- Hello, Jeff - I have not verified the veracity of this
story however, if true it is no wonder the H5 in China has mutated.
-
- I have been trying to get genebank H5N1 sequences for
2005 and cannot find any. Why doesn't genebank have any 2005 sequences?
-
- It will be interesting to note any amantadine resistant
markers in 2005 Chinese sequences. It has been reported that China has
been using amantadine to prevent H5N1 in poultry.
-
- As soon as I have more information I will update you.
I would appreciate any information that your listeners may have on this
subject.
-
-
- By Peter Goff in Beijing
- 6-19-5
-
- China has been trying to suppress a bird flu outbreak
by feeding poultry a human antiviral drug, threatening public safety in
the event of a global pandemic.
-
- China first reported an avian flu outbreak in February
last year. Yet for more than eight years, according to drug company officials
in Beijing quoted in the US media, the agriculture ministry has been urging
farmers to use the drug, amantadine, on infected birds, in breach of international
guidelines.
-
- It explains why scientists discovered late last year
that the virus had grown resistant to amantadine, which cannot now be used
to fight it in humans.
-
- Over the past 18 months bird flu has spread across East
Asia, infecting more than 100 people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand,
killing at least 54 people and devastating poultry stocks.
-
- Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation
in Geneva, said last night that the UN body had long suspected China of
using amantadine on poultry.
-
- "We will be asking the government in Beijing about
it this week," he said.
-
- Mr Thompson said that the drug, which is now ineffective
against the H5N1 strain of the virus found in Asia, should have been a
key part of the fight against a global outbreak.
-
- "It would have been important in a pandemic and
it is a disappointment that it may have been lost to us."
-
- The first human cases of avian flu were recorded in Hong
Kong in 1997, when the H5N1 variant mutated into a form lethal to humans,
killing six people.
-
- The WHO said the virus could easily mutate further, allowing
it to jump from human to human in a lethal strain that could kill millions
of people worldwide.
-
- Amantadine is one of two drugs used to treat human influenza.
The alternative, oseltamivir, is much more expensive to mass produce.
-
- According to The Washington Post, animal health officials
in China said that government bodies approved the production and sale of
the drug for use in chickens, even though the practice is banned in many
western countries because birds develop immunity.
-
- Chinese farmers and officials from pharmaceutical companies
confirmed that the drug had been used since the late 1990s to treat sickly
chickens and prevent healthy birds from catching it.
-
- "Amantadine is widely used in the entire country,"
Zhang Libin, from the Northeast General Pharmaceutical Factory, told the
newspaper. "Many pharmaceutical factories around China produce amantadine,
and farmers can buy it easily."
-
- A farmer from Hebei province, near Beijing, confirmed
that he had been giving his chickens the drug for several years. "Local
government vets have always recommended it," he said.
-
- Last week China confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in
its northwestern Xinjiang province, where 460 geese died and more than
13,000 birds were slaughtered to try to control its spread.
-
- The outbreak came only a few weeks after more than 1,000
migratory birds died of the virus in neighbouring Qinghai province, the
first confirmed outbreak in China in almost 12 months.
-
- Three years ago China was condemned internationally for
trying to hide the extent of the SARS outbreak, which ultimately infected
8,000 people and killed about 800.
-
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/
2005/06/19/wflu19.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/19/ixworld.html
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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