Azerbaijani Deaths Likely To Push Human Bird Flu Total Past 100

More countries see animal disease; U.S. health secretary urges preparedness

Three deaths in Azerbaijan likely were caused by the H5N1 avian influenza virus, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) statement March 14, a finding that will push the global total of human deaths from bird flu to more than 100.

Further analysis of samples from the three victims - all women, aged 17-21 - is ongoing, but WHO says it is likely the findings will point to H5N1.

If so, Azerbaijan will become the eighth nation to report human deaths from the disease.

Avian influenza deaths among wild birds in this Caspian Sea nation first were reported in early February. Poultry deaths had occurred in settlements near where the women died, but the means of exposure has not been identified precisely.

Other nations with confirmed human deaths are Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. The death of an Indonesian child caused by H5N1 sent the WHO total of confirmed deaths to 98 on March 13.

Burma and Cameroon are reporting their first cases of animal disease caused by the deadly virus, according to news services. International health organizations have not confirmed those findings, however.

Both nations border on other countries struggling to control the disease in animal populations. Burma shares borders with China and Thailand, both among the first wave of Asian nations to report the disease. Cameroon is a neighbor to Nigeria, where the first animal disease was reported on a poultry farm in February.

Since January, H5N1 has spread into more nations more rapidly than at any other time in the two-year-old epidemic.

In January, the disease made its first appearance outside East or Central Asia in Turkey. To date, 21 nations of Eastern and Western Europe have confirmed cases of the disease in wild fowl or poultry. With Cameroon, four African nations have spotted disease.

International health officials warn that H5N1 has proven its ability to cross the species barrier and infect humans. They warn that the virus could mutate to become contagious among humans, setting off a global influenza pandemic.

The chances of a pandemic increase as the virus spreads into more nations and the potential of human exposure grows in a corresponding fashion.

So far, the virus has not been transmitted easily among humans through contact such as a cough or sneeze. Virtually all the human cases - now almost 180 - have resulted from direct contact between the people and sick birds or their environs.

"WE ARE IN A RACE," U.S. HEALTH SECRETARY SAYS

The rapid migration of the disease lends new urgency to the Bush administration's campaign to heighten awareness about the need for preparedness.

"We are in a race," said U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt in a report on pandemic planning issued March 13. "We are in a race against a fast-moving virulent virus with the potential to cause an influenza pandemic."

Leavitt on March 13 issued the Pandemic Flu Planning Update and said that his department is about half way through a schedule of summits in which he travels to state capitals, briefing local officials about the need to think about the scope of a pandemic and how they might cope with it.

"It would last for a year or a year and a half," Leavitt said in a Washington speech to the American Medical Association (AMA) March 13, "with two or three waves of six to eight weeks as the pandemic rolled out across the country."

As part of its effort to urge heightened preparedness across social sectors, HHS has issued a series of guidelines - for businesses, schools, individuals and others - urging people to think about the many ways their lives, work and families might be touched by a pandemic and to encourage contingency planning.

He made a special appeal to the nation's physicians at the AMA meeting.

"We need you to be thinking about how you would deal in a clinic if 40 percent of your work force, for example, could not come in for a period of two to four weeks," Leavitt said, "and you have a surge of [infected patients] coming to you."

Leavitt's planning update also underscores the importance of U.S. and international cooperation in preparing for the outbreak of a pandemic.

He said the United States is working with many global partners to assure readiness when the avian influenza virus changes its form to become contagious among humans.

"Containing or slowing an influenza pandemic demands that a nascent outbreak anywhere in the world be recognized and confirmed within 1 to 2 weeks," Leavitt said.

Source: U.S. Department of State

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