Bird flu case in Iraq

Considering the number of people in Iraq, especially Baghdad and the Sunni triangle, dying from bombings by terrorists and from private militias and death squads, bird flu probably doesn't seem like a major threat.

However, Iraqi authorities have now learned that a boy who had respiratory problems earlier this year, and fortunately recovered, was infected with bird flu.

bird flu in Iraq

If chickens or other bird were infected with the H5N1 virus earlier this year, where did it go?

Given the security risks in the four out of fourteen Iraqi provinces where remaining Bathist followers of deposed Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorists are still active (the mass media is not telling you the violence is bad but contained - most of Iraq is reasonably peaceful and under government control.), it seems unlikely that the government could mount an effective response to H5N1 infections in chickens and people.



Bird Flu in Iraq
Bird Flu in Iraq

Bird flu in Bali pigs

One thing that has puzzled me about the spread of bird flu is the absence of researchers finding the disease in pigs.

That's good news, but now that's changed.

bird flu in pigs

The reason the lack of news about avian flu in pigs is good news itself is that pigs can catch both human and avian influenzas. Many influenza experts have feared the potential of pigs to act as genetic mixing bowls where ordinary seasonal human flu viruses interact with the H5N1 bird flu virus to create new genetic combinations . . .

. . . which could include a strain of virus with the strength and lethality of bird flu and the ability to easily pass from human to human of ordinary seasonal flu.

Through much of Asia, small farmers keep both chickens and pigs, often in the same building.

So far, a pandemic influenza has not emerged from some pig in Asia, but the potential is still there, as the above article shows.

We may be thankful that the country currently with the most widespread bird flu infections is mostly Muslim. So far as I know, most Indonesians do not keep pigs, because it is forbidden by their religion.

However, the people of Bali are mostly Hindus. They would not raise cattle for food, but are not forbidden to keep pigs.

Let's hope that the pigs of Bali do not breed a pandemic.


a bird flu complication -- encephalitis



Bird Flu in Pigs
Bird Flu in Pigs

Bird flu virus resisting Tamiflu in Thailand

The link is not currently working, so I'm not including, but I recently read an interesting article that appeared in The Bangkok Post.

A research study in Thailand found signs that the H5N1 bird flu virus was developing resistance to Tamiflu (oseltamivir).

This is bad news for everyone in the established medical system who is pinning all their hopes of defeating this disease on that drug.

The team allegedly found actual changes in the neuraminidase protein (which is how the virus breaks out of infected cells to infect more cells). Tamiflu works by inhibiting the function of neuraminidase. If the virus cannot break out of the infected cells, they cannot infect news ones.

The study will soon be published in the Emerging Infectious
Diseases Journal and Journal of Virological Methods.

Previously, resistance to Tamiflu was found in some H5N1 samples taken from Vietnamese victims in 2005.

There's been no known human to human transmission of Tamiflu-resistant bird flu, but such strains could still infect chickens and ducks.

Whenever anyone is diagnosed with avian flu, everybody around them, all family, friends and neighbors, are also being given treatments of Tamiflu.

This wholesale use of the drug is likely encouraging the H5N1 virus to develop into resistant strains.

The widespread use of Tamiflu to treat flu victims has also contributed to the finding that the human flu H3N2 virus also also developed resistance to Tamiflu.



Resistance to Tamiflu Discovered
Resistance to Tamiflu Discovered

New bird flu case in Eygpt

Bird flu seems to be able to go through periods where it's dormant, and authorities think they have it under control -- and then it pops up again.

A woman in Eygpt is the latest victim. But she is the first human avian flu patient since May.

Eygptian woman latest bird flu case

The avian bird flu virus was first found in Egypt in February 2006, and it spread from around March to May. But the government did act quickly to cull chickens, and by the end of May seemed to have it under control.

Plus, in Egypt almost all commercially raised chickens have been vaccinated, and about 20% of "backyard" chickens.

But recently they found an outbreak of the disease in some chickens.

Then this woman found some of the ducks she kept sick and dying. She killed them and plucked their feathers, thus exposing herself to the H5N1 bird flu virus.

So far, Egypt is the country with the most number of bird flu cases outside Asia.


High Fever -- a bird flu complication





New Bird Flu Case
New Bird Flu Case