10,000 Doses TAMIFLU -2-IRAQ/in few days?

UPDATE: Tamiflu Sent To Iraq On Human Case Of
Bird Flu-UN -3 Feb 2006 16:42 GMT

Copyright © 2006, Dow Jones Newswires

(Updates an item at 1445 GMT with details of suspected cases,
background)

* The quarantine area has several hundred thousand

GENEVA (AP)--A large shipment of an anti-flu drug is being sent to Iraq
to help contain any outbreak of bird flu following the first confirmed
human case of the disease in the country, a top official of the U.N. health
agency said Friday.

Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's top official in charge of
monitoring communicable diseases, said the manufacturer Roche Holding
AG (RHHBY) had agreed to provide enough Tamiflu to treat up to 10,000
people.

Chan said the confirmation by an authoritative laboratory in the U.K.
made clear that the pulmonary disease that killed a 15-year-old Iraqi girl
Jan. 17 was the fatal H5N1 bird flu virus.

She noted that specimens from the girl's 39-year-old uncle, who died Jan.
27, and a 54-year-old woman under treatment for respiratory illness
were being sent to the U.K. laboratory, but have yet to be tested.

"I was on the phone talking to the company, and they

are willing to provide in the order of 7,000 to 10,000 treatment courses,

and we are trying to ship them as soon as possible," Chan told reporters.

But she said it would be days before the medicine arrives in Iraq.


Tamiflu, which reduces the symptoms of flu, is the drug that experts say
offers the best initial hope of containing a human influenza pandemic in
case the bird flu virus mutates into a strain that can easily spread from
human to human. It also helps treat individual cases of bird flu caught by
humans from poultry.

A team of WHO experts and animal health specialists is to arrive in
northern Iraq next week to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation in
the Sulaimaniyah area, WHO said.

The agency credited Iraqi clinicians with "a high level of awareness" in
detecting the human case even though there had been no confirmed
outbreaks of bird flu in poultry. But it said it underscored the urgent need
to investigate the extent of bird outbreaks in northern Iraq and possibly
elsewhere.

Chan said there had been "a lot of rumors" of other human bird flu cases
in northern Iraq, "but those rumors were not substantiated. Our team will
work with their experts and will make a proper assessment to find out the
size and the extent of the problem."

World health officials have been tracking bird flu since if first started
killing humans in East Asia in 2003. Since then WHO has confirmed bird
flu in 161 people, 86 of whom died. The spread of the disease to Turkey
late last year and Iraq this year has led the agency to step up its control
efforts. WHO has confirmed 12 human cases in Turkey, four of which
were fatal. Further tests of nine more Turkish cases are still pending.

Chan said international teams of experts had been deployed to nine
countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Lebanon, Moldova,
Syria and Ukraine - to help local officials prepare and check for signs of a
bird flu outbreak in poultry.

"All countries are really scrambling to find out what is going on in their
countries," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, who is coordinating WHO's global
influenza program. "These teams are going out there to help."

Fukuda said he expects the teams to find some bird flu in poultry in the
region.

But Chan stressed that WHO still regards the H5N1 strain of bird flu as
difficult for humans to catch.

"We expect to see outbreaks in poultry, and we will continue to see
sporadic human cases," she said. "This is still pretty much an animal
disease. It is a rare disease in humans. Only in situations where there is
exposure and contact with infected birds would a human being be
exposed to the risk of getting infection."

Fukuda said he saw promise in a recent study that put H5 proteins in a
vaccine that proved "quite effective" in keeping mice from dying of bird
flu.

"This is one vaccine among many H5 vaccines that are out there. There
are scores of vaccines which have been tried and put in trials and in mice
many of these vaccines have been protective," he said. "The key question
is whether we can take these vaccines and make them useful for people,
make them commercially viable and use them with a lot of people. That's
the next step. All of these studies such as the recent one are good news.
But we need to go to the next step."

But Chan stressed, "That doesn't mean we will have that vaccine very
soon. We are still far from being able to use that on a commercial scale
within the coming years."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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Edited by Rick

“......would come these almost unbelievable stories. If they were
believable you're supposed to do something, if they were unbelievable,
you didn't have to do anything. A lot of health officers were, and a lot of
politicians to whom the health officers would have to con, people they'd
have to convince, preferred not to face it. “

“The first reaction of the authorities was, for many of the most important
ones, just flat-out denial. This was simply too large an event for them to
deal with, not only in policy, but to even to think about constructively.

Excerpts from PBS 1918 Spanish Flu documentary

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/filmmore/reference/
interview/drcrosby3.html

Edited by Rick

Yes, Rick, excellent timely reference, we can only hope that those preparing now for a possible pandemic will learn from past experience. 

After recent announcements about the first US preparations I am waiting for a more detailed plan outlining public health and social policy in the event of a serious outbreak of disease.

The camels got lost, come on guys give em a break.

And yes we are dumb enough to repeat history, I feel like Im watching a rerun of 1918.