Free of H5N1, Ghana reports

Full story: http://www.modernghana.com/GhanaHome/NewsArchive/news_details.asp?menu_id=1&id=VFZSUmVrOVVhekU9

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) yesterday announced that the nation is officially free of H5N1 in birds. After detecting H5N1 on small poultry farms in three separate districts between early April and late May of this year, the MOFA set up a quaratine and surveillance area around the farms, where more than 13,000 birds died from the virus. Nearly 30,000 more birds were culled to prevent spread of the disease.

Three weeks is the typical period between disinfection and a declaration of this nature, however the government extended this period by a couple of weeks to allow for greater surveillance.

The government recently began an education campaign for farmers on biosecurity to prevent future outbreaks and encourage the reporting of sick and dead birds. Ghana has also set up a compensation system to incentivize farmers to promptly report possible outbreaks of H5N1.

Bird flu in Canada is NOT H5N1

A large Saskatchewan poultry farm is under avian flu quarantine, but Canadian health and animal control officials report that the avian flu subtype, infecting these birds is H7N3, a strain not typically harmful to humans. There is no evidence of H5N1, the strain health authorities fear may mutate into a pandemic form, in Canada at this time.

Though H7N3 is not harmful to humans, it is quite deadly in poultry. All 50,00 birds at the farm will be culled to prevent further spread to poultry in the region.


Full story available from the Star Pheonix, via the H5N1 blog: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/story.html?id=50600535-f009-4219-b605-4675d47646d9&k=20218

Outbreaks of H5N1 in Russia & Bangladesh

From Ria Novosti: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070926/81001133.html

"About 250,000 birds are to be culled at a poultry farm in south Russia's Krasnodar Territory following an outbreak of bird flu earlier this month, Russia's agriculture watchdog said Wednesday.
A total of 170,600 birds have been slaughtered at the Lebyazh-Chepiginskoye farm and the remaining 77,500 are due to be culled in the near future, Alexander Skorikov, the head of the animal health department at Russia's agriculture watchdog said.
September 5 about 22,000 birds were culled at the farm after a regional laboratory identified the lethal H5N1 virus in dead birds at the farm."

From Xinhua: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/26/content_6797589.htm

"Some 6,000 chickens were culled at Sahapur village in Sadar sub-district in Bangladesh's northwestern Bogra district, 170 km of capital Dhaka Tuesday night following the detection of avian influenza virus in a poultry farm.
The private news agency UNB on Wednesday reported that Nakul Saha, owner of the poultry farm, took several dead chickens for laboratory test on suspicion that they might have died of bird flu. "

Rapid diagnostics for H5N1 in humans - at a lower price

From Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/83386.php.

"Scientists in Singapore say they have invented a quick and cheap bird flu test in a hand held kit that can detect the deadly H5N1 virus in under 30 minutes."

Scientists from Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have been developing an easily deployed, rapid diagnostic test for H5N1 for the past year. Health experts believe that a diagnostic tool such as this may be the key to identifying clusters of H5N1 in humans if it begins to mutate into a pandemic form - particularly in countries with less developed health infrastructures where time is wasted while cultures are shipped to and tested in central labs.

Using the droplets from a throat swab, this CD-like device can "isolate, purify, and amplify" the culture and scan it for the virus in under 30 minutes. Not only is the device easily portable but trials have shown it to be as effective at identifying the virus as equipment in central labs. The kit would also be about "5,000 percent cheaper" than currently available tools. It is not clear when the device will be available.

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine: "Catching bird flu in a droplet."Juergen Pipper, Masafumi Inoue, Lisa F-P Ng, Pavel Neuzil, Yi Zhang, and Lukas Novak. Nature Medicine Published online: 23 September 2007.

H5N1 outbreak in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Froam allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200709200338.html

"Over 1,052 birds have so far been culled in Panda Development Area of Nasarawa State in the wake of Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) that affected the area just as the people of the area were commended for reporting early signs of the flu.

UNICEF field officer for Avian Influenza, Alhaji Bala Hassan who visited the affected area from their headquarters in Bauchi said the efforts of the people of the area in reporting cases of sick or dead birds as well as their contributions towards the depopulation exercise was commendable.

Bala who was in Nasarawa weekend and visited Kondoro and panda district areas where the incident occurred cautioned the people against taking sick or dead birds for granted and should ensure that poultry meat and eggs are properly cooked before consumption."

Good news - Chlorine kills H5N1

From Emerging Infectious Diseases (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/)

With waterfowl being significant carriers of H5N1, there are definite concerns about H5N1 being transmitted to other poultry and humans through water.

A recent study published in EID demonstrated that Chlorination, the most common form of water treatment, does indeed kill H5N1

"The results of this study confirm that avian influenza (H5N1) is readily inactivated by
chlorination... For drinking water disinfection at conditions similar to those used in this study, the US Environmental Protection Agency specifies free chlorine Ct values of 6 and 8 mg-min/L to achieve enteric virus inactivation of 3 and 4 orders of magnitude, respectively (14). According to our results, these Ct values would be more than sufficient to inactivate HPAI (H5N1) in the
water environment. The information on chlorine disinfection presented here should be helpful for developing risk management procedures regarding the role of water in the transmission of the virus to humans and poultry."

Low Dose H5N1 Vaccine: Improving Ability to Stockpile?

Sanofi Pasteur, which developed the first FDA-approved pre-pandemic vaccine in April, recently released results of a clinical trial of a new antigen-sparing, low-dose H5N1 vaccine, which they said produced an immune responses in a significant (70-80%) number of the adults in the trial.

The guidelines for the first vaccine from Sanofi would have recommended a dose of 90ug of antigen to produce an immune response to the virus, whereas annual flu vaccine contains about 45ug of antigen.

This new low-dose vaccine could contain only 1.9 to 3.75ug of anitgen, significantly increasing the number of doses manufacturers could deliver in a shorter time period, which would be particularly important in the event of a pandemic.

The vaccine is still in Phase 1 trials in the United States and Sanofi has not commented on how long they believe it will take before the vaccine is ready for licensure or manufacturing.

Full story available online:
http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/news/ng.asp?n=79839-sanofi-pasteur-vaccine-h-n-influenza