Watch for sick health care workers

That's my panic signal...sick HCW's.

Problem is as someone else pointed out...this is flu season over there and we may see a lot of people & HCW's reporting ILI that may be reported as a suspected BF infection. 

We will have to wait, biting our fingernails, until actual test results come in.  Then we will have to wait to see if those test results are confirmed.

From what I was able to glean in a down and dirty search is there isn't too much protection for the HCW's...so IF this is H2H BF they will start dropping out about tomorrow or Saturday.

Stay tuned sports fans.

Washington -- If Turkish health authorities are correct, the first human cases of bird flu have occurred outside of East Asia with the deaths of a teenage brother and sister in a rural district of eastern Turkey bordering Iran and Armenia. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported January 5 that disease experts have been dispatched to Turkey to collaborate on the case. Turkish health experts have reached a preliminary finding of avian influenza based on samples of lung tissue from a 14-year-old boy and his 15-year-old sister. The samples are being analyzed further in the United Kingdom and final results are expected in two days. The boy and girl were both hospitalized on January 1. He died that same day, and she died January 5. The WHO account of the cases says that both the youngsters were known to have contact with chickens. Deaths of chickens were known to have occurred in their district of Dogubayazit recently, though the highly pathogenic form of avian influenza -- H5N1 -- was not confirmed.  H5N1, which has killed or caused the destruction of hundreds of millions of birds across Asia, was confirmed in a neighboring Turkish province December 27, 2005. Turkish health officials say that nine more patients with similar symptoms are also hospitalized, most of them youngsters, all of them from Dogubayazit. Two of them are siblings of the deceased. Turkish authorities have placed Dogubayazit under quarantine, according to the WHO summary, with no movement of people or birds allowed. Culling of poultry is also under way, the standard response to prevent further spread of disease to either humans or animals. Turkey will become the sixth nation to report human cases of avian influenza, if the preliminary tests on the boy and girl are confirmed in the British laboratory.  Over the last two years, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and China have reported a total of 142 cases of human infection, with just more that half ending in death. The report from Turkey January 5 pushes the global totals to 144 human cases with 76 deaths.  Vietnam is by far the single most severely affected nation, with 93 cases and 42 deaths. The remaining expected human cases in Turkey will be subject to intense study. If they are proven to be H5N1, this likely will be the largest single cluster of human disease cases ever detected in one place at one time. Medical authorities now will be looking hard to detect whether these individuals acquired H5N1 through contact with sick birds, their droppings or their environs, or if they passed the disease among themselves through coughing or sneezing. If the latest cases appear to have been transmitted from human to human, international health authorities will be renewing their alert about the threat of pandemic influenza.  H5N1 rarely has infected human beings before now, so humans do not have immunity to this pathogen. That means disease could spread rapidly from nation to nation, causing widespread illness and death, leading to social and economic disruption. Over the last year, health authorities have been working to raise awareness about the possibility and the consequences of pandemic. In October 2005, the United States convened the first meeting of the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza with participation from nearly 90 nations and all the major international organizations responsible for monitoring animal and human health. (See related article.) The partnership is working to elevate the avian influenza issue on national agendas; coordinate efforts among donors and affected nations; mobilize resources; improve disease reporting and surveillance; and build local capacity to identify, contain and respond to an influenza pandemic.

Well those that do the planning have to work within limits (ie budgets) that others set.

Same can be said with regards the WHO. Its fair to assume that many of their problems are due to lack of money, staff, resources in general? I understand that the 'playing things down' stuff also makes people moan about the WHO, but earlier in this thread we see what happens when people panic.

Which leaders/institutions would of had the power to make WHO and vetinery and health services and surveillance across the entire globe strong enough to effectively fight the pandemic?

When I plan I shoot high so that if I hit low it's still above what I expected.

These guys are aiming low and will end up below that.

If we simpithize with the persons doing the planing, (the ones we get our instructions from) then we can expect little.

Problems are identified to overcome not waller in.

Their planning reflects a "too late" attitude.

They are loosers I wouldn't follow to the bathroom.

With small thinkers like these in charge of the planning we are screwed.

Guess it will be easier to plan to dig more graves.

I would PANIC if I were you.

Edited by Corn

I can appreciate all of those points, and I do agree with a lot of them, more or less. But who else is there (no pun intended), that is am important question for sure.

I dont consider questions of money etc to be baby talk. Its as much at the heart of the matter as anything else. People moan about the UN being weak in world leadership, and the WHO is going to receive the same flak from the same people I imagine. Well if you want a strong UN or a strong alternative, you have to make it happen.

I think it is just about too late really to expect this to change in time for this pandemic, though you know if I actually wear an optimists hat for a moment, there may still be more time than we think (or there may be virtually no time left at all, I ouldnt bet either way).

The USA likes to do strong leadership globally when it deems a military option to be necessary, why dont they apply the same reasoning to fighting the flu pandemic?

If you say, why should they have to do it, then we are back at needing a global solution, which the WHO is, flawed by the usual institutional problems it may be.

As best I am aware no one body decided that the WHO was in charge when the pandemic threat first emerged, its probably just a result of decades of international laws and agreements, which the USA has likely pushed forwards as much as any other state. If anybody knows more about this Id love to hear.

Attack the WHO and criticise them when they deserve it, Im not trying to stop that. I just want a more detailed debate about solutions sometimes.


Edited by elbows

Medical staff morale key in bird flu outbreak: expert
By Jennifer Tan 38 minutes ago

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Hospitals must prepare their staff for the trauma of a bird flu epidemic or risk a collapse of morale and services at a time when they will be most needed, a medical expert said on Saturday.

"I predict that you will have very few staff two weeks into the epidemic if you do not have mechanisms in place to minimize the stress and effect on morale," Charles Gomersall, the director of intensive care at Hong Kong's Princess Margaret Hospital, told a bird flu symposium in Singapore.

"If you have poor staff morale, they will not come to work, you would not have a service -- end of story."

He said hospitals could offer staff counseling and daily debriefings to help them manage stress during an outbreak.

While the H5N1 avian flu virus mostly affects birds, it has killed at least 88 people in seven countries since it re-emerged in late 2003, with most victims in east Asia.

There is no evidence yet that the virus has mutated to the point that it could spread from human to human, a nightmare scenario experts believe could kill millions.

Gomersall said there appeared to be a higher mortality rate among avian flu patients than among those affected by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2003, particularly among children.

Taking 54 reported bird flu cases from Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong and China, he found that the death rate for those requiring intensive care was 89 percent and their median age was 12.5 years. "The much greater problem in avian flu compared to SARS is the high mortality, in particular the high mortality amongst children," Gomersall said. "The family will have dropped off their child and the next time they see him, he will be dying -- can you imagine the effect that will have on staff morale in your unit?"

Gomersall said hospitals needed to start equipping their facilities and training their staff now.

"Once the epidemic starts, you've got a very, very short time between presentation (of symptoms) and ICU admission," he said.

"The number of days between having no patients with SARS and having a lot of patients with SARS is about 3 to 4 days.   Avian flu

is unlikely to be better: if anything, it's likely to be worse. If you haven't started preparing already, go home and start now."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060211/hl_nm/birdflu_hospitals_ dc_2

Elbows Quote,

The USA likes to do strong leadership globally when it deems a military option to be necessary, why dont they apply the same reasoning to fighting the flu pandemic?

You're right there but we are too streched out. Iraq will probably be our last adventure for awhile. We have to be broke soon. We are an illusion supported by a strong modern military just like Germany in 1939. We are over extended and unless they declare martial law here we will not have enough manpower or money for many more forays.

I had once thought we could get a coalition together to fight BF but think it will be too little too late for that.

We could have probably started earlier on this but China was and still is not helpful and I doubt if they ever gave the WHO the virus samples they had been requesting over and over.

And there is no way to raise the standard of living in Vietnam and the rest of South East Asia overnight. Thier living practices are thousands of years old.  Although I would draw the line at chickens in the house. You have alot of people sharing a small space. The world population is growing. Land is shrinking. Maybe mother nature is plannig a cull of her own. We have wrecked the planet.

All we can do is prep and accept individual responsibility for ourselves and our loved ones. That's the real truth in this matter.

There will be no quick fixes and sudden cures.

Edited by Corn

Putin wants global rules on bird flu, energy (English)
MOSCOW, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Russia, the world's second biggest oil exporter, was working on transparent rules for the global energy sector for discussion by the Group of Eight industrial nations. ...
 

You think 6 months is long, read Osterholm's 18 months.