purged in the President's postelection housecleaning, Thompson, according to the New York Times, "gave candid, unexpected answers to questions posed to him." Asked what worried him most, Thompson cited the threat of a human flu pandemic. "This is a really huge bomb that could adversely impact on the healthcare of the world," killing 30 million to 70 million people, he said.

The Secretary, of course, spoke with the authority of someone with access to the best medical intelligence in the world, but reporters were undoubtedly surprised that Thompson was so alarmed about a peril that his department, with its $543 billion annual budget--a quarter of the federal total--had done so little to address. In the 2005 fiscal year, for example, Thompson had allocated more funds to "abstinence education" than to the development of an avian influenza vaccine that might save millions of lives. This is but one example of the way that all Americans, but especially children, the elderly and the uninsured, have been placed in harm's way by the Bush regime's bizarre skewing of public-health priorities. On Thompson's watch, HHS and the Pentagon spent more than $12 billion to safeguard national security against largely hypothetical threats like smallpox and anthrax, even as they pursued a penny-pinching strategy to deal with the most dangerous and likely "bioterrorist": avian influenza. The Administration's lackadaisical response to the pandemic threat (despite Secretary Thompson's personal anxiety) is only the tip of the iceberg. Over the past generation, writes Lancet editor Richard Horton, "the U.S. public-health system has been slowly and quietly falling apart."

I do agree that more time, $$, and scientific resources need to be devoted to preventing a pandemic, but I believe if there is to be a pandemic, it will be a human made super-virus that will get us...something that some gov't (most likely the US) has developed as a weapon. Something that either a terrorist gets his/her hands on or some combination of human error that makes this super-virus leak and infect us all.

Excellent paranoia.

But then again, how do you prepare for it when you don't know exactly what the flu strain will look like after it shifts?

I get the sense scientists are focusing attention on killing existing virus strains only.

This reminds me of SARS, which was overblown.

OMG I'm so scared

We should commit suicide to avoid the impending doom.

This is all Bush's fault somehow. They'll find a way to blame him.

Funding for Animal Health Protection (USDA §1433 FORMULA FUNDS)
To increase the funding in USDA for research of foreign animal and zoonotic diseases


BACKGROUND

The failure to diagnose foreign animal diseases, emerging infectious diseases and zoonotic agents (animal diseases transmissible to humans) accurately and rapidly, whether they are intentionally introduced or naturally occurring, can lead to catastrophic economic losses in the United States and loss of human and animal lives. Increase funding for the USDA §1433 Formula Funds for Animal Health and Disease Research Program will address this problem by improving prevention, surveillance, diagnosis and control measures for high-consequence disease agents such as foot-and-mouth disease, avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and monkeypox.

AVMA POSITION

The AVMA is actively pursuing increased funding for USDA §1433 Formula Funds for Animal Health and Disease Research Program to be used by accredited U.S. schools and colleges of veterinary medicine, and agriculture experiment stations.

PURPOSE OF THIS LEGISLATION

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The objective of USDA §1433 Formula Funds for Animal Health and Disease Research Program is to support research to improve the health and productivity of domestic livestock, horses, poultry, and aquatic animals, to prevent diseases in both domestic and wild animals, and to protect human health through control of zoonotic agents.

WHY AVMA SUPPORTS THIS LEGISLATION

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Improves vaccines development and other biosecurity countermeasures to protect animal herds and flocks.
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Improves rapid diagnostic technology for priority disease agents.
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Strengthen animal surveillance, animal census and tracking, integrated with GIS tracking.
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Devise plans for recovery after disease outbreak, including effective carcass disposal and safe repopulation of affected premises.

KNOWN OPPOSITION TO THE AVMA POSITION

None

CURRENT LEGISLATIVE STATUS

There was an appropriation of $5 million in FY05 that was divided between 27 U.S. schools and colleges of veterinary medicine, and 50 agriculture experiment stations for USDA §1433 Formula Funds for Animal Health and Disease Research Program to improve both human and animal lives. The AVMA encourages you to increase the funding for USDA §1433 Formula Funds for Animal Health and Disease Research Program to improve foreign animal disease research, detection, and recovery.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

To contact your Members of Congress, urging their support for these critical funds in USDA, simply type in your zip code in the space above. For more information, please contact Dr. Lyle Vogel, at the AVMA-Scientific Activities Division at (800) 248-1862; Dr. John Melcher (202) 546-4084; Dr. Gerald Rushin at the AVMA-Governmental Relations Division at (800) 321-1473, ext 3207.

His poor management of public health has left precious little funding for the CDC and the NCID to solve the problem. Now it has to be hammered out by state governments. State officials will never agree with one another and the one state that fucks up will screw all the rest.

*bows*