Fears a couple that just returned from Bangladesh could have avian flu are inaccurate, according to a Toronto hospital.

The elderly couple was admitted to Toronto East General Hospital Tuesday night after complaining of flu-like symptoms and apparently isolated.

However speculation that they could be suffering from a human form of the H5N1 virus is unfounded, the hospital said in a statement released Wednesday.

“Toronto East General Hospital (TEGH) is concerned about inaccurate media speculation and reporting regarding human cases of avian flu. TEGH has no reason to speculate that any patients in the hospital have avian flu,” the statement read.

“Furthermore, media reports are indicating that the individuals suspected to have avian flu had recently traveled to Bangladesh. It is important to clarify that, according to the World Health Network, there have been no reported human cases of H5N1 avian flu in Bangladesh.”

Officials did say they were dealing with an increased number of patients with seasonal flu-like symptoms.

They’re still waiting for test results to confirm what the couple is ailing from, but they insist bird flu is not a possibility.

The H5N1 virus spreads quickly and has a mortality rate as high as 70 per cent..

Health experts fear avian flu is the most likely source for the next pandemic.

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Efforts to contain bird flu are failing in Indonesia, increasing the possibility that the virus may mutate into a deadlier form, the leading U.N. veterinary health body warned.

The H5N1 bird flu virus is entrenched in 31 of the countrys 33 provinces and will cause more human deaths, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement released late Tuesday.

“I am deeply concerned that the high level of virus circulation in birds in the country could create conditions for the virus to mutate and to finally cause a human influenza pandemic,” FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said.

Indonesia “has not succeeded in containing the spread of avian influenza,” Domenech said, adding that there must be “major human and financial resources, stronger political commitment and strengthened coordination.”

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 236 people in a dozen countries worldwide since it began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. It has been found in birds in more than 60 countries, but Indonesia has recorded 105 deaths, almost half the global tally, according to the World Health Organization.

The USA’s flu epidemic continued to grow last week, with cases mounting in every state and a dozen new deaths among children, the government’s leading flu expert said Friday.

Altogether 22 children have died of flu so far, with widespread flu activity reported in 49 states, up from 44 last week, says Nancy Cox, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention influenza division. Only Florida is reporting regional flu activity for the week ending Feb. 16th, according to the CDC.

“Influenza activity has continued to increase, but not quite as dramatically as over the previous two weeks,” she said in her weekly flu update. “We’re within the normal parameters of what we’d expect for an influenza season.”

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Vietnam’s Preventive Medicine and Environment Department has said some people hospitalized recently are suspected of having contracted bird flu, local newspaper Youth reported on Friday.

Specimens from the people, including a seven-year-old child from northern Hai Duong province, are being tested for bird flu virus strain H5N1. The child is under treatment at the National Hospital of Pediatrics in capital Hanoi.

To date, Vietnam has confirmed a total of 104 human cases of bird flu infections, including 50 fatalities, since the disease started to hit the country in December 2003.

In mid-February, two local people, a 27-year-old man from northern Ninh Binh province and a 41-year-old man from northern Hai Duong province, died from bird flu. On Jan. 18, a 32-year-old ethnic man from northern Tuyen Quang province died from the disease.

Last December, after detecting no human cases of bird flu infections for nearly four months, the Health Ministry confirmed that a four-year-old boy from northern Son La province died on Dec.16, 2007 from bird flu.

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A week after lifting the ban on the sale of poultry products, the state government on Monday suddenly issued an alert on the spread of bird flu among human beings.

The health department has asked health officials to keep a watch on possible human contraction of the H5N1 virus. “We will have to be alert to prevent any such cases for the next three months,” an official said after attending a high-level meeting to assess the threat.

Health officials are extremely worried that cullers and civilians who helped out in the culling may have escaped the rigorous quarantine process. The condition of culling team members needs to be monitored very closely, doctors from all flu-hit districts suggested.

“All health officials have been instructed that if anyone comes to government healthcare centres with fever running for more than five days after having come in contact with a dead chicken, he/she should be put through all pathological tests for avian flu,” said Basab Mukherjee, a KMC executive health officer in charge of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) project in the city.

Mukherjee said the civic authorities would remain in close contact with all government hospitals and KMC health clinics for the next three months, as instructed by the state health department.

Though an alert has been sounded, the menu for the high level meeting, among other items, was egg curry. “Perhaps, it was an attempt to bring back confidence among doctors in the post flu period,” said an official who attended the meeting.

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An epidemic of avian influenza in West Bengal, India has the Indian “government in panic mode”, according to the Times of India Web site.

And with good reason: 15 million of West Bengal’s 80 million people are crammed into its capital city, Kolkata (Calcutta), which is a petri dish of poverty, pollution, political intransigence and hopeless public health. It is the city where Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity order.

If the infection reaches Kolkata’s poultry markets, there is a much greater risk of animal-to-human transmission than there has been in Indonesia or Vietnam, where infections of H5N1 influenza have already crossed species from animals to humans.

There have been many more human infections of highly-pathogenic influenza in Indonesia (120 cases, 98 deaths) and Vietnam (102 cases, 48 deaths) than in India. There were three outbreaks of avian influenza in India in 2006, but there have been no human deaths there, yet.

But Kolkata is a whole other miasma of misery. The population density of Kolkata is 24,000 people per square kilometer (62,000 per square mile), the second highest in the world. In comparison, the population density of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest city, is only 3,000 per square kilometer (8,000 per square mile), a fraction of Kolkata’s. Even the density of Jakarta, Indonesia, at 12,500 people per square kilometer (33,000 per square mile), is just half that of Kolkata.

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The government has been carrying out allout efforts to resist the bird flu throughout the country.

A number of steps have already been taken to face the probable menace. Sources said monitoring cell has been opened at the office of the Deputy Commissioner in each district.

Special task force has been formed. BDR patrol in the border areas has been geared up, importation of all kinds of poultry through India and Myanmmar borders has been prohibited, propaganda to create awareness among the people is being made and the masses are being urged not to be panicked.

Besides, the government is mulling to declare red alert as a drastic measure to face this catastrophe if necessary. According to the official figure the country has 1.50 lakh poultry farms and a panic of bird flu has been spread all over, although, infection of bird flu in hundred farms has so far been informed.

About 3.50 lakh cocks in 134 farms have already been killed and as a result the poultry farmers who invested a huge amount are being frustrated. If it is not controlled now, it would be spread all over the country in an epidemic form.

And at the same time it would not only cause a huge economic loss but also thousands of people involved in this industry would be jobless. Ministry of Livestock sources said the price of cock, duck and pigeon has been reduced in the market.

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The Indian state of West Bengal, battling the country’s worst outbreak of deadly bird flu, appealed on Saturday to the federal government to send “all possible help to defeat” the virus.

The call by state animal resources minister Anisur Rahaman came as authorities struggled to stop the disease spreading beyond the 12 out of 19 state districts already affected.

“We have to control the disease immediately as the deadly H5N1 virus has been spreading fast,” Rahaman said, adding “avian flu is knocking on the doors of Kolkata,” the eastern state’s congested capital of 13.5 million people.

“I’m urging the federal government to send all possible help to defeat the virus before it affects the humans,” he told AFP.

New Delhi has already sent some medical teams and other assistance to the state.

Three days of heavy rains have held up efforts to slaughter poultry, turning some rural dirt roads into muddy rivers and making it impossible for health teams to reach chicken farms in the poverty-ridden state.

Rahaman said he was deeply concerned by reports some villagers in rural areas were eating slaughtered chickens.

“We don’t understand why people do not understand the dangers of the disease despite repeated warnings,” he said, adding children were still playing with chickens.

Humans typically catch the disease by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 strain may mutate into a form easily transmissible between people.

Panic about bird flu has gripped Kolkata after news spread that the disease had reached the outskirts of the city on Friday.

Few shops were selling poultry on Saturday in the city.

“Not a single customer has come to my shop since the morning,” said Malati Mondal, a store owner.

The government has raised the number of chickens to be slaughtered to 2.5 million from 2.2 million, Rahaman said, adding 1.3 million had been killed so far.

Workers at entry points to Kolkata were disinfecting vehicles entering the city.

India has not had any human cases of bird flu. But Rahaman said he feared the disease would spread to humans with hundreds of people reporting flu symptoms.

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Last year, for the first time since avian flu emerged as a global threat, the number of human cases was down from the year before. As the illness receded, the scary headlines with their warnings of a pandemic that could kill 150 million people all but vanished.

But avian flu has not gone away. Nor has it become less lethal or less widespread in birds. Experts argue that preparations against it have to continue, even if the virus’s failure to mutate into a pandemic strain has given the world more breathing room.

There were 86 confirmed human cases last year compared with 115 in 2006, according to the World Health Organization, and 59 deaths compared with 79. Experts assume that the real numbers are several times larger, because many cases are missed, but that is still a far cry from a pandemic.

Dr. David Nabarro, the senior United Nations coordinator for human and avian flu, recently conceded that he worried somewhat less than he did three years ago. “Not because I think the threat has changed,” he quickly added, but because the response to it has gotten so much better.”

The world is clearly more prepared. Vaccines have been developed. Stockpiles of Tamiflu and masks have grown. Many countries, cities, companies and schools have written pandemic plans. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, created in Stockholm in 2005, just estimated that the European Union needed “another two to three years of hard work and investment” to be ready for a pandemic, but that is improving because previous estimates were for five years.

In the worst-hit countries — all poor — laboratories have become faster at flu tests. Government veterinarians now move more quickly to cull chickens. Hospitals have wards for suspect patients, and epidemiologists trace contacts and treat all with Tamiflu — a tactic meant to encircle and snuff outbreaks before the virus can adapt itself to humans.

Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health, recently called the virus “extremely stable” and, thus, less likely to mutate into a pandemic form. Many prominent virologists would vehemently disagree. But others who argued three years ago that H5N1 would not “go pandemic” are feeling a bit smug.

Avian Flu - H5N1 Pandemic - Bird Flu - New York Times

Vaccines and drugs will not be enough to slow or prevent a pandemic of influenza, according to a U.S. government report released on Tuesday.

The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirms what most experts have been stressing for years — that the pharmaceutical industry cannot be relied on alone to protect the world from bird flu.

The GAO, the investigational arm of Congress, reached its own conclusion independently.

“The use of antivirals and vaccines to forestall the onset of a pandemic would likely be constrained by their uncertain effectiveness and limited availability,” the GAO report reads.

Health experts almost universally agree that a global epidemic — a pandemic — of influenza is inevitable and even overdue. Flu is always circulating but, every few decades, a completely new strain emerges and makes millions sicker than usual.

One prime suspect is the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. It is entrenched in poultry across much of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, pops up regularly in Europe and has forced the slaughter of hundreds of millions of birds.

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