WHO
confirms five deaths from China bird flu
The
World Health Organization says there have now been five deaths in
China from a new bird flu virus.
BBC,
4
April 2013
There
have been 11 laboratory-confirmed cases of the H7N9 virus, a form of
avian flu which had not been seen before in humans.
But
the WHO says there is currently no evidence of human-to-human
transmission of the virus.
Tests
suggest that the virus could be treated with the anti-influenza drugs
Tamiflu and Relenza.
Around
400 people who have been in close contact with the 11 cases are being
monitored.
'Heightened
surveillance'
The
Chinese government has stepped up its disease surveillance and is
retrospectively testing any recently reported cases of severe
respiratory infection, to check if any cases had not been recognised
as H7N9.
An
inter-government task force has been formally established, and the
animal health sector has intensified investigations into the possible
sources of the virus.
China's
government has also advised people to maintain good personal hygiene,
including frequent hand-washing and avoid direct contact with sick or
dead animals.
The
WHO is not recommending any travel or trade restrictions.
New
bird flu strain: Genuine threat or fear mongering?
China,
Japan and Vietnam are on alert not to let the deadly new bird flu
strain spread. The last decade has however shown the information
about a virus has always spread much faster than the virus itself.
RT,
4
April, 2013
The
new strain of bird flu, labeled H7N9, has already claimed five lives.
Four people have died in the county’s financial hub of Shanghai,
while another person died on Wednesday in the neighboring province of
Zhejiang, after being confirmed infected on Thursday.
Scientists
studying samples of the virus taken from a Chinese man who died in
hospital in March say this strain of the disease is harder to track
than the now more common H5N1.
The
scientists from research institutes around the world warned on
Wednesday that this new virus can generate no noticeable symptoms in
birds while seriously harming humans.
"In
that sense, if this continues to spread throughout China and beyond
China, it would be an even bigger problem than with H5N1 in some
sense, because with H5N1 you can see evidence of poultry dying, but
here you can see this would be more or less a silent virus in poultry
species that will occasionally infect humans," AP quoted the
University of Hong Kong microbiologist Malik Peiris.
The
Chinese Health Ministry announced it’s mobilizing to combat the
virus. Passengers flying to and from Hong Kong are being called to
report on their condition if feeling unwell. Vietnam banned poultry
imports from China in an effort to prevent the deadly virus from
getting in.
Scientists
have so far said there are no signs of transmission of the H7N9 virus
between any of the victims or people they have come into close
contact with.
However,
they are already looking into the possibility of a pandemic, saying
the virus may mutate in future and become easier to spread among
humans.
Two
women ride past the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control
after the arrival there of testing kits for the H7N9 bird flu virus
in Beijing on April 4, 2013. (AFP Photo/Mark Ralston)
However,
statistics from World Health Organization shows the term “pandemic”
has so far been hardly applicable to bird flu or swine flu, which
together are much less deadly than common seasonal flu.
Bird
flu has claimed 371 lives since 2003. The 2009 swine flu outbreak
killed much more - 18,138. In the meantime, the common flu, which is
hardly ever in the news, kills 250,000-500,000 every year.
This
huge difference in numbers of casualties between exotic kind of flu
and the seasonal one has caused many to believe that this is being
orchestrated by the pharmaceutical companies.
In
2010, the British medical journal and the Daily mail published a list
of 20 people who worked as advisors for WHO and the same time they
had financial ties with pharmaceutical companies.
That
same year the World Health Organization came under scrutiny from the
Council of Europe, which was looking into whether the international
body had colluded with drug companies to exaggerate the threat from
swine flu.
An
estimated US$18 billion was spent worldwide on vaccinations and drugs
to fight it.
Swiss-produced
Tamiflu was pronounced the best remedy for swine flu back when the
outbreak of the disease started. Later, scientists started doubting
the drug’s effectiveness.
“We
have evidence that it is less effective than was previously thought,
that it doesn’t seem to be clearly effective in reducing
complications in healthy adults but it also shows that the data
available for evaluating drugs generally is inadequate, because drug
companies hold on to data which should be more publicly available,”
said Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal
in an interview with RT.
RT’s
Aleksey Yaroshevsky was in Ukraine in 2009 and remembers how swine
flu hysteria led to shelves at local pharmacies being emptied “by
the people panicking, rushing there to buy medication.” Further
speaking of the scale of the panic he recalls an episode “when the
Prime Minister of Ukraine back then, Yulia Tymoshenko, arrived
personally at the airport to meet huge shipment of the Tamiflu drug.”
Eventually,
there were cases when Tamiflu was actually incinerated because there
was too much of it.
“I
think they are trying to unnecessarily feed the sense of panic in the
population. People demand Tamiflu from their doctors...
Pharmaceutical industry has been having a field day of profits after
this swine flu scare,” analyst William Engdahl told RT.
As
for the new H7N9 bird flu strain, there are so far no vaccines
against it, but scientists already say that existing anti-flu drugs
are likely to do the job.
This
means the demand for Tamiflu or a similar drug may well be
resurrected soon.
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