"India has put 26 people in isolation with bird flu symptoms and hundreds more people are being monitored, officials said on Friday as Pakistan and Thailand reported outbreaks of bird flu in poultry. India is battling its worst outbreak of avian influenza, which has spread to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts. The densely populated state is adjacent to Bangladesh, itself trying to control a major outbreak of bird flu, and has millions of backyard fowl. India has not reported any human infection of the H5N1 bird flu virus in its four outbreaks of avian influenza since 2006.
'The preliminary tests for bird flu are negative, but more tests are being conducted and the list of sick people reviewed every day,' R.S. Shukla, a senior health official, told Reuters.
To the west in neighboring Pakistan, authorities said bird flu had been detected at a poultry farm on the outskirts of its biggest city, Karachi. But officials said on Friday there was no likelihood of any human infection.
In Thailand, the virus has been found in a second province in the north. Tests confirmed the outbreak in Phichit, 215 miles north of Bangkok, where about 30 village chickens died last week. There were four outbreaks in Thailand last year, but no new reports of human infections in the country where H5N1 has killed 17 people since 2003.In Indonesia, 102 people have died of the disease. In the latest case, the health ministry said on Friday a woman who had lived near a poultry slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta died of multiple-organ failure. The woman, 31, is the seventh person to die of bird flu in Indonesia this year and some experts say the flare-up is caused by a combination of factors such as rainy weather and poor sanitation.
Not including the latest death, bird flu has killed 224 people in a dozen countries since late 2003, the World Health Organization says.
In West Bengal, veterinary staff have culled 2.6 million birds, completing what officials said was a successful operation that had brought the bird flu situation under control. The focus now is on hundreds of medical and veterinary workers and villagers who had come into close contact with dead or sick birds. Officials said health staff returning home after the culling operation had been asked to get themselves checked. Dozens of isolation wards had been created in hospitals in the affected districts to handle any sudden rush of suspected human cases.
Health experts also worry about the situation in Bangladesh, a crowded country of 140 million people where bird flu has spread to nearly half of the country's 64 districts. Livestock officials said bird flu was still spreading and had resurfaced in the Feni district southeast of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The government has ordered culling of all chickens and ducks in one kilometer radius around affected farms. The virus is threatening the livelihoods of millions of people reliant on the country's poultry industry and driving up food prices."
Full story by Reuters: http://in.reuters.com/article/health/idINSP11055220080201?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
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Spread of avian flu by drinking water
There is a widespread link between avian flu and water, e.g. in Egypt to the Nile delta or Indonesia to residential districts of less prosperous humans with backyard flocks and without central water supply as in Vietnam:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no12/06-0829.htm.
See also the WHO web side:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/emerging/h5n1background.pdf and
http://www.umg-verlag.de/umwelt-medizin-gesellschaft/407_m_s.html
“Influenza: Initial introduction of influenza viruses to the population via abiotic water supply versus biotic human viral respirated droplet shedding” and http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473309907700294/abstract?iseop=true
“Transmission of influenza A in human beings”.
Avian flu infections may increase in consequence to increase of virus circulation. Transmission of avian flu by direct contact to infected poultry is an unproved assumption from the WHO. There is no evidence that influenza primarily is transmitted by saliva droplets.
Infected birds and poultry can everywhere contaminate the drinking water. All humans have contact to drinking water. In hot climates/the tropics flood-related influenza is typical after extreme weather and floods. Virulence of influenza viruses depends on temperature and time. Special in cases of local water supplies with “young” and fresh H5N1 contaminated water from low local wells, cisterns, tanks, rain barrels, ponds, rivers or rice paddies this pathway can explain small clusters in households. At 24°C e.g. in the tropics the virulence of influenza viruses in water amount to 2 days. In temperate climates for “older” water from central water supplies cold water is decisive to virulence of viruses. At 7°C the virulence of influenza viruses in water amount to 14 days.
Human to human and contact transmission of influenza occur - but are overvalued immense. In the course of influenza epidemics in Germany, recognized clusters are rare, accounting for just 9 percent of cases e.g. in the 2005 season. In temperate climates the lethal H5N1 virus will be transferred to humans via cold drinking water, as with the birds in February and March 2006, strong seasonal at the time when drinking water has its temperature minimum.
The performance to eliminate viruses from the drinking water processing plants regularly does not meet the requirements of the WHO and the USA/USEPA. Conventional disinfection procedures are poor, because microorganisms in the water are not in suspension, but embedded in particles. Even ground water used for drinking water is not free from viruses.
Dipl.-Ing. Wilfried Soddemann - Free Science Journalist - soddemann-aachen@t-online.de
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