News Reports for August 27, 2012

India: 2 more suspected flu patients in city (Karnataka)

Bhopal - Samples of two more suspected swine flu patients were sent for confirmation from the city on Saturday. One of them is a girl undergoing treatment at Parul Hospital, while the other one is an elderly person admitted at Hamidia Hospital. Results of two samples sent for testing on Friday are still awaited.

(Snip) a meeting of district task force was held on Saturday to take stock of the situation in the wake of death of a swine flu patient on Friday. (Snip) every private and government hospital should have a provision of isolation ward, where people suffering from contagious diseases could be kept and treated so as to reduce the chances of infection to other patients. In-charge doctors from both the government and private hospitals participated in the meeting.

Later, an official press communiqué said that there was no reason for panic due to swine flu. It's like any other viral disease and could be cured after prescribed treatment. Fifteen hospitals have been identified in the city for treatment of swine flu patients. Once diagnosed, a swine flu patient is given medicines free of cost. The antibiotic given for H1N1 virus Temi Flu and masks etc are available in the hospitals in ample number, said the release.

Shrivastava said that paramedical staff should be trained more effectively for handling diseases like swine flu and training programmes should be orgnised for the purpose. He asked the doctors to disseminate information to people on how to prevent and handle diseases like swine flu, malaria and chikungunya and media could be used for the purpose. Continued: http://www.hindustantimes.com/...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 01:25:05 AM UTC

All hail our avian allies

WHEN a deadly outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) in Hong Kong hit the headlines in 1997, the less scientifically minded among us were caught off guard. We had questions. Our imaginations ran wild. You mean chickens get flu? Who's heard of a chook sneezing? Do you catch this virus through eating roast chicken, living near a poultry farm or feeding crusts to seagulls? Is my beloved pet budgerigar an assassin, and how about the backyard magpies?

These are just a few of the questions Peter Doherty delicately teases out in his survey of the way birds, or at least the scientific study of them, have led to massive advances in the understanding of infectious and other human diseases.

Because chooks might occasionally carry lethal viruses, as in the case of H5N1, but they also have the capacity to save lives, particularly when they're placed in cages and plonked in strategic positions around the countryside to gauge, say, the spread of Murray Valley encephalitis. Or when their eggs are used by scientists to study how viruses reproduce or for the production of influenza vaccines. Or when 4000 or more wattlebirds and gulls fall from the sky, poisoned by lead, as they did in Esperance in 2007, and authorities are able to track its source before humans and children begin to die, too.

Peter Doherty's Sentinel Chickens.

As Doherty says, ''our free-flying, wide-ranging avian relatives serve as sentinels, sampling the health of the air, seas, forest and grasslands that we share with them and with the other complex life forms on this planet''.

Like the proverbial canary in a coalmine, a saying he later deconstructs, they act as monitors, beautiful and endlessly fascinating creatures that, as in ancient mythology, act as harbingers of danger - particularly in relation to climate change and environmental degradation.

Doherty, a Nobel prize winner, is as much a teacher as a research scientist - he could tell you the answer to questions straight up, but instead, so you'll piece things together, he foregrounds his discussions in basic explanations of biology, anatomy and pathology.

Despite his admission early on that ''we working scientists increasingly find ourselves working in a kind of Tower of Babel, where it's harder and harder to stay abreast of what's going on in even closely related fields'', his writing spans an impressive array of disciplines, from ornithology and microbiology to avian pathology and psychology, zoology, phenology and poetry. Along the way we meet a fascinating array of people - research scientists, Nobel prize winners, eccentric but dedicated blokes ''who spent a good part of their lives sticking probes up the back ends of birds across the planet'' - many of whom Doherty counts as close friends. Continued: http://www.watoday.com.au/ente...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 06:36:22 AM UTC

Australia: Sunshine Coast mother dies of the flu (Queensland)

A 38-year-old mother-of-four has died in a Brisbane hospital after coming down with the flu six weeks ago. Katrina Day spent the past month in an induced coma since she started suffering cold and flu symptoms in July, which her husband Nick Day said seemed like "nothing major" at the time.

Her condition worsened over a couple of days before Mrs Day went to the hospital with breathing problems. "They checked her out and sent her home. They couldn't find anything wrong," Mr Day told the Sunshine Coast Daily last week.

The next morning, Mrs Day's condition had deteriorated so rapidly that she was rushed to Nambour General Hospital by ambulance and airlifted to The Prince Charles Hospital's intensive care unit. She was not expected to survive the ride. Mrs Day underwent surgery and was hooked up to a machine which took over from her heart and lungs.

(Snip)

Mrs Day became the third Queenslander in three weeks to die in the same Brisbane hospital from flu complications. A 16-year-old boy and a man in his 50s have also died.

Latest Queensland Health figures show 10,784 people have tested positive to the flu so far this year, 1.8 times the five-year average. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/nat...

(Note: People who think the flu is no big deal, especially those who refuse to get the vaccine each year, have no idea how tragic even one life lost by influenza can be. This is a good example so always get your flu shot, folks!)

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 06:53:52 AM UTC

Canada: B.C. nurses to air concerns over mandatory flu shot policy (British Columbia)

Representatives of the BC Nurses Union sit down with the Health Employers Association today to air concerns over a newly proposed flu shot policy.

The province's health officer announced last week that B.C. would become the first province in Canada to require health-care workers to either get the flu shot or wear masks when treating patients during flu season.
Union spokeswoman Margaret Dhillon says the policy is troubling and nurses were not consulted before the change was announced. Continued:  http://www.theprovince.com/hea...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 21:20:49 PM UTC

USDA Releases First July H3N2 Swine Sequences - Ohio

Recombinomics Commentary

The USDA has released the first swine H3N2 sequence from a sample collected in July 2012.  The Ohio isolate, A/swine/Ohio/A01203624/2012, which was collected July 12, which is the same day the H3N2v isolate from Mauii, A/Hawaii/03/2012, was collected, which was 4 days prior to the collection date for the four isolates from the LaPorte cluster (A/Indiana/06/2012, A/Indiana/07/2012, A/Indiana/08/2012, A/Indiana/09/2012) and 15 days prior to the collection date for the first isolate from the Butler County cluster, A/Ohio/13/2012.

Although the July Ohio swine isolate had an H3 from the same lineage as the 2012 H3N2v sequences, this lineage was also found in the human 2010 and 2011 H3N2v case, the MP sequence matched the 2010 H3N2v cases and the N2 was from the same lineage as one of the 2010 H3N2v cases, A/Pennsylvania/14/2010.

(Snip) like the four June isolates from Ohio, (Snip) which match the first 10 human H3N2v cases from 2011, the Ohio swine sequences collected just prior to the explosion of H3N2v cases in July and August, the swine isolates fail to match the 25 sequences from these cases (from Hawaii, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) which match the three prior cases (from West Virginia and Utah).  The novel sub-clade in the 2012 human cases has only been detected in two swine isolate (from North Carolina and Indiana), which creates serious discordance.

(Snip) swine sequences, including June and July, 2012 sequences from Ohio, match the human isolates from 2010 and 2011, yet these recent swine sequences have not produced any recent human cases.  All human H3N2v isolates in 2011 and 2012 had an MP gene segment which matched H1N1pdm09, and all 2012 human isolates had an NA gene segment which matched the final two cases in 2011 (the West Virginia day care cluster with no swine contact). http://www.recombinomics.com/N...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 21:43:55 PM UTC

english translation?

I get the general idea that he's saying the flu that's going around the swine is different from the flu that the human cases have... but how is the CDC explaining this? Are they saying it doesn't matter, that it's all the same flu? Or...what?

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by: Cathy M @ Tue Aug 28, 2012 at 00:00:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Canada: New swine flu poses limited risk for Islanders (Prince Edward Island)

Although federal health officials are warning people susceptible to flu to stay away from pigs, the risk of Islanders contracting a new strain of swine flu is limited, say experts.
(Snip) The Public Health Agency of Canada issued a warning last week that people should keep a distance from pigs at agricultural fairs and petting zoos. The warning came after several hundred people in the U.S. who attended agriculture fairs contracted the virus.

The H3N2v virus hasn't been found in pigs or people in Canada yet (Snip)
"It's primarily affected teenagers and children. It isn't clear from that whether it's that they're at risk for the disease for various reasons of immunity, or is it really that it's because of the close contact that some of them may have, i.e. 4-Hers working in pig barns, those kind of things," said Spika.

"There are lots of unknowns, but at this point in time, it really would appear to be a mild illness, of limited risk to humans (Snip)."

A spokesperson for the P.E.I. Hog Commodity Marketing Board thinks the risk on P.E.I. is very low because of stringent health screening that's done before pigs can be imported. Pigs are screened for several viruses, including H3N2 strains of the flu. (Snip) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 21:50:39 PM UTC

Please post new news stories to...

News Reports for August 28, 2012

Thank you!

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by: AlohaOR @ Tue Aug 28, 2012 at 04:14:21 AM UTC