MaxedOutMama
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
WHO Press Conference
WHO (World Health Organization) held a joint press conference today with Chinese officials, during which they discussed the findings from their Qinghai visit:
Julie Hall of WHO gave an interview during which she came out and said that they weren't getting the data they needed from China:
Bloomberg has a story which refers to the deaths of birds in Tacheng. As always, Recombinomics should have up-to-date news and commentary. EPIDEMica will also carry ongoing news and it has a map of the reported outbreaks. This isn't looking good at all, because these birds will be moving within two months. I have heard rumors that doctors are stockpiling tamiflu.
A total of 5,000 birds have died on an island in northwest Qinghai province, according to officials from the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization just back in Beijing from visiting the area.The real significance of this is that up till now the Chinese had only disclosed 1000 deaths from bird flu in Qinghai, while unauthorized reports had indicated the number was more like 8000. Those same reports also had reported over 100 human deaths.
``This is the first time we've seen large numbers of migratory birds dying from bird flu,'' said Julie Hall, the WHO's official in charge of communicable diseases in China, Tuesday.
``So the virus has obviously changed to be more pathogenic to animals. What it means to humans we don't know,'' she said.
Julie Hall of WHO gave an interview during which she came out and said that they weren't getting the data they needed from China:
Efforts to monitor avian influenza in Asia continue to be hampered by a lack of viral sequence data from China, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert told The Scientist today (June 28). Without appropriate data, she said, it is impossible to compare Chinese virus with the strain circulating in Vietnam or to confirm the sensitivity of the PCR primers being used in China and elsewhere.
Julie Hall, WHO coordinator for communicable disease surveillance and response in China, was among 17 experts from WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Chinese government who visited remote Qinghai province last week to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 wild birds at a nature reserve.
Hall told The Scientist that while WHO had received data from poultry outbreaks in 2004, none had been passed on yet this year. Last week FAO sent a request to ministries of health in all H5N1-afflicted countries requesting that they share samples and send them to FAO/World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reference laboratories in Australia for further testing.
Bloomberg has a story which refers to the deaths of birds in Tacheng. As always, Recombinomics should have up-to-date news and commentary. EPIDEMica will also carry ongoing news and it has a map of the reported outbreaks. This isn't looking good at all, because these birds will be moving within two months. I have heard rumors that doctors are stockpiling tamiflu.
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you should check out a copy of the latest issue of "foreign affairs" About half of it is addressing the pandemic.
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