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Avian Influenza Daily Digest
October 23, 2008 14:00 GMT
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Article Summaries ...
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
Ministers urged to rethink rather than repackage $2 billion global response to infectious diseases
10/23/08 Medical News.Net--As the first globally co-ordinated plan for the planet's gravest health threats is hatched by government ministers from around the world this weekend, a new report sets out a 10-point plan for this new, globalised approach to infectious diseases such as avian flu.
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
WHO envoy: No problem with avian flu in Iran
10/23/08 IRNA--The World Health Organization (WHO) envoy Ambrogio Mananeti said here Wednesday that presently there is no problem in Iran in connection with bird flu.
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
Nigeria: Bird Flu As Dangerous As Financial Crisis - UN
10/23/08 This Day--A representative of the United Nations in the country, Dr Joyce Ijoro, has said the threat of bird flu on the nation's economy is as strong as any major crisis in the financial sector.
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
Science and Technology
Novartis factory leads fight against deadly flu
10/23/08 Liverpool Daily Post --United States public health officials have taken delivery of the first batch of a Liverpool-produced vaccine against a deadly strain of bird flu.
Vaccines
Pandemic Preparedness
Global Viral Forecasting Initiative Receives $11M To Implement Pandemic Early Warning System
10/23/08 Medical News Today--The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a nonprofit research initiative dedicated to preventing pandemics, has received $11 million dollars from Google.org and The Skoll Foundation. The support, which includes $5.5 million dollars from each organization, represents the...
Pandemic Preparedness
UN: Press Conference by UN Avian Influenza Coordinator David Nabarro
10/23/08 UN Press Office: Although most countries were planning for a possible avian influenza pandemic, many response strategies had not been adequately tested and might be invalid once the next pandemic actually started, Dr. David Nabarro, United Nations System Influenza Coordinator, told correspondents today.
Pandemic Preparedness
History: October 10, 1918 ?Flu? Pandemic Hits a Peak
10/23/08 Brooklyn Daily Eagle--[photo]--October 22, 1918, was considered the height of the great flu epidemic that killed about 25 million people all over the world. The epidemic had started in late 1917 and swept the world until 1919. In India alone 13 million died; 500,000 in America, including more than 12,000 New Yorkers, and millions more in Africa and Europe. The name of the virus comes from a 16th century Italian explanation of its presumed cause: the influence of the stars or occult astral bodies. About every eight to 18 years the influenza virus mutates so significantly that pandemic outbreaks erupt.
Pandemic Preparedness
Full Text of Articles follow ...
Pandemic Preparedness
Global Viral Forecasting Initiative Receives $11M To Implement Pandemic Early Warning System
10/23/08 Medical News Today--The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a nonprofit research initiative dedicated to preventing pandemics, has received $11 million dollars from Google.org and The Skoll Foundation. The support, which includes $5.5 million dollars from each organization, represents the largest grant to date from Google.org.
GVFI, an organization whose mission it is to prevent future pandemics before they become fully established, brings together fieldwork in disease hotspots throughout the world with cutting edge laboratory science aimed at the discovery of new pathogens.
"Pandemics pose an enormous threat to us all," said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. "Often, by the time a new virus is discovered, it's too late to contain it. The innovative Global Viral Forecasting Initiative is aimed at finding dangerous viruses when it is still possible to limit their spread. The Skoll Foundation is proud to support this pioneering and important work."
Through collaborative studies in Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lao PDR, Madagascar, and Malaysia, GVFI tracks emergent pandemics to their source, working to provide potentially vital months or years of advanced warning before the next HIV or SARS emerges on the global stage.
"The 1918 flu outbreak cost more lives than World War I. Most epidemiologists agree - and worry - that the world is overdue for another dangerous flu pandemic," says Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org. "The cutting-edge work of Nathan Wolfe and his network of public health stars may be one of the world's best bets to prevent the next pandemic."
GVFI's strategy for preventing pandemics comes out of more than a decade of research by its founder and director, Dr. Nathan Wolfe, who holds the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professorship in Human Biology at Stanford University. Utilizing $2.5m in seed funding from the prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award Dr. Wolfe and his team developed the global early warning system that will now be expanded with the Google.org and Skoll funding. The early warning system has already allowed the GVFI team and their collaborators to discover a range of novel viruses and has provided the first evidence that retroviruses continue to cross from animals to humans.
"Nothing is more important to me than stimulating and sustaining deep innovation, especially for early career investigators like Dr. Nathan Wolfe," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "He is a highly creative researcher who is tackling important scientific challenges with inventive ideas, ideas that are now garnering support from other sectors."
"The partnership between GVFI, Google.org, and the Skoll Foundation gives us the opportunity to take techniques we've developed over the last ten years and implement them globally" says Dr. Nathan Wolfe, Director of GVFI. "With this support, GVFI along with our collaborators will work to change the way the world prepares for the next pandemic."
Pandemic Preparedness
UN: Press Conference by UN Avian Influenza Coordinator David Nabarro
10/23/08 UN Press Office: Although most countries were planning for a possible avian influenza pandemic, many response strategies had not been adequately tested and might be invalid once the next pandemic actually started, Dr. David Nabarro, United Nations System Influenza Coordinator, told correspondents today.
Introducing the ?Fourth Global Progress Report on Responses to Avian Influenza and State of Pandemic Readiness? at a Headquarters press conference, Dr. Nabarro said the continuing lack of preparedness remained a cause for concern, especially since the report came on the heels of a World Bank study released over the weekend that suggested that the economic cost of a worldwide influenza pandemic could top $3 trillion. That would be equivalent to a global loss in gross domestic product of nearly 5 per cent.
?When planning for an extraordinary concern like an influenza pandemic, it?s not enough just to have written a plan and have everybody signing off on it,? Dr. Nabarro said. ?You also have to check it, test it and make sure that it works, and then revise [it] on the basis of assimilation?.
Of the 148 countries that provided data for the report ?- which was produced jointly by the United Nations and the World Bank ?- 53 per cent said they had tested their plans in the last 12 months, but only one-quarter had done so at all levels of Government. Furthermore, only 38 per cent had incorporated lessons learned from testing the plans into revising them, Dr. Nabarro said.
He added that the threat of an influenza pandemic was still the same as it was three or four years ago. Although nations were concentrating on one particular ?bird flu? virus that might be the cause of the next influenza, any influenza virus could cause a pandemic, and no one could say for certain when the next pandemic would come, where it would start, or how severe it might be. Preparedness should be done by and among Governments, and should engage the private sector, civil society, the media and other international bodies.
Highlighting other sections of the report, he said the world had been battling ?bird flu? caused by the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza type A virus for the last five years. That was because it had caused major problems in poultry systems, and could possibly mutate into a form easily and rapidly transmissible between humans. Sustained transmission of the virus among humans, however, had not yet occurred, although there had been several hundred sporadic human cases.
No countries had reported that their poultry were newly infected by the H5N1 avian influenza virus in the first nine months of 2008, as compared with four in the same period last year. Only 20 countries that had previously reported infections experienced outbreaks between January and September 2008, down from 25 in the corresponding 2007 period. Dr. Nabarro expressed concern with the situation in Nigeria ?- which had recently announced its first H5N1 outbreak in nearly 10 months ?- and also in nearby Togo, which also had a recent outbreak.
Dr. Nabarro was speaking in advance of an international ministerial conference on avian and pandemic influenza, scheduled to take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from 24 to 26 October. That conference ?- the sixth in a series -- is to be hosted by the Government of Egypt and co-hosted by the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, which was launched by the United States Government in September 2005, as well as by the European Commission. Dr. Nabarro said more than 60 ministers of health and agriculture from both developed and developing countries were expected to attend the conference.
Asked what the United Nations system thought about an alleged United States policy not to export vaccines developed in that country for bird flu and other diseases to Cuba, Iran, North Korea or the Sudan, Dr. Nabarro said there were some key principles that had to be adopted in dealing with global threats, including avian influenza or a possible human pandemic. Countries must share information about diseases with each other, openly and promptly.
They must also be prepared to share ?- working through the normal rules established by the international system and agreed to by countries -- samples of viruses that were taken from infected people or animals, so that they could be examined by scientists internationally, he continued. There should also be equitable access for all nations and peoples to vaccines, medicines, and other requirements for ensuring their health.
Asked by another correspondent if the United Nations system had conveyed that message to the United States Government, Dr. Nabarro said it was a regular part of dialogue with all Governments. The United Nations did not actually go to individual Governments on the subject. Moreover, the general principle of equitable access and benefit sharing was subjected to continued dialogue in the international fora of United Nations agencies.
Asked if countries had improved in terms of their level of transparency regarding national plans for a possible influenza pandemic, he said that since he had started his work in the autumn of 2005, there was much more openness among all the countries he worked with. In China, for example, he had complete access to information from the central and provincial Government authorities in the country. Countries had also become much more open on their pandemic preparedness planning. He was somewhat concerned, however, that interactions among countries were sometimes a bit tense.
Questioned about a report that Hong Kong was blocking poultry from Germany, Dr. Nabarro said that issue was difficult. Quite often, if there was either low pathogenic or high pathogenic avian influenza in a country, other countries would not import poultry from that country. It was action taken by national authorities to protect consumers, and it was part of what occurred during trade. He tried to encourage care and fair action in such instances, but he would not comment on whether it was a sound decision.
Pandemic Preparedness
History: October 10, 1918 ?Flu? Pandemic Hits a Peak
10/23/08 Brooklyn Daily Eagle--[photo]--October 22, 1918, was considered the height of the great flu epidemic that killed about 25 million people all over the world. The epidemic had started in late 1917 and swept the world until 1919. In India alone 13 million died; 500,000 in America, including more than 12,000 New Yorkers, and millions more in Africa and Europe. The name of the virus comes from a 16th century Italian explanation of its presumed cause: the influence of the stars or occult astral bodies. About every eight to 18 years the influenza virus mutates so significantly that pandemic outbreaks erupt.
Vaccines
Novartis factory leads fight against deadly flu
10/23/08 Liverpool Daily Post
--United States public health officials have taken delivery of the first batch of a Liverpool-produced vaccine against a deadly strain of bird flu.
For the past two years, the Novartis factory, in Speke, has been work- ing to produce a vaccine that it is hoped will offer some protection against an H5N1 bird flu pandemic.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, but experts fear it will mutate into a form easily passed from human to human, sparking a pandemic similar to three others in the past century.
Yesterday, the United Nations and World Bank reported that international efforts have pushed back the spread of bird flu, but the threat of the virus mutating remained a real one.
Since late 2003, there have been 387 cases of humans catching the disease from birds, of whom 245 have died in Asia, Africa and Europe. There have been only 36 human cases this year, of which 28 proved fatal.
The report added H5N1 was still ?actively circulating among poultry in a number of hotspots? and was entrenched in Indonesia and Egypt.
It called for continued vigilance and investment worldwide to combat the disease, saying ?the threat of an influenza pandemic remains unchanged?.
The vaccine produced by Novartis will offer protection against the avian form of the virus. No vaccine against a human form can be developed until such a virus actually appears.
The initial delivery to the US of the H5N1 vaccine has boosted net sales at Novartis? vaccines division by 20% to $1.3bn.
Around 33m doses of Novartis?s conventional flu vaccine, Fluvirin, have also been shipped so far this year from the Liverpool factory, which employs 800 people.
Last year, the plant produced 50m doses and, with another year to go, that figure could still be surpassed.
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
Ministers urged to rethink rather than repackage $2 billion global response to infectious diseases
10/23/08 Medical News.Net--As the first globally co-ordinated plan for the planet's gravest health threats is hatched by government ministers from around the world this weekend, a new report sets out a 10-point plan for this new, globalised approach to infectious diseases such as avian flu.
Ministers of health and agriculture will formulate a global plan to prepare for, and respond to, the threat of avian flu and other emerging infectious diseases at the International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (October 24-26). The plan - called the One World, One Health initiative - aims for an unprecedented integration of animal, human and ecosystem health issues to fight the threat of the avian flu virus, H5N1.
A new report by Professor Ian Scoones and Paul Forster of the ESRC STEPS Centre at the UK's Institute of Development Studies lays out 10 key recommendations for One World, One Health, based on analysis of lessons learned from the massive $2bn international response to the avian flu over the past five years, during which time 245 people have died.
According to the report - The International Response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Science, Policy and Politics - ministers need to rethink current ideas in order to achieve an effective, equitable and resilient international plan of response to emerging diseases.
The recommendations include rethinking disease surveillance, redefining health security, new responses to uncertainty and ignorance, emphasising access and equity as well as questions of organisational architecture and governance.
"The One World, One Health initiative is a radical departure from the conventional sectoral approaches to health. It is essential, but presents many challenges. We have identified 10 challenges for the way ahead, and urge ministers to rethink rather than repackage their measures. One World One Health needs to be more than 'old wine in new bottles'," said Professor Ian Scoones, IDS Fellow and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.
Over the last decade, the avian flu virus, H5N1, has spread across most of Asia and Europe and parts of Africa. In some countries - including Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt - the disease has become endemic. Although 245 deaths have been reported since 2003 there has, as yet, been no human pandemic. But somewhere, some time, a new emerging infectious disease will have major impacts, given changing disease ecologies and patterns of urbanisation and climate change.
A major international response, backed by over $2bn of public money, has affected the livelihoods and businesses of millions. Markets have been restructured, surveillance and poultry vaccination campaigns implemented, and over two billion birds have died or been culled. Simultaneously substantial investment has been made in human and animal health systems and developing drugs and vaccines.
In many countries pandemic contingency and preparedness plans have been devised. Yet coordination at country level has been found wanting; rivalries between professions and organisations persist; and funding and capacities for an effective and equitable global responses to a pandemic remain weak.
The themes addressed in this report are being explored as part of a project on avian influenza policy responses in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. They are central to the ESRC STEPS Centre's research programme on ecology, politics, policy and pathways to sustainability.
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
WHO envoy: No problem with avian flu in Iran
10/23/08 IRNA--The World Health Organization (WHO) envoy Ambrogio Mananeti said here Wednesday that presently there is no problem in Iran in connection with bird flu.
"Iran has no problem with avian flue now. Presently, we have good cooperation with (Iranian) ministries of agricultural jihad and health in terms of bird flu control," Manenti told reporters on the sidelines of annual meeting of the representatives of UN agencies in Iran.
Manenti said that WHO and Iran had in the past set up workshops in connection with avian flu. --IRNA
Regional Reporting and Surveillance
Nigeria: Bird Flu As Dangerous As Financial Crisis - UN
10/23/08 This Day--A representative of the United Nations in the country, Dr Joyce Ijoro, has said the threat of bird flu on the nation's economy is as strong as any major crisis in the financial sector.
Speaking at an Animal and Human Influenza (AHI) workshop organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on Social Mobilization of Migrant Poultry Workers, Traders and Transporters in Maiduguri, Ijoro said, "Avian influenza would be a major economy issue if its epidemic ever happened in Nigeria, as many Nigerians depend on poultry economically and for food."
Ijoro said bird flu threat should be made a policy issue at all tiers of government, urging participants at the workshop to take the message to people concerned wih policy management, especially as it relates to agriculture and poultry.
AHI Project Assistant, IOM Nigeria, Mr James Atusue, said organisers of the workshop were ready to work with both national and UN stakeholders to contribute towards a consolidated action plan for avian and human pandemic preparedness, specifically by addressing the needs of migrants and mobile populations in Nigeria.
He said "this project will strengthen capacity of the target group through implementation of activities that provide avian influenza and pandemic preparedness information for behaviour change."
