Avian flu

Abuja -- 13 August 2008 -- Animal health specialists warn a new strain of highly pathogenic bird flu in Nigeria - which has previously not been recorded in sub-Saharan Africa - increases the risk of avian influenza spreading to other countries in West Africa.

Nigeria's bird flu officials blame infected migratory birds from Europe or Central Asia for the spread of the new strain of H5N1 to the country.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization says the newly discovered virus strain is genetically different from the strain that circulated in Nigeria in 2006 and 2007.

The U.N. food agency says the new strain is similar to ones previously identified in Italy, Afghanistan and Iran, last year.    » read more »

Novel Project Could Help Thwart Worldwide Influenza Threat

LA JOLLA, CA, April 14, 2008—An international group of American and Turkish research scientists, led by Sea Lane Biotechnologies, has created the first comprehensive monoclonal antibody libraries against avian influenza (H5N1) using samples from survivors of the 2005/2006 "bird flu" outbreak in Turkey.

H5N1 virus    » read more »

04 February 2008 -- Indonesia's health ministry says a 29-year-old woman has died of bird flu, raising the death toll in the southeast Asian nation to 102.

Officials say the woman died on Saturday in a Jakarta hospital. She is at least the eighth person to die this year from the disease.

The woman visited her parents recently and officials say their neighbors kept chicks. It was unclear, however, whether the chickens were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

Most bird flu cases in Indonesia involve contact with infected poultry.    » read more »

24 January 2008 -- The United Nations is warning that bird flu outbreaks have spread to 15 countries, making the disease a global threat that requires close monitoring.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a statement Thursday, calling for more monitoring and greater efforts to contain the virus.

The outbreaks have been reported since December and involve mostly domesticated poultry infected with the virulent H5N1 strain.    » read more »

23 January 2008 -- Indian officials are struggling to contain a serious outbreak of bird flu that has spread across nearly half of the eastern state of West Bengal.

India's Farm Minister, Sharad Pawar, said Wednesday the virus has been detected in nine of the state's 19 districts. Neighboring states are being asked to send medical staff to help deal with the outbreak.

West Bengal officials have set a new target of slaughtering 300,000 chickens a day and increased the number of veterinary teams to 600.    » read more »

15 January 2008 -- Indian health officials have confirmed that an outbreak of bird flu in the eastern part of the country, near Bangladesh, is the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

The new outbreak has already killed about 35,000 birds in the state of West Bengal. The state's minister for animal resources, Anisur Rahaman, Tuesday said the poultry deaths were reported from farms in the Morgram village in the Birbhum District, and in south Dinajpur.    » read more »

15 January 2008 -- Officials in Indonesia say another person has died from bird flu, bringing the country's death toll from the disease to 96 since the outbreak started in 2003.

The latest victim was a 16-year-old girl from the town of Bekasi, on the eastern outskirts of Jakarta. Officials say she died Tuesday.

Monday, officials reported that a 32-year-old woman from an area just west of Jakarta died of bird flu last week, at her home in the city of Tangerang. A statement from the health ministry said the woman's family kept chickens in their backyard.    » read more »

04 January 2008 -- China says a recent outbreak of avian flu in the northwestern Xinjiang region has killed nearly 5,000 birds.

Official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Friday that authorities killed 29,000 birds to control the outbreak in the city of Turpan.

On Thursday, a government laboratory confirmed the presence in poultry of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

Bird flu outbreaks were reported also this week in Bangladesh, Israel and Vietnam.

The World Health Organization says the virus has killed more than 200 people worldwide.

Source: VOA News

19 December 2007 -- Delegates from 111 countries met in New Delhi, India, the first week of December to assess the progress in combating avian flu and the preparations for a human influenza pandemic. Two of the public health officials leading that effort summarized the results of the conference at a news briefing in Washington. .

Since it was first diagnosed in Asia in 1996, the virus that causes avian influenza, or bird flu, has forced the destruction of millions of infected poultry flocks in nearly 60 countries. More than 200 people have died after contracting the so-called H5N1 virus.    » read more »

17 December 2007 -- Experts with the World Health Organization are urging countries to step up surveillance of bird flu outbreaks in poultry. The announcement follows Pakistan's first human bird flu fatality and Burma's first reported human case of bird flu. Concern is also growing that as colder weather sweeps through much of the northern hemisphere, so will cases of the potentially deadly virus.

The World Health Organization says the bird flu virus is likely to become more prevalent in the coming months, because just as people are prone to sickness in cold weather, so are birds.    » read more »

17 December 2007 -- Officials in Benin say tests have confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus on two poultry farms.

Agriculture Minister Roger Dovonou says tests from a laboratory in Italy confirmed the virus has struck one farm in the city of Cotonou and another in the town of Adjarra, outside the capital Porto Novo.

Benin reported its first suspected cases of bird flu on December 7th. Workers slaughtered several hundred chickens at the two farms as a precautionary measure, and also disinfected the sites.    » read more »

14 December 2007 -- The World Health Organization has confirmed Burma's first human case of bird flu.

Based on information provided by the Burmese Ministry of Health, the WHO identified the victim as a seven-year-old girl from eastern Shan State.

Officials say she developed symptoms of the disease last month in an area where there had been an outbreak of the H5N1 virus in poultry. The girl survived the disease.

Seven countries in East Asia have reported human cases of the potentially deadly H5N1 virus. The two with the greatest number of cases are Indonesia and Vietnam.    » read more »

16 December 2007 -- Health officials in Pakistan have confirmed the country's first human fatality caused by bird flu.

The Health Ministry says the victim worked at a poultry farm in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, near the border with Afghanistan.

Officials say the brother of the man infected with avian influenza also died recently, but he was not tested for the disease.    » read more »

16 December 2007 -- With the approach of Christmas and Muslims marking Sallah, poultry consumption in Nigeria is expected to reach an all-time high this month. As Gilbert da Costa reports for VOA from Abuja, recent reports indicating the virus remains entrenched in Nigeria and an outbreak in neighboring Benin have prompted fresh concerns about bird flu infecting humans in Nigeria.

Health officials in northern Nigeria are disinfecting poultry markets in a bid to stem cases of bird flu before Christmas and the Muslim festival of Sallah, this month.    » read more »

11 December 2007 -- Chinese authorities are warning of a "very high" possibility of outbreaks of bird flu over the next several months as health officials hunt for clues how a father and son became infected with the virus.

Vice Agriculture Minister Yin Chengjie was quoted as saying Tuesday he is not optimistic about winter and spring months when the virus is at its most contagious.

Yin said it is critical to improve methods of poultry breeding, slaughter, delivery and processing in the country.    » read more »