Category Archives: pandemic

Large Crabs Escape From Box on German Train – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The animals had absconded from a container that toppled over. It was being transported by two Chinese passengers. The crabs, whose bodies can grow as large 10 centimeters — not including the legs — are a delicacy in Chinese cuisine.

via Large Crabs Escape From Box on German Train – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Printed as a funny item but this is how disease and invasive species of all sorts are traveling around the globe – humans think nothing they do have any big consequences???

Polio virus strain in Syria confirmed as being from Pakistan: WHO | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

Extremists in Northwest Pakistan have been killing those trying to vaccinate children in that area for the last two years. The same in Nigeria – to some fundamentalists – absolutely everything is political – including science – witness tea-baggers in US and UK denying climate change.

 

Islamist fighters from countries including Pakistan are among groups battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad, leading to speculation that they brought the virus into the country.

via Polio virus strain in Syria confirmed as being from Pakistan: WHO | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

More than 50 dead from dengue outbreak in Central America | Vaccine News Daily

More than 50 people died from a severe strain of dengue fever in Central America, with more than 4,900 cases of the disease in Nicaragua alone, Food for the Hungry said on Tuesday.

Food for the Hungry, an organization that provides emergency relief and long-term development programs, is mobilizing workers to battle the disease in Nicaragua after the country’s government declared a red alert to contain the epidemic on October 25. FH will send workers to Somotillo, Nueva Segovia and Chinandega to provide medical equipment, insecticide-treated bednets, cleaning materials and fuel for mosquito fumigation.

“The dengue situation is getting worse,” Ervin Laiva, the director of FH in Nicaragua, said. “Hospitals are full. The strain is very, very strong. Adolescents are standing or moving around, and then suddenly go into shock.”

via More than 50 dead from dengue outbreak in Central America | Vaccine News Daily.

BERNAMA – Bird Flu Claims 13 Lives In Cambodia This Year

A ten-year-old boy died of bird flu on Saturday, bringing death toll in the country to 13 this year.

\”We regret to announce the boy passed away in Kantha Bopha Hospital this morning,\” said Sonny Inbaraj Krishnan, communication and media relations officer at the World Health Organisation (WHO) office in Cambodia.

Xinhua news agency learns the boy confirmed positive for human H5N1 avian influenza on Thursday after he was admitted to the hospital in Phnom Penh.

A joint statement from the Cambodian Health Ministry and WHO office said the boy had come into contact with chickens in his village in southern Kampot province a month before becoming ill.

Some 30 chickens had reportedly died in the village at that time.

Cambodia has reported 45 human cases of the virus with 32 deaths to date.

According to WHO, H5N1 influenza usually spreads among poultry but can spread from poultry to human.

via BERNAMA – Bird Flu Claims 13 Lives In Cambodia This Year.

New SARS-like virus discovered in Chinese horseshoe bats | Vaccine News Daily

not new – the original vector found

Zhengli Shi, director of emerging infectious diseases at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said there have been disagreements about the origin of the virus that evolved into human SARS-CoV since 2003.

“Even though our team reported that bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses in 2005, we have been searching for this missing link for 10 years, and finally we’ve found it,” Shi said.

Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina Ralph Baric said the study provides “the most compelling information to date” that animal coronaviruses are programmed to transmit between species. He said the SARS-CoV is not extinct, but instead is “hiding” in animals.

“The study further demonstrates the critical importance of continued surveillance and the development of public health preparedness platforms to control these important and deadly emerging human coronaviruses,” Baric said.

via New SARS-like virus discovered in Chinese horseshoe bats | Vaccine News Daily.

Free range ‘not responsible’ for bird flu – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Federal Agriculture Minister has been asked to retract his statement that an increase in free range egg production would lead to more outbreaks of avian influenza.

Lee McCosker, from Humane Choice, Humane Society International\’s farm accreditation system, says factory farming spreads the disease, not free range.

She wants Barnaby Joyce take a closer look at how the birds on the free range farm near Young were housed and reassess the situation.

via Free range ‘not responsible’ for bird flu – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

WHO reports millions of TB/MDR-TB patients missed by health care system | Vaccine News Daily

WHO reports millions of TB/MDR-TB patients missed by health care system | Vaccine News Daily. The report estimates that roughly three million people are currently infected with TB without access to quality medical care; it is believed 75 percent of this population is concentrated in 12 countries. The WHO also reports that treatment for those with MDR-TB infections must be improved, as the disease continues to gain strength.

“The WHO Global TB report highlights the very big gains the global community has made in the fight against tuberculosis,” Osamu Kunii, head of the Strategy, Investment and Impact Division of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said. “We are now at a crucial moment where we cannot afford to let these gains go into reverse. We need the commitment of the international community to address the significant funding gap to fight this disease.”

Pesticide illness triggers anti-Monsanto protest in Argentina | Environment | DW.DE | 25.10.2013

Sofía Gatica sits in the sun on a café patio in the Argentine city of Córdoba. She talks about raising her three children in Ituzaingó, a Córdoba suburb surrounded by soy fields. In the mid-1990s her oldest son became extremely ill.

\”When he was four years old, he came down with the illness that left him temporarily paralyzed,\” she recalls. \”He was admitted to the hospital. They told me that they didn\’t know what was wrong with him.\”

The Gatica family lived just fifty meters from fields planted with genetically-modified soy. Planes regularly flew overhead, spraying the plants with the herbicide glyphosate. Slowly, the entire suburb started getting sick.

Argentina is the world\’s third-largest soy producer

\”Children were being born with deformities,\” Sofia says, \”little babies were being born with six fingers, without a jawbone, missing a skull bone, with kidney deformities, without an anus – and a lot of mothers and fathers were developing cancer.\”

In 1999, Sofía Gatica gave birth to her fourth baby, a little girl. Three days later, the baby died of kidney failure. The loss of her child prompted Gatica to take action. She decided to find out what was happening in her neighborhood.

\”I went door-to-door and did a survey – asking each mother for the sick person\’s name, address, clinic, everything. And each mother sent me to another, and to another, and so on.\”

via Pesticide illness triggers anti-Monsanto protest in Argentina | Environment | DW.DE | 25.10.2013.

Aussie Spin to kill wild birds and protect million chicken farms! Poultry vet agrees free range encourages bird flu – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

He thinks it\’s \’commonsense\’ that free range birds are more likely to contract the virus because they have more exposure to wild water birds.

\”If you have commercial poultry free ranging and they come into contact with these wild water fowl, wild ducks, invariably at some stage they will contaminate this commercial poultry, and, using simple terms, the virus hots up and it gets into these commercial poultry and you finish up like the current situation like we have, where we have significant mortalities and we need to quarantine the farms and unfortunately have to destroy the birds.\”

via Poultry vet agrees free range encourages bird flu – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).