Black Death did not kill indiscriminately + H5N1 Breaking News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Black Death that decimated populations in Europe and elsewhere during the middle of the 14th century may not have been a blindly indiscriminate killer, as some experts have believed.

An analysis of 490 skeletons from a London for Black Death victims demonstrated that the infection did not affect everyone equally, two U.S. scientists said on Monday.

While many perfectly healthy people certainly were cut down, those already in poor health prior to the arrival of the plague were more likely to have perished, they found.

"A lot of people have assumed that the Black Death killed indiscriminately, just because it had such massive mortality," anthropologist Sharon DeWitte of the University at Albany in New York, said in a telephone interview.

People already in poor health often are more vulnerable in epidemics. "But there's been a tradition of thinking that the Black Death was this unique case where no one was safe and if you were exposed to the disease that was it. You had three to five days, and then you were dead," DeWitte said.

The plague epidemic of 1347 to 1351 was one of the deadliest recorded in human history, killing about 75 million people, according to some estimates, including more than a third of Europe's population.

DeWitte analyzed skeletons unearthed from the East Smithfield cemetery in London, dug especially for plague victims and excavated in the 1980s, for bone and teeth abnormalities that would show that people had health problems before they died of plague.

She found such abnormalities in many skeletons, suggesting these people had experienced malnutrition, iron deficiencies and infections well before succumbing to the Black Death.

The proportion of people with such signs of frailty in the cemetery, compared to those who appeared to have been of robust health before the epidemic, indicated that the infection was somewhat selective in who it killed, DeWitte and Pennsylvania State University anthropologist James Wood reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some experts have thought the Black Death -- named after the black spots the bubonic form of the plague caused on the skin -- killed indiscriminately regardless of age, sex or level of health because it was so virulent and the European population so immunologically unprepared, DeWitte and Wood wrote.

"The Black Death was highly virulent and undoubtedly killed many otherwise healthy people who would have been unlikely to die under normal-mortality conditions," they wrote. But people already in poor health were more likely to die, they wrote.

By Will Dunham
More.

Bird flu spreads to fresh areas, culling target jacked up

NVDL: H5N1 unleashes a cytokine storm, and the degree of this reaction is directly proportionate to immunity. In a bizarre and macabre twist, the healthier you are, the more your body would fill up with puss.
(Wiki: a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset).Thus H5N1 has been found to be most lethal in healthy individuals aged 20-40. Naturally people suffering from AIDs etc. present a brush fire scenario for such an epidemic. The story immediately above was posted yesterday. The story below was posted 12 hours ago:

Indonesia logs 4 H5N1 cases; death toll reaches 100

This story appeared 58 minutes ago:
H5N1 bird flu detected in two Thai provinces

This story appeared two days ago:
Sixth swan tests positive for H5N1 bird flu: British officials

Bird flu kills 590 ducks in northern Vietnam (REUTERS)

NVDL: Right now we're experiencing a seasonal change, which coincides with the movements of migratory birds.

HANOI, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Bird flu has killed 590 ducks in a northern Vietnam province, the fifth to have reported outbreaks among poultry within about a month, the government said on Wednesday.

The two-month-old ducks started dying on Monday at a farm in Ha Nam province. Tests confirmed on Wednesday the presence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Animal Health Department said in its daily report.Further tests also found the H5N1 virus in samples taken from two dead chickens dumped in a river in Ha Nam province, 60 km (37 miles) south of Hanoi, the report said.

The case in Ha Nam brought to five the number of provinces that have confirmed bird flu in poultry since early October. Three of the provinces are in the north, one is in the southern Mekong delta, while the fifth is in the central province of Quang Tri.

Floods that affected Quang Tri in the past two weeks could help spread the virus to nearby areas, an Agriculture Ministry official said.

No human infections have been reported in Vietnam since the virus killed a teenager in early August, one of four deaths among seven Vietnamese known to have been infected this year. Since 2003, bird flu has killed 46 people in Vietnam.

Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed 205 people out of 334 known cases, with most of the deaths in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Egypt, the World Health Organisation figures show. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh, editing by David Fogarty)

Bird flu kills Indonesian toddler, raises country's death toll to 89
1 day ago

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian health officials say a toddler has died from bird flu after apparently coming into contact with dead poultry.

Nyoman Kandun, a senior health ministry official, says the four-year-old girl from Tangerang, about 20 kilometres west of the capital Jakarta, died Monday after being in hospital for two days.

Kandun says investigators concluded the girl had contact with dead poultry in her neighbourhood.

Kandun says the death raises the number of people in Indonesia who have died from the disease to 89. The girl is the fourth Indonesian killed by the disease this month.

The World Health Organization says Indonesia's death toll from bird flu now accounts for almost one-half of the recorded 203 fatalities worldwide.

The disease remains hard for people to catch - most cases have so far been traced to contact with infected birds. But experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a global pandemic.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and home to millions of backyard chickens, is considered a possible hot spot for spreading the disease.

ALERT:Bird flu cases in Vietnam, Indonesia

1 Hour ago:
Hanoi (dpa) - After months of no reported cases of avian influenza, ducks in Vietnam's Mekong Delta have tested positive for the virus, a local official said Thursday.

Samples taken from ducks at a farm in southern Vietnam's Tra Vinh province have confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus, said Le Tuyet Hong, head of the animal health department of Tra Vinh province.

"We have culled all the ducks in the farm and put a ban on transporting poultry out of the village," said Hong. "We have also disinfected the area and other farms in the entire village. We are trying to keep the outbreak from expanding to other villages as it is very easy for the virus to spread in cool weather."

The last reported outbreak of the bird flu in Vietnam was in August. The country was declared bird flu-free in September but veterinarians warned that the virus could reappear.

For Indonesia story, click here.
For more click here.
For research progress click here.

UN Warns World at Greater Risk from Infectious Diseases

By VOA News
23 August 2007

The World Health Organization says infectious diseases are spreading around the world at a faster rate than ever before, making them more difficult to treat.

In its annual World Health Report, issued Thursday, the United Nations agency says one or more new diseases have been identified every year since the 1970s, a rate it says is "unprecedented."

The agency also says efforts to control such well-known diseases as tuberculosis have been compromised as they evolve into stronger, more drug-resistant forms.

WHO says the spread of infectious diseases is due to the growth of international air travel over the last 50 years. It has confirmed more than 1,100 outbreaks of different diseases over the past five years alone.

WHO is urging greater cooperation among its 193 members in reporting health outbreaks and sharing viruses to help develop vaccines.

Think H5N1 has disappeared?

Housemaid latest avian flu fatality (1 hour ago)
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

The Health Ministry's laboratory has confirmed a Tangerang domestic helper died from the bird flu virus Friday, bringing the country's death toll to 83.

The victim died at Tangerang's Sari Asih Hospital on Tuesday after two days of treatment for a high fever and acute pneumonia, a release made available for The Jakarta Post confirmed Saturday.

The maid's employers, Wahyu Proyato and Winda Amalia, who are residents of Perumnas II in Tangerang regency, said they had no idea how their maid contracted the virus because there were no fowl at their home or in the neighborhood.

Wahyu said his maid was treated at a clinic for a high fever and cough earlier this month. He said her condition improved after taking medication.

"Her condition improved after she took the medicine and she was able to babysit my child," he said.

Wahyu said his family and the housemaid did not have direct contact with live poultry and birds near the house.

"The only contact (with chickens) we had was on July 27 when my maid went with me to the market, just 200 meters from my home, to buy chicken meat," he said.

He said he had never purchased live chicken from the market.

The maid's body has been claimed by her family to be buried in Cilacap, Central Java.

Yuliah Iskandar, the regency health agency's head of communicable disease prevention, said a team had been assigned to investigate the source of the H5N1 virus in the neighborhood.

"There are no indications that bird flu has spread in the neighborhood, but we have taken blood samples from residents to be tested in a laboratory," she told the Post on Saturday.

Following the deaths of Iwan Siswara, an official at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), and his two young daughters early in July 2005, the central government declared Tangerang a bird flu red zone. Since then, the agency has recorded less than ten deaths in the regency, Yuliah said.

Meanwhile, Banten has recorded 14 human cases of bird flu, 12 of which were fatal.

On Jan. 19, Banten Governor Ratu Atut Chosiah issued a bylaw on poultry restrictions, which included a ban on keeping backyard fowl. The ordinance, however, has not yet taken effect due to prolonged protests from the Banten Council.

A similar ordinance was issued by the Jakarta administration following new outbreaks in the capital in January.

Initially a disease that affected poultry and birds, the H5N1 virus is now able to infect humans, but so far there is no evidence to suggest the disease can be transferred from human to human.

The Autumn of our Lives

Dear Nick,

I am not sure about seasons and influenza in Asia. In the past global pandemics started in some Northern hemisphere countries in June but nevertheless the main wave normally appeared in the autumn. But this could have more to do with childrens movements as they return to school.

Best regards,
John Oxford