Category Archives: pandemic

White spot disease: prawn farmers say import ban too late | Australia news | The Guardian “Was it a Trump Company?”

A prawn importer suspected of deliberately evading biosecurity controls to bring infected produce into the country is expected to face criminal charges as authorities try to contain a white spot disease outbreak in Australia.But prawn producers say the indefinite import ban has come too late: the government’s own agricultural quarantine agency, Biosecurity Australia, warned six years ago that the risk of the disease being introduced to Australia by the importation of green (raw) prawns was high.

Source: White spot disease: prawn farmers say import ban too late | Australia news | The Guardian

H7N9 activity intensifies in China with 16 more cases | CIDRAP

Increasing H7N9 activity comes amid the lead-up to the Lunar New Year holiday, which comes with a travel surge and an increase in live-poultry transport and sales. Lunar New Year falls on Jan 28, and 2017 is the year of the rooster.H7N9 is endemic in Chinese poultry, and the MMWR report said tests on poultry samples by China’s agriculture ministry since April 2013 have found 233 positive samples from 16 provinces, all but 1 from live-poultry markets.Live-market closures were one of the key steps that slowed H7N9’s earlier waves, and three cities in Jiangsu province—Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou—recently suspended live-poultry sales.New cases in 3 provincesGuangdong province health officials said in a monthly communicable disease report that 14 H7N9 cases were detected in December, 7 of them fatal, according to a report translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board. The report didn’t give any epidemiologic details, but 1 of the cases is thought to be an illness first reported in early December.

Source: H7N9 activity intensifies in China with 16 more cases | CIDRAP

Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND-  “Being a billionaire and inciting greed and status seeking behavior of all who come close can ruin any serious effort to understand and control malaria.”

The two technologies could be “transformational,” said Dan Strickman, a senior program officer at the foundation. The next challenge, however, will be to identify the approaches that work best in combination with existing medical treatments so as to shrink the footprint of the disease over the next ten to fifteen years, Karl Malamud-Roam, manager of Rutgers University’s public health pesticides program, told the Seattle Times.

Source: Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND

Finding out how human behavior facilitates the expansion of growth of malaria carrying mosquitoes would cost less but would show that industrial farming and deforestation are the chief facilitators of malaria’s continual comebacks.

H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South Korea | CIDRAP

Does anyone really need a doctorate in agronomy to understand that H5N8 influenza among “turkeys” in Nigeria explains why avian influenza is a global poultry killer and one of the most probably future sources for a killing human influenza that will make the 1918 flu looks like child’s play?

If someone talked about the turkey industry in Russia, China, Nigeria and India 30 years ago, you’d still be laughing and gasping for breath. Now because the race for profit from the industrialized poultry market knows no boundaries and has no understanding of how pandemic viruses develop, we may all soon be gasping for breath!

H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South KoreaFiled Under: Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News  | Dec 19, 2016Share Tweet LinkedIn Email Print & PDFturkeyfarm.jpgLauren M./ Flickr ccNigeria and South Korea report the first cases of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza, as the strain continues to infect European poultry after first emerging in wild waterfowl populations.Nigeria reports H5N8 in mixed free-range birdsNigeria reported H5N8 in a collection of guinea fowls, turkeys and pigeons in Danbare, located in Kano state in the north-central part of the country, according to a report to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).Fifteen birds died from the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and another 235 were culled in an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading. The outbreak occurred on Nov 19 and is considered resolved.The report said the bird owner purchased the live birds from a market. Nigeria is also battling outbreaks involving highly pathogenic H5N1, which is endemic in a handful of African nations.

Source: H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South Korea | CIDRAP

Boomtown, Flood Town

For Louise Hansen, the story has been the same every time she’s flooded: The water starts to creep into her house in the middle of the night.In 2009 — the first time her west Houston home flooded after she moved into it about a decade earlier — she figured it was an anomaly. Then it happened again in 2015. And again in 2016.Three times in less than 10 years — for a home that’s not in any floodplain identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s actually paralyzed me,” said Hansen, who grew up in the area and is now selling her house just for the lot value. “I just don’t think I can go through another flood.”Many of Hansen’s neighbors, who live in an area of Houston known as Memorial City, have had the same experience. They’ve flooded in 2009, 2015 and 2016, and none of them live in any known floodplain.

Source: Boomtown, Flood Town

Study confirms 4-fold rise in Zika microcephaly in Colombia | CIDRAP

Over the past year, experts have wondered if Colombia—hit with Zika virus after Brazil—would see a rise in Zika-related microcephaly similar to that witnessed in Brazil. Colombia has officially reported some microcephaly cases (476, including 44 pregnancy losses), but nowhere near the level seen in Brazil, raising questions about the impact of the virus.

Source: Study confirms 4-fold rise in Zika microcephaly in Colombia | CIDRAP

The Rolling Stones. sympathy for the devil. (powerful images) – YouTube Deja vu too 1968-2016

warning: this video contains images that may cause upset.I put up some of the most powerful photographs we have all more than likely seen at some point in our lives.the things we humans do to each other!they all seemed to fit with the music.

California’s Mosquito Population Has Increased Tenfold, And We’re To Blame: SFist – But disuse of DDT is not the driver – ubanization is.

That is to say, as humans continue to reshape the state to fit our desires, we are creating the conditions for a mosquito population explosion. To make matters worse, the channel reports that species capable of carrying the West Nile virus and Zika do well in California’s human-made environment. And scientists expect it to only get worse.”Urbanization, driven by human population growth and movement, has been a major driver of environmental change during the last century and is projected to increase substantially in the future across the globe,” the study authors write. “Our results suggest that urbanization is likely to drive additional changes in mosquito communities, including the expansion of habitat for urban mosquitoes.”

Source: California’s Mosquito Population Has Increased Tenfold, And We’re To Blame: SFist

Antibiotic resistance and clonal diversity of invasive Staphylococcus aureus in the rural Ashanti Region, Ghana | BMC Infectious Diseases | MRSA – Not good – pandemic related.

Results In total, 9,834 blood samples were cultured, out of which 0.6% (n = 56) were positive for S. aureus. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was detected in 35.7% (n = 20) of the S. aureus strains, of which one was a MRSA. The highest rate of antibiotic resistance was seen for commonly available antibiotics, including penicillin (n = 55; 98.2%), tetracycline (n = 32; 57.1%) and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (n = 26; 46.4%). Of all S. aureus strains, 75.0% (n = 42) carried the PVL-encoding genes. We found 25 different spa types with t355 (n = 11; 19.6%), t314 (n = 8; 14.3%), t084 (n = 8; 14.3%) and t311 (n = 5; 8.9%) being predominant.ConclusionThe study exhibited an alarmingly large level of antibiotic resistance to locally available antibiotics. The frequency of genetically diverse and PVL-positive methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) was high and could represent a reservoir for the emergence of virulent PVL-positive MRSA clones.

Source: Antibiotic resistance and clonal diversity of invasive Staphylococcus aureus in the rural Ashanti Region, Ghana | BMC Infectious Diseases | Full Text

Rio Grande Valley, Texas, reports first case of local Zika | CIDRAP

Heightened surveillance in Brownsville The CDC said it would be aiding TDSHS about continued, heightened surveillance of the Rio Grande Valley, including conducting an environmental assessment at the patient’s home and trapping and testing mosquitoes across the region. According to the TDSHS, Brownsville has recently sprayed for mosquitoes in the area and will continue to do so.”Even though it is late in the mosquito season, mosquitoes can spread Zika in some areas of the country,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, in a media release. “Texas is doing the right thing by increasing local surveillance and trapping and testing mosquitoes in the Brownsville area.”Beginning this evening, health workers from TDSHS will be going door to door in the patient’s neighborhood to educate people on how to remove standing water and protect themselves against Zika. They will also collect voluntary urine samples to determine if there are other local infections.As of Nov 23, the CDC said 4,444 cases of Zika have reported in the continental United States and Hawaii; 182 of these were the result of local spread by mosquitoes in Florida. Those numbers do not include the Brownsville case.

Source: Rio Grande Valley, Texas, reports first case of local Zika | CIDRAP