The number of people that could die in a flu pandemic that matches the 1918-20 outbreak will be “very scary” and far higher than the 62 million deaths forecast by a recent study, an adviser to the White House said on Monday.

“I think that number is a very optimistic number if we are talking about a 1918-wide pandemic today,” Rajeev Venkayya, Special Assistant for Biodefense to President Bush, said.

The 1918-20 “Spanish influenza” pandemic - the worst in living history - killed anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people. Half a million died in the United States alone. (more…)

Tests have found that four members of a family in southern Vietnam who were hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu were not infected with the bird flu virus, a doctor said Tuesday.

France tests dead birds, does not suspect bird flu

Officials are carrying out tests to see what caused the deaths of some 4,000 chickens on a farm in northeastern France, but initial indications did not point to bird flu, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. The ministry said in a statement that the birds died suddenly on Saturday while another 3,500 chickens at the same site appeared completely health. “The clinical aspects (of the case) as well as the results of the autopsies do not especially indicate a diagnostic of bird flu,” the statement said, adding that full results were not expected until Tuesday. The owner of the farm told LCI television that it was “99 percent certain it is not bird flu”.

Tags: bird flu, France

Source: Reuters

U.S. Warns Africa On Bird Flu

The United States government yesterday warned that the avian flu, popularly known as the bird flu or H5N1, may mutate into a deadly pandemic worldwide and could end up claiming millions of lives globally, especially in developing countries. The US leader of Delegation on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, Ambassador John Lange, stated this at a press briefing at the US Embassy, Abuja, yesterday.

Lange stated that the avian flu requires constant surveillance, which the US is trying to establish through broad-based cooperation to prevent an outbreak of the pandemic in case the avian virus mutates. According to him, there is need for cooperative action to be taken down to the grassroots where many rural dwellers are exposed to the virus without knowledge of its deadly impact when they come in contact with chickens.

Tags: bird flu, African bird flu, Avian flu, H5N1

Bird flu may be the tip of the iceberg experts say. Experts meeting in Mali say the deadly H5N1 virus (bird flu) is just one of a plethora of diseases threatening animals and people around the world as global warming, intensive farming, increased travel and trade help dangerous microbes breed and spread. “Avian flu is just one of many diseases that are impacting the continent (of Africa).

The experts are telling us that other diseases are going to emerge or re-emerge,” said Francois Le Gall, the World Bank’s lead livestock specialist for Africa. “Almost every year there is a new disease appearing, and 75 percent of these emerging or re-emerging diseases are coming from animals; 80 percent of those have zoonotic potential,” he said in an interview.

Tags: bird flu, avian flu, World Bank

Moldy grain, not bird flu, caused a large mallard duck die-off in Idaho, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said Friday.

A big sigh if relief for people in Idaho and Utah as well as others in North America.

Source: Dow Jones

A 35-year-old Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, taking the country’s human death toll from the virus to 57, a health ministry official said on Tuesday. The woman from West Java had been undergoing treatment in a Jakarta hospital since early in the month. “The woman had contact with chicken eggs and there had been reports about dead poultry,” the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. The vast majority of human bird flu cases involving the H5N1 virus have been linked to direct or indirect contact with infected fowl. Indonesia’s death toll of 57 from the disease is the highest in the world. The total number of confirmed human cases in the country is 74.   

Indonesian woman dies of bird flu -health ministry