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Vigilance needed to clip bird flu's
wings
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Southeast Asian
countries grappling with fresh outbreaks of bird
flu are displaying strong faith in the
transparency of authorities in the fight against
the lethal disease, marking a departure from the
secrecy that governments resorted to last
year.
This
shift, 12 months after the region's governments
were heavily criticized for concealing details of
the deadly avian flu, is being welcomed by public
health bodies.
"The improvement in
transparency and reporting by [Vietnam and
Thailand] compared with the beginning of the
problem this time last year is distinct," Peter
Cordingley, spokesman for the World Health
Organization's (WHO) Western Pacific Regional
Office, told Inter Press Service.
"Both
countries are carrying out intensive surveillance
of both poultry and humans," he added. "WHO is
pleased with this."
Such surveillance
comes at a time when the two countries currently
affected by the H5N1 strain of the virus are
striving to limit the number of human fatalities
due to avian flu.
Vietnam reported another
avian-flu infection on Wednesday. Currently, that
country is the epicenter of the virus, with 12
people dying from bird flu in January. The most
recent victim was a 10 year-old-girl from southern
Vietnam. There were 17 deaths caused by the virus
last year.
Thailand has been more
fortunate. In the first month of this year, that
country has yet to add any victims to the 12
bird-flu-related deaths it recorded in 2004.
But health officials worry that the Asian
death toll, which now stands at 41, may increase
in the wake of high chicken consumption that is
expected during the annual Chinese Lunar New Year
festival that starts on February 9.
To
thwart an increase in deaths, Vietnamese
epidemiologists and doctors launched an intensive
drive over the weekend to monitor all suspected
bird-flu patients. It is expected to cover the 30
provinces and cities in Vietnam where the current
outbreak of bird flu has been detected.
For its part, Thailand plans to open seven
more laboratories in the country to test patients
for bird flu. That would bring to 14 the number of
testing centers being used to detect signs of the
virus.
Thai newspapers reported over the
weekend that the Livestock Development Department
had identified 21 provinces in the country as
"high-risk areas for new outbreaks of bird flu".
Both agriculture and public-health
officials are on the edge given the speed at which
the lethal virus spread across nearly 10 Asian
countries during the cool season last year,
resulting in more than 100 million chickens being
culled or dying due to the disease. The countries
affected ranged from Thailand and Vietnam to China
and Indonesia.
A second outbreak was
detected just before the current cool season
arrived in five Southeast Asian countries,
including Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Fears of the virus being transmitted from
human-to-human have grown with reports of one such
probable case occurring in Thailand last year.
Public-health officials are also studying a
probable case of the H5N1 virus being transmitted
from one patient to another in Vietnam, at the
start of this year.
The report of the
spread of bird flu between humans in Thailand was
featured in the recent issue of the US-based New
England Journal of Medicine. It confirmed that two
Thai women who died of bird flu last year had
gotten the infection while caring for an
11-year-old girl, who had died few days before.
"Human-to-human transmission can occur if
somebody is exposed to a long period of contact
with a patient having the virus," Dr Kumnuan
Ungchusak, director of the Bureau of Epidemiology
at Thailand's Public Health Ministry, told IPS.
Such exposure has to be very close, "like
hugging the patient," added Dr Kumnuan, who led
the Thai researchers in the study that appeared in
the US medical journal. "Exposure also must be for
a long period, more than 12 hours, and also the
patient must be critically ill."
At the
same time, medical evidence points to the low
survival rate among people who were infected with
bird flu from contaminated poultry. Between 70-80%
of those infected with the H5N1 strain of the
virus have died, according to available reports.
The WHO has already sounded the alarm
about the prospect of a global pandemic - killing
millions of people - if the bird-flu virus mutates
and is passed rapidly between humans.
That
is because the human immune system lacks the
capacity to combat a potential new virus evolving
from bird flu. What is more, the estimated eight
vaccines being worked on to inoculate people from
the bird-flu virus are still far from being made
commercially available, say health officials.
The last century offered a grim picture of
the devastating impact of influenza pandemics: an
estimated 50 million people died worldwide during
such a pandemic between 1918-19.
"All
countries - first and developing worlds - should
prepare for a flu pandemic," said the WHO's
Cordingley. "We think one is highly likely if the
present situation continues to deteriorate."
This region has to mount a unified effort
to prevent such a pandemic, he added. "Defenses
against bird flu in humans, and against a
pandemic, are only as strong as the weakest
nation. By that definition, Asia is at risk."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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