Bird Flu Cases Climb in Indonesia; Virus Kills Poultry in Japan
Saturday, January 13th, 2007 | |
Posted by John under: Pestilence
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — Bird flu killed two more Indonesians, infected fowl in Japan and reached another Vietnamese province, signaling a resurgence of outbreaks similar to last year, when the virus spread to more than 30 countries in the first quarter.
“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Mat 24:7
Indonesia’s latest fatalities were women in their 20s from areas near the capital, Jakarta, said Joko Suyono, an official at the Health Ministry’s avian flu emergency center. Nine other Indonesians may have contracted the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
Veterinary officials in Japan are culling fowl on a farm on the southern island of Kyushu, where H5N1 was confirmed today, the country’s first outbreak in almost three years. Vietnam reported infected poultry in Tra Vinh, the sixth southern province to record an outbreak in the past month. The infections provide more chances for the H5N1 virus to mutate into a pandemic form.
“This time last year, it began to pop similarly and then it began to spread,” Peter Cordingley, a Manila-based spokesman for the World Health Organization, said in a Jan. 11 interview. “We saw it go across central Asia into the Middle East, into Europe and into Africa. We don’t know whether it’s going to happen that way this year, but this virus is very versatile and I think it would be foolish to bet against it.”
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza is known to have infected 265 people in 10 countries since 2003, killing 159 of them, the WHO said yesterday. Millions could die if H5N1 mutates and begins spreading easily between people, sparking a global outbreak.
A 22-year-old from Indonesia’s Banten province died early today, two days after she was admitted to Jakarta’s Persahabatan hospital, the health ministry’s Suyono said. She tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus yesterday, the WHO said.
Nigeria, Egypt
A 26-year-old woman from South Jakarta died late yesterday of the virus, Suyono said. The cases bring to at least four the number of confirmed infections recorded in the Southeast Asian nation this year after a hiatus of almost two months. South Korea, Nigeria and Hong Kong have reported diseased birds in the past month, while China and Egypt found new human cases.
Results of tests for H5N1 are pending on six other patients being treated at the Persahabatan hospital, Suyono said. These include the husband of a 38-year-old woman who died of H5N1 on Jan. 11 and their 18-year-old son, who is in critical condition, Suyono said. The other patients under that hospital are four people from Bekasi, in West Java province.
A mother and her two children, who were hospitalized in Bandung city, also in West Java, make up the other three of the nine being tested for H5N1, he said.
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.
Japan Outbreak
In Japan, a poultry outbreak was confirmed on a farm with 12,000 chickens in Miyazaki prefecture, the nation’s Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said in a statement today. The virus killed 3,800 fowl and the rest will be culled.
The ministry ordered 16 other farms not to move produce until an investigation is finished. The properties are located within a 10-kilometer (6-mile) radius and raise a combined 330,000 poultry. Officials will probe the route of the infection once efforts to contain its spread have been implemented.
Japan’s first H5N1 outbreak was reported in a commercial poultry flock in Yamaguchi prefecture on the southwestern edge of the main island of Honshu three years ago. Outbreaks were also found in poultry in Oita and Kyoto prefectures, the last of which occurred in March 2004.
Japan is the world’s second-largest importer of chicken meat, trailing Russia, according to data kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It bought 443,000 metric tons of the meat, worth 102 billion yen ($846 million) in 2005, according to Japan’s farm ministry.
New Vietnamese Outbreak
The H5N1 virus killed at least 880 ducks in the Cau Ke district of Tra Vinh, a Mekong Delta province, said Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of animal health with the Vietnamese Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development.
“These water birds were never vaccinated and neither were any of the infected poultry in the other five provinces where dead birds were found” during the past month, Nam said in a telephone interview from Hanoi today. “We haven’t seen any birds that have been vaccinated get infected. It shows that the vaccines and the vaccination program both work very well.”
Vietnam, which has the highest tally of human H5N1 cases, has so far culled about 30,000 poultry to control outbreaks in the provinces of Ca Mau, Bac Lieu, Hau Giang, Vinh long, Kien Giang and Tra Vinh, he said.
Vietnam hasn’t reported any human H5N1 cases since late 2005.