HK STANDARD:
Ministry of Health officials in the mainland are trying to determine how a 24-year-old man, who had no known contact with infected or dead poultry, died from avian flu on Sunday.
The Centre for Health Protection of Hong Kong's Department of Health was told yesterday morning none of the man's close contacts had shown signs of avian influenza. Reports say that 69 people who had been in contact with the man are under medical observation.
The center said samples taken from the man confirmed he had been infected with H5N1. His death brings the number of avian flu fatalities in the mainland to 17.
But virologist Julian Tang Wei-tze was skeptical about the assessment that the victim has had no contact with birds or poultry. "Its about the accuracy of their contact history. With an incompatible history it's hard to exclude any contact with infected birds, their droppings or people."
A Hong Kong-based microbiologist said it was too early to assume any sort of mutation and that the explanation lay in the definition of contact with sick or dead poultry.
- THE LAST FEW MONTHS HAVE SEEN A HUGE INCREASE IN THE NUMBERS OF BIRDS AND POULTRY INFECTED WITH THE BIRD FLU ALL OVER THE GLOBE - FROM ASIA TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE AND THE UK.
IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME...
4 comments:
The H5N1 flu requires three things to get itself into shape for humans: birds, pigs, people.
Pigs serve as an intermediary in the system as they have an immune system close to humans, which is why China with its pig and duck farms is such a good place for avian and swine flu types to intermingle: they share common hosts and exchange genetic material. Human contact does not require direct bird contact, just birds in the area and poor sanitation. H5N1 has been detected in wild populations of birds on nearly every continent, but the conditions for environmental enhancement is only in those poor Nations that have H5N1 in the wild *and* combined avian and swine farms *and* poor sanitation. China tops that list, but SE Asia has a similar conditions elsewhere, and due to the number of such farms in China it becomes ground zero for early detection of avian flu. It can arise elsewhere, just less likely to do so.
THANKS FOR THIS.
ONE DAY, H5F1 WILL KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN AGW.
It is a potent threat, to say the least.
As I was going through the NYT archives looking for information on the Taft/Bryan race I ran across a 1915 article on the flu that was starting up in the US... it was one of those shocking bits of evidence buried in the paper archives that point to the modern conclusion that the 'Spanish Influenza' was a product of the US rural farm system prior to big agribusiness... we don't think of the NE US as a prime vector for generating up influenza strains, but in the late 19th and early 20th century such was the case. While the 1915 outbreak may not be related to the 1918, there are troubling signs there... until China does something about its rural poor, they remain a global threat not due to arms, but to, yes, poor hygiene. That is not a slur or a knock on the Chinese people, but a view that poor farm management and labor conditions can lead to influenza outbreaks. Only the modern era of transport makes it a global threat... just as it did prior to WWI and the US flu outbreaks.
agreed ajax, but there is the ADDED threat with h5ni that it is carried by wild migratory birds.
birds which can trans,it them to agri-herds, and hence the culling of MILLIONS AND MILLIONS in the last month alone.
the wilds biords might also be able to carry and transmit a mutated h5n1 which is H2H and then the pisspoor hygiene in china matters not.
many have argued that china - and their pig-duck farms - are the world's incubator for ALL flu transmissable to humans.
maybe the h5nq will mutate there into one both wild birds and humans can get and then we can't stop it's spread.
many will die.
this is likely to happen.
when... no one can say.
BTW: u wanna cross post here? we got a heck of a crew and you ahev tons to offer and TAB might be another place for it to be heard?
tinkabbouddit!
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