Tick, Tick, Tick | 107 Avian Flu Deaths In Indonesia

Chickens - Experts say the danger is the virus may evolve into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, in which case the transmission rate would soar, causing a pandemic in which millions of people could die. Image Credit: FAO

Tick, Tick, Tick 107 Avian Flu Deaths In Indonesia

This morning, two deaths of adolescent Indonesians help to establish the island(s) nation as the most affected nation on Earth due to the bird flu virus.

One boy and one girl bring the total number of deaths to 107, and it is unclear wither these cases can be traced to “Cluster” human-to-human transfer of the virus even though the boy that just passed away had a brother die from the same disease.

There are still other individuals who have tested positive for the Avian Flu but have yet to succumb to the effects of the H5N1 virus of which there remains no cure.

Indonesia - Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting the H5N1 virus, which is endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia. According to United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data on March 19, bird flu has infected 31 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia. Image Credit: FAO

This excerpted from Reuters -

Two Indonesian youths die of bird flu
By Mita Valina Liem; Editing by Ed Davies and Alex Richardson Reuters Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:05am EDT

JAKARTA - Two Indonesian youths have died from bird flu, a health ministry official said on Monday.

A 15-year-old boy from Subang, in West Java, died on Wednesday in an area where chickens had died, said Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the ministry.

An 11-year-old girl from Bekasi, east of Jakarta, who died on Friday also tested positive for the virus, the official said.

"There were dead chickens in the boy's neighbourhood, but in the girl's case it is still unclear," Kandun said via a mobile phone text message.
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Earlier on Monday, a 22-month-old girl from Sumatra's Bukit Tinggi tested positive for bird flu and the health ministry was checking her neighbourhood for possible backyard farming.

"Her condition is improving, and she is being treated at a Padang hospital," Lily Sulistyowati, a health ministry spokeswoman, said by telephone.

Including the latest deaths, Indonesia has had 132 confirmed cases of the virus.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting the H5N1 virus, which is endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia.

According to United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data on March 19, bird flu has infected 31 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia.

Experts say the danger is the virus may evolve into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, in which case the transmission rate would soar, causing a pandemic in which millions of people could die.
Reference Here>>

Tick, Tick, Tick – Bird Flu Brings Bali "Low"

The Bali Starling lives only on Bali. As few as six may exist in the wild. Image Credit: Adrian Pingstone in January 2005

Tick, Tick, Tick – Bird Flu Brings Bali "Low"

Indonesia has become the country to watch as it relates to bird flu crossover deaths. Human infection and deaths attributed to Avian Flu virus contracted directly from the raising of birds for food have now claimed 82 victims … the most of any country in the world.

If this virus mutates to where it can be transferred from human to human, the health of the world will be in jeopardy through a pandemic that will have little in the way of vaccines and other tools to counter this threat from the world health community.

If this virus is able to make the crossover from bird - human transmission to human - human transmission, forget the war on terror created by radical Muslim Islamists … a pandemic will become the greatest threat to human life and stability in this world as we know it.

Funny how this threat, Avian Flu crossover, happens to be at its worse in a primarily Muslim believing country (Bali is managed as part of Indonesia while primarily believing in Hindi traditions in religion). One has to ask – What is wrong with these societies and infrastructures that would allow this threat to world health to approach a tipping point? It may be just a coincidence but the world needs answers and a clear counter strategy to combat this potential pandemic.

Excerpts from Forbes via The Sydney Morning Herald -

Bali bird flu deaths spark tourism fears
By Kate Benson and Mark Forbes in Jakarta - August 14, 2007

AUSTRALIAN health officials are on alert after a deadly outbreak of bird flu on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

The finding is another blow to Indonesia's tourism industry, still struggling to recover from the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings.

Ni Luh Putu Sri Windiani, from north-western Bali, became the island's first human victim of bird flu after she died of multiple organ failure on Sunday.

Doctors at the Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar confirmed last night that the 29-year-old Indonesian woman had tested positive to the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Ms Windiani's daughter, Dian, 5, died suffering from similar symptoms at the same hospital 11 days ago after playing with sick chickens outside their house, but experts are unable to determine if she had bird flu.

It is also unclear whether Ms Windiani contracted bird flu from the chickens or from her daughter. She started showing symptoms more than a week ago, but was admitted to hospital six days later. She was transferred to Denpasar on Friday and treated in the isolation unit.

Australian officials said they were closely monitoring the investigation into the deaths.
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Australia's travel advisory already warns of the risk of bird flu in Indonesia, but states the danger to short-term visitors is relatively low.

A spokesman from the Bird Flu Information Centre in Jakarta, Joko Suyono, said many chickens around Ms Windiani's house had died suddenly in recent weeks.

"The villagers didn't burn the carcasses. Instead, they buried them or fed them to pigs," he said.

The deputy director of the World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Ian Barr, said yesterday there was no need to panic.

"Most of these cases occur in villages, not in downtown Kuta or Denpasar, so I'm not sure that travellers should be too concerned."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing, Kay McNiece, said travellers to any bird flu-affected country should steer clear of birds and should practise good hygiene.
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Indonesia reported its first human bird flu case in July 2005.
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Twenty-one Indonesians diagnosed with the disease have survived.
Reference Here>>

We, at MAXINE, become very concerned when officials are "unclear whether Ms Windiani contracted bird flu from the chickens or from her daughter".

We think it is high time that officials in Bali (and Indonesia) become CLEAR as to the source of this latest death due to Avian flu infection and not be so worried about how this might effect tourism.

Tick, Tick, Tick - H5N1 Virus Hits The Rising Sun - UPDATED

Workers bury bags of slaughtered chickens from the Sato Broiler farm at a mountain near the farm in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, on Saturday. Image Credit: KYODO PHOTO

Tick, Tick, Tick - H5N1 Virus Hits The Land Of The Rising Sun

It looks as though that Chicken Teriyaki may be a little more difficult to come by in a couple of "Prefectures" (counties) in southwestern Japan.

Japan has been fairly safe from large scale bird flu infections throughout the history of avian flu spreading in populations of farm raised birds.

So this latest event in the "2006-2007" H5N1 flu season is troubling even though no human infections have been reported.

This from The Japan Times -

H5N1 AT SECOND FARM
Bird influenza feared at farm in Okayama
The Japan Times - Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007

OKAYAMA (Kyodo) The agriculture ministry announced Saturday that bird flu is suspected in the deaths of 22 chickens at a poultry farm in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture.

The word came just hours after the ministry confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain was detected in the second outbreak of bird flu this month in Miyazaki Prefecture.

The farm in Takahashi raises around 12,000 chickens. Two died Friday and 20 died Saturday, according to the ministry. It is having a laboratory conduct further analysis to nail down the precise cause.

Until an outbreak of bird flu is confirmed, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and the Okayama Prefectural Government are planning to request that farms in adjacent areas do not move livestock, officials said.

In the first case this month, the ministry confirmed that the H5N1 strain of bird flu was found in dead chickens at a farm in Kiyotake, Miyazaki Prefecture.

On Saturday, the ministry also confirmed the H5N1 strain was found in dead chickens at a poultry farm in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, in the second outbreak this year.

A government lab analyzed samples from 3,000 chickens that died at the Sato Broiler farm in Hyuga. The farm had a total of 52,500 chickens, with a large number of deaths first reported there Monday.

The analysis found that the birds had been infected with H5N1, the agricultural ministry said in a statement.

The Miyazaki Prefectural Government started culling about 50,000 chickens raised on the Hyuga farm on Friday and continued the work Saturday.

The Hyuga case followed the highly virulent case of bird flu confirmed at a poultry farm in Kiyotake, about 60 km south of Hyuga.

The government confirmed Japan's first outbreak of avian flu in 79 years in January 2004 from chickens that started dying in late 2003 at a farm in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Reports of infections of birds have been sporadic since then in Japan -- one H5N1 case in Oita Prefecture and another in Kyoto, both in February 2003, with the last report before the latest outbreaks being a weaker H5N2 strain infection in Ibaraki Prefecture in June 2005.
Reference Here>>

Two previous cases have been in Miyazaki prefecture. Image Credit: Associated Press

UPDATE -

Officials in Japan have confirmed a third outbreak of bird flu
Although they are still determining if it is the H5N1 strain dangerous to humans.
BBC - Monday, 29 January 2007, 06:02 GMT

About 40 chickens have died on a farm in Takahashi, in Okayama prefecture.

Officials have ordered all poultry there to be culled, and the movement of people and goods restricted.

Two bird flu outbreaks earlier this month in the southern prefecture of Miyazaki have already been confirmed as the H5N1 strain of the disease.

The Japanese authorities have already determined that the new case of bird flu belongs to the virulent H5 family of the virus, but further tests are needed to find out if it is H5N1, the strain potentially deadly to humans.

Officials, however, are taking no chances. They are due to start culling all 12,000 birds at the affected Takahashi farm as early as Tuesday.

Other farms in a 10 km (six-mile) radius have been banned from transporting chickens and eggs, a ministry official told reporters.

Thousands of chickens have already been killed in Japan's main chicken-producing region of Miyazaki, following two H5N1 outbreaks in two separate towns there earlier this month.
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