Photo Gallery: H5N1-MAIN-GALLERY
When the first kampung in Jakarta is surrounded by the Indonesian military in an attempt to stem the spread of H5N1 through quarantine the people will run. Game over.
Watch the numbers (if you can).
From CIDRAP
June 5, 2008, Indonesia quits offering prompt notice of H5N1 cases
July 15, 2008, Indonesia details reasons for withholding H5N1 viruses
CYTOKINE STORM and the INFLUENZA PANDEMIC
pandemos – of all the people
50-100 million died in the 1918 pandemic (called the “Spanish Flu” because Spain was a neutral country during World War I and thus had the only uncensored news, and was responsible for the early reports of the outbreak).
influenza — medieval Italian for “influence of the stars”
The world suffers from “cultural amnesia” (Mike Davis, 2005) about the 1918 pandemic because there are few alive today who were alive then. This is also relevant in terms of immunity.
In addition to death and disability, pandemic flu shortens life spans among survivors by as much as 10 years.
The H5N1 virus will impact young and middle-aged healthy individuals far more than normal seasonal flu due to the severity of the inflammation or cytokine storm it induces in healthy lungs.
There will be very little warning.
There will be simultaneous outbreaks.
There will be a shortage of supplies of all types.
Facilities will be overwhelmed.
Health care workers et al will be at highest risk.
There will be widespread illness and a shortage of workers.
There may be more than one wave of infection.
All planning and response will have to be local. (You’re on your own.)
Critical attention must be paid to the legal, public health and socio-psychological aspects of the collection, identification and disposal of bodies.
The Top Ten Things You Need to Know…
1. Avian flu is not necessarily pandemic flu. The development of a pandemic is dependent on the degree of pathogenicity in the virus.
2. We are globally interdependent.
3. Flu pandemics are recurring events; we are on the brink of one now.
4. When a pandemic arrives, there will be widespread illness and death,
5. Current medical supplies are inadequate or insufficient.
6. Economic and social disruption will occur.
7. We need to build “surge capacity” into our health care systems.
8. Education is critical and will generate trust and confidence in government, planners, medical care providers, etc. Such trust and confidence will emerge and sustain itself only if there is “transparency in communications”.
9. All planning must be local.
10. A rejuvenation of the public health system is required.
And a few morew things you need to know…
Infection occurs before symptoms present themselves.
Infected individuals remain contagious for 2-7 days (longer in children!).
There is scientific unanimity about the fact that we are overdue for such a pandemic.
The disease will spread rapidly and affect an entire nation pretty much at the same time. Thus the ability to call on outlying regions for support, supplies, manpower, etc. will not exist. We live in a Just-in-Time distribution economy, and this distribution chain will be affected by absenteeism etc.
Urban crowding drives up the attack rate of the disease.
Low socio-economic status also drives up the attack rate of the disease.
the above from:
Avian Influenza Pandemic Conference, December 6, 2005
From Reuters, August 7, 2008:
Indonesia testing 13 for bird flu in Sumatra village
Thu Aug 7, 2008 12:59pm (Reuters)
Thirteen people from a village in North Sumatra are due to be tested for bird flu after falling sick, Indonesian health officials said on Thursday.
The 13, from Air Batu village, were hospitalised this week after suffering fever, but their conditions had improved on Thursday and they might not be suffering from the disease, a health official said.
A bird flu surveillance team from Indonesia’s health ministry has been sent to the area.
“Although they found dead chickens in the area, the symptoms are not like bird flu,” said Erna Tresnaningsih, the health ministry’s director of animal-borne disease control.
A seven-year-old girl and an eight-month-old child were being treated in Adam Malik hospital in North Sumatra’s capital Medan with Tamiflu, the medication most often used to treat bird flu, said hospital spokesman Sinar Ginting.
A spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation said she was not authorised to comment on the case.
The country’s largest known cluster of bird flu cases in humans occurred in May 2006 in the Karo district of North Sumatra province, where as many as 7 people in an extended family died.
The World Health Organisation said at the time that limited human-to-human transmission could not be ruled out but that the virus samples from the scene did not show any significant genetic mutations.
Ginting was quoted by media as saying on Wednesday that not all the patients were believed to have had contact with fowl, which is the most common way of contracting the H5N1 bird flu virus, after some chickens in the area had died suddenly and were found to have been infected.
Suspected cluster cases can raise concerns about rare human-to-human transmission or that the virus might have mutated into a form that can pass easily among people, triggering a pandemic.
Bird flu remains mainly an animal disease but experts fear the H5N1 virus might mutate into a pandemic strain that would sweep the globe, possibly killing millions and hobbling economies.
Health experts say monitoring of the virus across Indonesia’s thousands of islands to detect any genetic changes is vital, but there has been some confusion over the government’s stance on reporting cases.
Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari, who has clashed with the international community over virus sharing, said in early June her ministry would only report cases every six months, although the ministry has reported three deaths since.
The virus is known to have infected 385 people in 15 countries, killing 243 of them since late 2003, according to the WHO’s June 19 tally.
Indonesia reported on Sunday that a 19-year-old man died from bird flu last week, bringing the total death toll in the Southeast Asian country to 111, the highest of any nation. …> go to article
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