Word: avian
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Tony Abbott had been health minister for only a few months when his home fax machine discharged the fateful report one February morning last year. Outlining the possible impact on Australia of an avian-flu pandemic, the departmental brief stunned Abbott, whose gaze kept returning to the key forecasts: 13,000 deaths, 58,000 hospitalizations and 2.6 million people seeking medical help in just the first three months of an outbreak. Abbott attended a funeral that day, but on his way to and from the service he spoke by phone to the report's author, Chief Medical Officer John Horvath...
...Southeast Asian Nations agreed in May to a five-year plan to combat threats to the region's biodiversity. "Now it remains to be seen if they'll commit the resources to back that up, put their money where their mouths are." Last week, amid an outbreak of avian flu in Indonesia that has sickened 20 and killed two, the U.S. State Department announced the formation of an international coalition to lobby Asian governments to tighten the screws on wildlife smugglers. Asia can only hope that it doesn't take a deadly pandemic to save the pangolin...
...said there is no evidence yet of sustained human-to-human transmission, but Indonesians are increasingly worried?and Jakarta's confused response to the crisis has done little to ease fears. On Sept. 19, after a zoo in the capital reported an outbreak among its birds, the government declared avian flu an "extraordinary event"?but officials later admitted they weren't sure what the designation meant. Two days later, as more suspected human cases appeared in and around Jakarta, Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari caused a minor panic by telling reporters that the city was experiencing a bird-flu epidemic...
...virus hardly seems to usurp or even credit the media or government’s attention in this time of extreme American crisis. But according to the World Health Organization, countries must now prepare for a worldwide pandemic and mobilize for “an all-out war on avian influenza.” As a reaction the Bush administration provided $5.5 million “in technical assistance and grants” to affected nations throughout Southeast Asia throughout the past year. On May 11, 2005 an emergency appropriations bill, signed by Bush, suitably gave a further $25 million...
With a laboratory death rate of more than 50 percent and a very significant chance of a international outbreak of the disease, H5N1 avian influenza has caused significant fear throughout the globe. This is also considering that the last global pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, caused more deaths than World War I combat: an estimated 20 to 40 million people throughout the world died from...