Bird Flu Pandemic Coming This Year?

The "Bird Flu" is getting scary! Take a look at a few articles I came across today. I can see a major panic happening soon across America and Europe - once people start realizing that it could be here as soon as this fall and winter and there's no vaccine.

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Recombinomics Commentary
August 9, 2005

535 poultry heads in the village Ushsar and 345 poultry heads in Vinogradovka settlement of Akmola oblast have been infected with the bird flu during the recent weeks.

The above report indicates H5N1 is being detected further south in Kazakhstan, in the Akmola region. The village seems to be 80 miles southwest of the capital, marking the most southern and western location reported in Kazahkstan. As the weather turns colder, many birds migrating westward towards Europe will begin to turn south toward the Black and Caspian Seas.

The northern portion of the Caspian Sea is almost due west from Tacheng in Xinjiang and the above locations are almost half way from Tacheng on a line connecting to the Caspian Sea. This distance of less than 1000 miles can be covered in a few days or less by many species of migrating birds, so new reports of H5N1 in Europe and points south should begin to appear in the next few weeks.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08...azakhstan.html

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Britain prepares for bird flu death toll of thousands

Jonathon Carr-Brown, Health Correspondent
THE government is to mount an exercise to help emergency services prepare for any potential bird flu pandemic that could kill thousands of people in Britain.

The disease has already jumped species, leading to three human outbreaks, the most serious of which killed 23 out of 34 people infected in Asia last year.

Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, has said that the question "is not if the pandemic comes, but when".it took massive doses - roughly 12 times the normal amount - to produce a protective response in humans.

With global vaccine production capacity already falling far short of what would be needed in a flu pandemic, experts suggested it is critical to ramp up research into ways to produce the same response with smaller doses of antigen, the substance in a vaccine that activates the immune system.

"I think these results suggest the world is even less prepared than more prepared," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"And unfortunately many policy makers might take this announcement as being 'We've hit the gold mine' - when in fact I would suggest we are having a hard time even finding water."

In light of the American findings, federal Health officials said studies into a yet-to-be-made Canadian H5N1 will key in on the role antigen-sparing techniques could play in pandemic vaccine production. It's hoped those studies will begin late next summer.

"It's something that we are definitely considering in the design, because of what we know, that it could take lots of doses," said Dr. Theresa Tam, associate director of respiratory diseases at the Public Health Agency of Canada.

"It's of great interest to us to look at these types of antigen-sparing strategies, whether it be adjuvants or whole viruses."

Adjuvants are chemicals that, when mixed with vaccine, kick the body's immune response up several notches, allowing a smaller dose of vaccine to produce a bigger effect. Vaccines made of whole viruses, rather than viral particles, are known to provoke greater immune responses as well but are also known to produce more side-effects on administration.

February's federal budget set aside $34 million for production of trial batches of an H5N1 vaccine. But Canada's flu vaccine manufacturer, ID Biomedical, has still not been given the go-ahead to do the work.

"We're close to entering into a contract. Hopefully it will be done shortly," Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Monday.

The company has said it would take 12 months from contract signing to vaccine delivery, because it must build and licence a special high-biosecurity facility within its existing vaccine plant.

http://www.canada.com/health/story....3f-4fd64bf0ad54

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