Bird flu

[selchie]

As with any communicable disease, sanitation is your first defense. Wash your hands, don't let people sneeze on you, don't play with used tissues, etc. Bolster your immune system, and don't panic.

[MotherBear]

Birdflu plans upset some Maori in Rotorua
06 December 2005

Plans to ban funerals and refrigerate bodies for up to six months during a bird flu pandemic have outraged Maori in Rotorua. The plans, unveiled at a meeting at Rotorua Hospital, have upset some kaumatua who say proposed bans on tangi and hongi have the potential to cause "uproar" among Maori.

District health boards across the country are planning for how to cope with an influenza pandemic following the spread of the H5N1 virus throughout Asia and parts of Europe. So far it has killed about 60 people.

The flu virus has only been contracted by people who have had direct contact with infected poultry but officials fear the virus will mutate and spread easily between humans. To prevent the virus from arriving in New Zealand and spreading, the Ministry of Health is preparing interventions like closing borders and schools and restricting public gatherings.

Bay of Plenty medical officer of health Paul Martiquet said during a pandemic, the dead would be refrigerated or frozen in containers and buried as soon as it was over - meaning funerals and tangi would be temporarily banned.

"We wouldn't want funerals or tangi taking place because they would be a breeding ground for exposing large groups of people to the virus," Dr Martiquet said.

Other strategies being discussed include a ban on hongi - a traditional Maori greeting - as any close contact between people could spread the virus. The plans have upset Maori in Rotorua who say they conflict with their cultural beliefs.

Te Arawa Maori Trust Board chairman Anaru Rangiheuea said tangi were the most important cultural practice for Maori and any delays in farewelling the dead would only aggravate the grieving process.

"Being isolated from a loved one would have serious implications for many families and there would be issues for Maori on how their dead were being treated."

Pihopa (Bishop) Kingi said a hongi was nothing to be feared and was safer than kissing. "No one can pass on germs by pressing noses. I don't see how it could be censured."

Te Runanga O Ngati Pikiao chief executive Dennis Curtis said hongi and tangi were as natural to Maori as "breathing air" and any ban on their practices would outrage Maori. Staff at Rotorua's Te Puia tourist attraction, however, say a hongi ban would not affect the cultural experience of its visitors.

Historically, Te Puia guides greet visitors with a hongi but the practice was stopped about two years ago during the Sars (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis.

[Glenda]

Apart from the usual knee-jerk reaction mentioned above from those supposedly speaking for Maoris, in the event of a bird-flu pandamic I would put money on Maoris doing all their can to survive - just like anyone else would.

[smiley=icon_neutral.gif]

[MotherBear]

Bird-flu bill lets medical officers seize land, cars
27 May 2006
By KAMALA HAYMAN

Nurses will sign death certificates and medical officers will be able to seize any land, buildings or cars needed during a flu pandemic if far-reaching law changes are approved. International health experts are warning all nations to prepare for a global pandemic as the lethal bird-flu virus spreads across Asia and into Europe, killing millions of birds and more than 100 people. Seven members of a family have died in Indonesia despite no apparent contact with infected birds, raising the spectre the virus could be spreading between humans, although only through close and prolonged contact.

New Zealand health authorities are planning for a pandemic that could infect 40 per cent of the population and kill 33,000 people, overwhelming health services. Now an Epidemic Preparedness Bill proposes extending the powers of nurses and medical officers to help authorities cope. The bill proposes allowing nurses to sign death certificates ? currently only done by doctors ? if no doctor was available for at least 24 hours. However, it forbids the issuing of a death certificate if a doctor or nurse who attended the patient during the illness had refused to issue the death certificate because the cause of death was not clear.

Medical Association chairman Ross Boswell said this proposal was 'odd' because nurses were likely to be even busier than doctors during a pandemic. 'We need nurses looking after patients, not doing paperwork.' He suggested lawyers be asked to sign the certificates if doctors were not available. 'It is a medico-legal (document) and they will not be involved in care of the sick and dying.'

Pegasus Health nursing director Shelley Frost said health services would change significantly during a pandemic. 'Doctors and nurses are going to get sick, so we will be struggling with a greatly reduced workforce and will need to take on different roles,' she said. She agreed nurses would be busy, but everyone would have to adapt during the crisis.

The bill proposes significantly extending the powers of medical officers. They would be able to requisition any land or buildings ? publicly or privately owned ? for a wide range of reasons, including the treatment of patients or storing or disposal of bodies. Vehicles could also be taken if they were needed to transport patients, doctors or medical equipment, or to carry food, tents or other temporary facilities.

Medical officers would also have the authority to close any premises in their district, except private homes, courts and prisons, and to insist on certain infection-control measures. Police would have the power to 'do anything reasonably necessary, including the use of force', to help medical officers exercise their powers.

Canterbury medical officer of health Mel Brieseman said the law currently listed the types of premises medical officers could close, so was too restrictive, and in some cases, such as billiard halls, out of date.

Currently, the law allowed buildings to be requisitioned during an emergency, but only if they were needed for a hospital. Medical officers could not seize land or vehicles under existing law.

The parliamentary administration select committee is due to report on the bill by July 31.

[MotherBear]

Woah! This is strong talk! This topic just doesn't go away.

Schools told to prepare for bird flu
5pm Wednesday September 27, 2006
By Sarah McDougall

A pandemic will strike New Zealand and schools need to be preparing for it now, the Ministry of Education's pandemic planning manager said today.

Graeme Marshall told the annual meeting of the New Zealand Education Institute there was a high risk of bird flu becoming a pandemic that would strike New Zealand, and it could kill between 30-50,000 people. "We will get a pandemic at some stage. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. However, there's no need to panic because an awful lot of us won't die. Something over four million (New Zealanders) won't die."

Not panicking was imperative. People needed to remember the pandemic would pass and life would go on, Mr Marshall said. As government representatives, school staff needed to reflect on how the best of a bad situation could be achieved. "It is unlikely that communities will thank us if we metaphorically head for the hills," he said.

In preparation for the pandemic schools needed to keep up to date contact lists and teachers should be actively encouraging children to wash their hands properly and blow their noses correctly.

When a pandemic struck teachers needed to provide as full a service as possible for as long as possible to keep things as near to normal as they could, Mr Marshall said. "I think it will be the sharpest test on our management skills. The issue will be monitoring safe and healthy working environments."

Prohibiting students from attending schools was one way medical officers of health might try to stop the spread of infection, he said. Sick students may also be sent home by principals. Correspondence schooling should be organised for those students, Mr Marshall said.

Staff themselves would need to be monitored for signs of sickness, and schools needed to be prepared for up to 50 per cent fewer staff at the height of a pandemic. "You must be sure to stay home when you're sick. " Every school should have an action plan in place and individuals should have an emergency kit of medication and food in their own homes, he said.

The Ministry of Health has outlined five stages of a pandemic management strategy. New Zealand is at stage one, the planning stage.

The last major pandemic was the Spanish flu, which hit New Zealand in 1918 and killed 8600 people.

- NZPA

[Glenda]

Found this article. ?It certainly seems to dismiss the popular idea that winter cold, frost and snow kills viruses and bugs. ?

:-/

Flu Viruses Survive Frozen In Lakes
30/11/2006

Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorInfluenza virus can live for decades and perhaps even longer in frozen lakes and might be picked up and carried by birds to reinfect animals and people, researchers reported.

Such frozen viruses could potentially become the source of new epidemics that sicken and kill generations after they were last seen, the researchers report in the Journal of Virology.

"We've found viral RNA in the ice in Siberia, and it's along the major flight paths of migrating waterfowl," said Dr. Scott Rogers of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. ?"The lakes are along the migratory flight paths of birds flying into Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa," the researchers wrote.

Migrating birds are blamed, in part, for the spread of H5N1 avian influenza, which has killed or forced the culling of more than 200 million birds globally.

Since January, H5N1 has spread out of Asia, across Europe and into Africa. Now more than 50 countries have battled the virus, which has infected 258 people and killed 153 since 2003. ?Experts fear it could mutate into a form that easily infects people and causes a pandemic. There were three such pandemics in the last century and one, the 1918-1919 pandemic, killed anywhere from 40 million to 100 million people.

It was caused by a virus called H1N1, a descendant of which still circulates and causes illness today. ?But the original form was only recently studied and was recovered from the still-frozen body of a victim from Alaska.

Were that strain of H1N1 to circulate today, it could cause another serious pandemic because no one alive now has immunity to it, Rogers said. The original H1N1 appears to have passed fairly directly from birds to people.

Rogers noted that World Health Organization and other experts try to predict every year which strains of flu virus will be circulating, and they advise companies to formulate the next year's flu vaccine accordingly.

"Sometimes they're wrong," he said. "We thought that by looking at what's melting and what birds are picking up," better guesses for the next year might be possible.

Rogers and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences sampled three lakes in northeast Siberia in 2001 and 2002. They found an H1 strain that circulated from 1933 to 1938 and again in the 1960s in the lake that had attracted the most geese.

"These certain strains come back from time to time," Rogers said.

"The data suggest that influenza A virus deposited as the birds begin their autumn migration can be preserved in lake ice. As birds return in the spring, the ice melts, releasing the viruses," the researchers wrote.

"Above the Arctic Circle, the cycles of entrapment in the ice and release by melting can be variable in length, because some ice persists for several years, decades, or longer."

Rogers said his team now wants to study lakes in Greenland and Canada.

[MotherBear]

NZ prepared for bird flu - govt
NZPA | Tuesday, 6 February 2007

An outbreak of bird flu in Britain last week does not pose a threat to New Zealand, but the arrival of the virus here is inevitable, the Health Ministry said yesterday.

More than 50,000 turkeys on a farm in Suffolk were gassed during the weekend, and 100,000 more will be slaughtered, after birds tested positive for the H5N1 virus on Tuesday.

National Coordinator of Pandemic Planning Steve Brazier said although the virus in Britain only affected birds, it could mutate at any time to affect humans.

Pandemic planning had been under way for the past 18 months, and New Zealand would be ready "when the big one hit", he said.

Mr Brazier said the Government had stockpiles of masks, antibiotics and Tamiflu, a drug thought to lessen some of the effects of the disease.

In the event of a pandemic, the Health Ministry would direct the national response from a bunker underneath the Beehive.

From here .