Flu.

international | sci-tech | news report Saturday January 08, 2005 11:42 by iosaf mac d.

"part two in a series explaining pandemic biohazard to you"

With the confirmation of two deaths from bird flu in Vietnam, World Health Organisations efforts to stem a pandemic of bird flu seem not to be working.

Last december Madrid's hospitals entered a small crises with the amount of flu victims (typical form), whilst Japan and China confirmed cases of bird flu amongst their poorest.

Biohazard - HIV/AIDS - TB - Influenza - SARS

In the West immunisation against most types of influenza are now common place and routinely every flu season (October to March) the elderly and weakest amongst us now "get the jab".

However there are more types of influenza coming. Each with it's own name. The first pandemic of influenza was called "spanish flu".

Spanish Flu broke out amongst the demobbing soldiers of the Great War in 1919.

The Great War, or ww1 as it is more commonly known began in 1914 and as every schoolboy and girl knows the first world war ended in 1918.

It killed 15,000,000 in 4 years.

The spanish flu killed 45,000,000 in roughly two years 1919-1921. The spanish flu killed more Irish than the trenches or the rebellion or subsequent war of independence.

"Professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary's College, London has dedicated most of his professional life to solving the molecular mystery behind one of history's most efficient serial killers; tracking its legacy around the globe, from Southwark to Spitzbergen. He is working with lung samples from Canadian soldiers who contracted the flu' analysing its molecular nature."

"The 1918 virus was an early version of H1N1, and the other two pandemics of the last century represent mutations of one or both of these proteins; the 1956 strain being H2N2 and the 1968 strain, H3N2.

And Mother Nature's newest far eastern formula? H5N1. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4092709.stm
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One of the gravest crises being faced by those in Asia, is lack of space. There are too many of the poor living in very close proximity to their animals.
It is commonplace to see young children sleep above the cages which keep chickens and other poultry on the streets which themselves abound with rats, pigeons and all types of vermin and wild dogs.

With the birth of China's 1,300,000,000 citizen on Thursday it is becoming clear that that country and its neighbour India suffer a population density in the cities which is unsustainable and is provoking due to the exceptionally poorly developed sanitation infrastructure a global health crises of infection.

W.H.O. -
http://www.who.int/en/
US government info on avian flu-
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/
W.H.O. on avian flu
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/

If you're a scientist or a health minister or similar type you can help the work which needs to be done *very quickly* on stemming avian influenza and order A(H5N1) for your lab and do some work.

We are facing a pandemic.
Those who are most likely to die are those with reduced immune systems.

Pandora's box has been opened by globalised tourism and trade. It is possible that H5N1 will mutate during its pandemic.

However hope is there, as demonstrated by those scientists in Barcelona who working with the Austurian Health research institute discovered RTS,S/AS02A, a vaccine which is efficacious in 58% of cases when given to children of 1 to 4 years. They continue to work on that vaccine for Malaria which hopefully will be available in four years. It will not come soon enough for the first reported cases of Malaria in the Disaster zone of SE Asia, though yesterday the Dominican republic in the Carribean declared it's malaria outbreak is "under control" with therapeutic treatment.
http://www.lne.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pIdNoticia=246655&pIdSeccion=46&pNumEjemplar=783


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Our scientific community are skilled and intelligent enough to tackle these problems with the proper comitment of capital and money and resources. With the proper use of love and will from the richest and most powerful.
These efforts are supported by many "unpopular" governments, states and individuals such as the USA, the Texan universities and the Gates foundation, and the work of the activist must be to seperate the threads of foreign policy mistake from foreign policy successes the threads of sillyness on patents from the threads of genuine concern if not masked by too much concern for the preserving the current capitalist system.

My previous report on HIV/AIDS breakthroughs, (enzyme inhibitor and genetic profile of victims)
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68118


THE BOTTOM LINE

We need to offer our brothers and sisters in humanity proper sanitation, proper development, proper infrastructure and health care.
And we need to assist them in migration, they need living space so that they are not left breathing the air of vermin.
It's that simple. This is what global security ought to be about.


Pass it on.