T. ModestoPhD
In Memoriam
Bird Flu Kills Third Indonesian in a Week, WHO Says (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aY_OYEkFGiHo&refer=canada
By Karima Anjani and Jason Gale
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu killed a 27-year-old woman on Indonesia's Java island, the third person to die of the virus there in less than a week, the World Health Organization said.
Tests on the woman from Central Java province showed she had the H5N1 strain of avian influenza when she died last week, the WHO said in a statement yesterday. A 67-year-old woman from West Java province and an 11-year-old boy from a southern suburb of the capital, Jakarta, also died from the disease.
The virus is reported to have killed a person every four days this year, more than double the 2005 rate, creating chances for it to mutate and spread easily among people. Pandemic flu could kill millions, and nations should decide in advance which groups of people would receive drugs and vaccine first, world health officials say. Almost a third of nations surveyed prioritized neither in their preparedness plans, researchers say.
``Because it is estimated to take six months to mass produce strain-specific vaccine, and global antiviral production and stockpiling is increasing, priority-setting for antivirals may prove to be more critical to pandemic preparedness,'' according to a study by Lori Uscher-Pines and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
WHO officials say that the world is now closer to another influenza pandemic than at any time since 1968, when the last of the previous century's three major outbreaks occurred. The threat is putting governments under pressure to get ready for a global outbreak of flu.
10 Countries Affected
The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 256 people in 10 countries in the past three years, killing 151 of them, the Geneva-based agency said yesterday. Almost half the 109 cases reported this year have occurred in Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country.
Of the 45 national plans reviewed, 49 percent prioritized which groups in society would receive antivirals such as Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu, and 62 percent listed which groups would receive flu vaccine, Uscher-Pines and colleagues said in a report published in PLoS Medicine, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal.
The researchers, in response to an e-mailed request, declined to identify the 13 countries that didn't prioritize groups. They looked at plans from both developed and developing countries from all regions, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Bahrain, Greece, Japan and Mexico. Plans for China and Thailand, which have reported human H5N1 infections, were also reviewed.
Tamiflu Sales
Sales of Tamiflu more than doubled to 669 million Swiss francs ($527 million) in the third quarter, Roche said today. The Basel, Switzerland-based company increased its forecast for government orders of Tamiflu this year to as much as 1.7 billion francs from a previous estimate of as much as 1.3 billion francs.
A pandemic can start when a novel influenza A-type virus, to which almost no one has natural immunity, emerges and begins spreading. Experts believe that a pandemic in 1918, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, began when an avian flu virus jumped to people.
Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers, according to the WHO. While the virus doesn't spread easily between people, some human-to-human transmission may have occurred.
Probing Source
The United Nations agency said the source of H5N1 infection in the woman from Central Java province is under investigation. She died on Oct. 13, a day after she was admitted to the hospital and five days after she developed flu-like symptoms.
Avian influenza may have infected the brain of the 67-year- old woman before it killed her on Oct. 15, Indonesian doctors said yesterday. The 11-year-old boy succumbed to his H5N1 infection on Oct. 14. He may have contracted the virus from the diseased chickens in his neighborhood, the WHO said.
Avian flu has killed people in Indonesia at the rate of more than one a week this year. Doctors fear the pace of new infections might pick up heading into the Northern winter, when seasonal influenza tends to be more prevalent.
``We have noticed a relatively quiet period during the Northern hemisphere summer months, with a rise in cases beginning in October,'' Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said in an e-mail today. ``In Indonesia, there has been no quiet period. Unfortunately, new cases have appeared there throughout the year.''
There is no proven seasonal link with human avian flu cases, and the pattern has been observed ``but over a very short time period of three years,'' Thompson said.
The Bloomberg school is named for Michael Bloomberg, a benefactor of Johns Hopkins University and the founder and principal owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
To contact the reporters on this story: Karima Anjani in Jakarta at kanjani@bloomberg.net ; Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: October 17, 2006 05:07 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aY_OYEkFGiHo&refer=canada
By Karima Anjani and Jason Gale
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu killed a 27-year-old woman on Indonesia's Java island, the third person to die of the virus there in less than a week, the World Health Organization said.
Tests on the woman from Central Java province showed she had the H5N1 strain of avian influenza when she died last week, the WHO said in a statement yesterday. A 67-year-old woman from West Java province and an 11-year-old boy from a southern suburb of the capital, Jakarta, also died from the disease.
The virus is reported to have killed a person every four days this year, more than double the 2005 rate, creating chances for it to mutate and spread easily among people. Pandemic flu could kill millions, and nations should decide in advance which groups of people would receive drugs and vaccine first, world health officials say. Almost a third of nations surveyed prioritized neither in their preparedness plans, researchers say.
``Because it is estimated to take six months to mass produce strain-specific vaccine, and global antiviral production and stockpiling is increasing, priority-setting for antivirals may prove to be more critical to pandemic preparedness,'' according to a study by Lori Uscher-Pines and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
WHO officials say that the world is now closer to another influenza pandemic than at any time since 1968, when the last of the previous century's three major outbreaks occurred. The threat is putting governments under pressure to get ready for a global outbreak of flu.
10 Countries Affected
The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 256 people in 10 countries in the past three years, killing 151 of them, the Geneva-based agency said yesterday. Almost half the 109 cases reported this year have occurred in Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country.
Of the 45 national plans reviewed, 49 percent prioritized which groups in society would receive antivirals such as Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu, and 62 percent listed which groups would receive flu vaccine, Uscher-Pines and colleagues said in a report published in PLoS Medicine, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal.
The researchers, in response to an e-mailed request, declined to identify the 13 countries that didn't prioritize groups. They looked at plans from both developed and developing countries from all regions, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Bahrain, Greece, Japan and Mexico. Plans for China and Thailand, which have reported human H5N1 infections, were also reviewed.
Tamiflu Sales
Sales of Tamiflu more than doubled to 669 million Swiss francs ($527 million) in the third quarter, Roche said today. The Basel, Switzerland-based company increased its forecast for government orders of Tamiflu this year to as much as 1.7 billion francs from a previous estimate of as much as 1.3 billion francs.
A pandemic can start when a novel influenza A-type virus, to which almost no one has natural immunity, emerges and begins spreading. Experts believe that a pandemic in 1918, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, began when an avian flu virus jumped to people.
Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers, according to the WHO. While the virus doesn't spread easily between people, some human-to-human transmission may have occurred.
Probing Source
The United Nations agency said the source of H5N1 infection in the woman from Central Java province is under investigation. She died on Oct. 13, a day after she was admitted to the hospital and five days after she developed flu-like symptoms.
Avian influenza may have infected the brain of the 67-year- old woman before it killed her on Oct. 15, Indonesian doctors said yesterday. The 11-year-old boy succumbed to his H5N1 infection on Oct. 14. He may have contracted the virus from the diseased chickens in his neighborhood, the WHO said.
Avian flu has killed people in Indonesia at the rate of more than one a week this year. Doctors fear the pace of new infections might pick up heading into the Northern winter, when seasonal influenza tends to be more prevalent.
``We have noticed a relatively quiet period during the Northern hemisphere summer months, with a rise in cases beginning in October,'' Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said in an e-mail today. ``In Indonesia, there has been no quiet period. Unfortunately, new cases have appeared there throughout the year.''
There is no proven seasonal link with human avian flu cases, and the pattern has been observed ``but over a very short time period of three years,'' Thompson said.
The Bloomberg school is named for Michael Bloomberg, a benefactor of Johns Hopkins University and the founder and principal owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
To contact the reporters on this story: Karima Anjani in Jakarta at kanjani@bloomberg.net ; Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: October 17, 2006 05:07 EDT