Indonesian Health Minister Claim That US Is Developing Bird Flu As BioWeapon Dismissed

Pakistan Official Confirms First Human To Human Spread Of H5N1

Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, has been a thorn in the side of the World Health Organisation, and the pharmaceutical behemoths, refusing to hand over samples of Indonesian bird flu because she very reasonably fears that these strains will be patented and Indonesia will be forced to pay billions to access H5N1 vaccines in the future.

Supari has published a book called 'It's Time For The World To Change - The Divine Hand Behind Avian Influenza, and kicked up a small storm of controversy over her claims that avian influenza viruses were being 'weaponised' in American bioweapons labs. The book won an endorsement from Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Excerpts from an interview with Supari on AM :

Dr Supari expresses alarm at WHO laboratories sharing bird flu virus data with the United States national laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where nuclear weapons are developed.

"Whether they use is it to make vaccine or develop chemical weapons, would depend on the need and interest of the US Government. It is indeed a very dangerous situation for the destiny of humanity", she writes and goes on to say ".. it is a matter of choice whether to use the material for vaccines or biological weapon development".

SITI FADILAH SUPARI: I didn’t know whether our virus will be develop into a vaccine or will be develop into a biological weapon. So just a question - I didn’t blame United States, I didn’t blame any country.

Supari cops plenty back from the US government and the World Health Organisation :

The United States has rejected the Indonesian Health Minister's claims that it is using bird flu samples to produce biological weapons and World Health Organisation officials have condemned allegations of conspiring to profit from bird flu vaccines.

The Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is understood to have ordered the minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, to recall copies of her book on avian influenza, which alleges the US and the WHO are conspiring against developing countries by seizing control of bird flu samples.

WHO officials said they were dismayed by some of the claims and urged Dr Supari to do more to control bird flu's spread and end her refusal to share virus samples - which is hampering attempts to find a cure.

A US State Department spokeswoman, Susan Stahl, denied Dr Supari's claim that Indonesian virus samples had been sent to a biological weapons laboratory in Los Alamos. The laboratory possessed no bird flu viruses from Indonesia or elsewhere, she said.

The facility's only involvement was hosting a database of publicly available genetic-sequencing data to help track the evolution of the virus, she said.

The WHO's assistant director-general for Health Security, David Heymann, said he was puzzled by the claims.

"I don't understand why they would take this virus to make a biological weapon; it doesn't transmit from human to human. Indonesia needs to spend more time on dealing with infections with chickens and stopping humans from being infected."

Claims that H5N1 was a bioweapon have been aired since the virus reappeared in Hong Kong in 1997, and started killing humans along with markets full of poultry.

When the avian influenza virus began ravaging poultry farms in rural Russia in the early 2000s, a US bioweapons conspiracy theory gained popularity. It went like this : the deadly virus was a US bioweapon designed to knock out local poultry farms and open up the market to cheap American poultry imports, mostly chicken wings and legs, which Russian poultry farmers called "Bush Legs."


A senior Pakistan government official has claimed the world's first human to human transmission of the H5N1 virus occurred in Pakistan in November 2007 :

A man in northern Pakistan passed the deadly bird flu virus to two of his brothers, and the virus killed one of them, in the first known human-to-human transmission in Pakistan, a health official said Friday.

'It was definitely person-to-person. That is confirmed,' said Maqbool Jan Abbasi, Ministry of Health joint secretary. He said the World Health Organization confirmed by serological testing from a family in Peshawar, northwest of the capital Islamabad, three brothers had H5N1, the strain of avian influenza that can be deadly in humans.

Confirmed : Human To Human Bird Flu Spread In Pakistan

The World Health Organisation has now officially confirmed that the H5N1 virus was passed from one person to another in Pakistan. However, they are calling this human transmission of one of the world's most deadliest viruses "limited" :

World Health Organization, WHO, officials say there has been limited human transmission of bird flu in Pakistan - with no new cases reported recently.

WHO's top bird flu official David Heymann Friday, said there appears to be no threat of the further spread of the H5N1 virus, with the last human case reported December 6.

At least eight people were infected in Pakistan's northwest in recent weeks - in the country's first human cases of bird flu.

One man who worked on poultry farm in North West Frontier Province has died. His brother also died recently, but was not tested for the virus.

Heymann says the cases appear to be part of a small chain of human-to-human transmission.

A WHO team is investigating the outbreak and results from initial laboratory tests are expected in the next few days.

Indonesia : At Least Four Recent Human Bird Flu Victims Had No Contact With Infected Poultry



Depending on which media, or government reports you believe, there has been at least 20 human bird flu infections in recent months, in Pakistan, China and Indonesia, where the victim had no known contact with infected poultry, which has been the most common way humans become infected with H5N1.

Indonesia 'bird flu officials' are now investigating at least four cases of human infection, where the most likely source of infection is human transmission. The same AFP story reveals that 20 percent of human bird flu infections in 2006 were not linked to infected poultry. But in 2007, that figure has risen to 3o percent. The good news for Indonesia is that human deaths from H5N1 have dropped in 2007 :

"In the last three to four months, we have had four cases where the poultry in the victim's neighbourhoods (tested) negative for the virus," said Bayu Krisnamurthi, head of Indonesia's National Avian Influenza Committee.

"The number is significant enough for us to intensify our investigations so that we could have a more accurate explanation," he told a press briefing giving an overview of what has happened in Indonesia this year with bird flu.

Krisnamurthi nevertheless insisted that Indonesia had made progress in tackling bird flu, with the number of reported cases decreasing this year.

In 2007, 40 cases were confirmed with 35 fatalities, compared to figures of 55 and 45, respectively, in 2006.

But he also conceded that Indonesia needed more effective measures, particularly to combat bird flu in poultry.

According to Krisnamurthi, even though the agriculture ministry vaccinated 70 percent of the country's farmed poultry in 2007, "the quality of the vaccine must be improved," he said.

Pakistan : H5N1 Virus Spreads Through Family

Pakistan Officials Waited 13 Days After Bird Flu Positive Test Results To Alert World Health Organisation
The Pakistan human transmissions reports grows only more confused and contradictory, but this story appears to lay out a few firm facts :

Authorities in Pakistan announced the country's first reported human cases of H5N1 avian flu Saturday in a cluster of family members which may have involved person-to-person transmission.

There was some confusion Saturday about how many people had tested positive for the virus, with Pakistan announcing six cases but the World Health Organization saying eight suspected cases had been identified.

The WHO said confirmatory testing must still be done. And a spokesperson for the agency said investigations are underway to try to determine how the various people became infected, but noted some human-to-human spread may have occurred.

"We can't rule it out," Gregory Hartl said from Geneva.

"There are other plausible explanations.... We don't know enough at this point. And in some of these cases, one never will know enough."

The cluster of cases involved four brothers and two cousins living in the country's North-West Frontier Province. Two of the brothers died, one without having been tested.

While the brothers who died are believed to have had at least some exposure to infected poultry, they were also known to have nursed the first case in the family, a brother who worked as a livestock official.

A doctor who treated members of the family also has tested positive for H5N1, but with a non-standard diagnostic test, Hartl said. He cautioned that further testing is needed to determine if she is indeed a case, noting she hadn't shown signs of infection.

Three people who are unrelated to the family but who were involved in culling H5N1-infected poultry in the same area have also tested positive; all are still alive. At least one of the cullers worked on the same farm as the livestock official.

The initial infection in this family dates back to late October, when the livestock official became sick. It appears that it was only after two of the man's brothers fell ill and died that testing was done looking for H5N1 infection. It is believed the first positive test was received in late November.

The WHO was officially alerted Dec. 12, Hartl said.

"We feel that the Pakistanis have done everything right in terms of their response," he said, noting the country has done a "huge" amount of work to strengthen infection control and increase surveillance.

"(But) yes, they could have alerted us earlier."

There was also a mild scare in the United States relating to the Pakistan outbreak. It's remarkable to see how fast the CDC can move when it needs to :

Meanwhile, U.S. public health authorities have confirmed they conducted H5N1 testing on a man who had recently visited Pakistan and was complaining of mild respiratory symptoms. The man, who officials will only identify as having a link to the cluster, is said to have been concerned he might have been infected.

"The individual went to his private physician after returning from Pakistan, and discussed this with his physician," said Claire Pospisil, a spokesperson for the New York State department of health.

Pospisil said the doctor contacted the local health department in Nassau County, where the man lives, and they collected samples for testing. The tests came back negative.

David Daigle, a spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said the CDC sent its plane to Albany on Dec. 8 to collect specimens for confirmatory testing. Within hours a CDC lab verified the state lab's findings.

"He was negative. There was no doubt about it," Daigle said from Atlanta on Saturday.

And more on other recent human infections :

On Friday, the WHO announced that Myanmar had reported its first human case in a seven-year-old girl who fell ill in late November. She has since recovered.

Earlier this month, China reported infections in a son and father from Jiangsu province; the son died. And in recent weeks Indonesia, the country hardest hit by H5N1, has reported several human cases.

China and Indonesia are warning there may be more human infections in the weeks ahead.

Pakistan : Two Brothers Attending H5N1 Infected Veterinarian In Hospital Caught Virus and Died

Amongst the conflicting reports coming out of Pakistan, comes this extraordinary story, which
claims that a veterinarian who fell ill with H5N1 then infected his two brothers with the virus, while in hospital, and both brothers died. The veterinarian, however, recovered.

There are many details in this story that are not reaching the wire reports from Reuters and Associated Press, including the claim that this is the first case of human transmission of the virus in Pakistan :

The deaths of two brothers of a veterinarian, who acquired the deadly H5N1 Avian Influenza virus after coming into contact with infected poultry at a farm in Abbottabad late-October, and the recent hospitalisation of a Mansehra-based poultry handler who has also tested positive for the disease, provide sufficient evidence for the government to institute concrete measures for interruption of human transmission of the disease from birds to poultry handlers and their close contacts.

Of the 40 suspected human samples collected from Peshawar and Abbottabad in the wake of the first-ever confirmed human transmission of H5N1 in Pakistan, 36 have tested negative, while four are positive, investigations conducted by ‘The News’ have revealed.

This is the first time that human cases have been reported in Pakistan, placing an onerous responsibility on the government and its partners to eradicate some of the dangerous trends in the poultry industry that could spell disaster for the country.

It is learnt that both the veterinarian, Dr. Ishtiaq Durrani, who is working as livestock production officer at the Department of Livestock and Dairy Development, NWFP, as well as the poultry handler from Mansehra, did not follow the recommended protective measures while handling infected birds. They may either have come into contact with the saliva, nasal excretions and faeces of the infected birds, or the feed and water that are given to them.

Dr. Ishtiaq was involved in culling of 3,000 birds following the October 21 outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm in Abbottabad. The other victim from Mansehra happens to be a daily wage labourer who was commissioned for culling without being advised on how he should protect himself. The labourer’s daughter, along with another male, is also under observation at a hospital in Abbottabad.

While Dr. Ishtiaq himself is on the path to recovery, his brothers Mohammad Ilyas Durrani and Mohammad Owais Durrani — both of who were attending him at the Khyber Teaching Hospital during his illness — died on November 19 and November 29, respectively.

Ilyas has been confirmed as being the first casualty of H5N1 in Pakistan. Even though his brother’s blood sample could not be collected, health experts talking to ‘The News’ said clinical evidence suggests that he too succumbed to the deadly virus. The blood samples of two of the three brothers were received by the National Institute of Health on October 28.

This Bloomberg wire report is vastly different to the above story, claiming that no samples were collected from the two dead brothers and that the most recent outbreak of H5N1 occurred in late November, instead of October.

Deadly Human To Human Bird Flu Spread In China?

Man Dies Of H5N1, Father Now Infected, No Contact With Poultry Suspected

Why does this Reuters story make no mention at all of recent news that human to human transmission of the bird flu virus is now regarded as a fact by experts?

The father of a Chinese man who died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu last week has also been diagnosed with the disease, authorities said on Friday.

The National Disease Authority has confirmed that a 52-year-old man surnamed Lu from the Nanjing, capital of the eastern province Jiangsu, was feverish with the H5N1 strain on Thursday, the Ministry of Health reported on its Web site (www.moh.gov.cn).

This latest case raises troublesome questions about how the man was infected.

Humans can contract H5N1 from close contact with infected birds, but scientists fear the disease could mutate into a version that spreads from person-to-person, risking wider outbreaks or even a global pandemic.

Lu's son died on Sunday from the same disease, making the question of how these two infections occurred especially important.

The Xinhua news agency had earlier reported that the son had had no contact with dead poultry and there had been no reported poultry outbreak in the province.

China has had 27 confirmed human deaths linked to the bird flu virus.


More from the BBC :

A statement on the Chinese ministry's website said a 52-year-old man in eastern Jiangsu province identified only by his surname, Lu, has been confirmed with the virus, just days after his 24-year-old son succumbed to it on 2 December.

WHO spokesman John Rainford said: "We are concerned. The fact that we have two cases here without necessarily a clear source of animal infection and within the same family means we need to make sure we do a thorough investigation."

The father began presenting symptoms on Monday and was confirmed as having the virus on Wednesday. He is being monitored in hospital.

Human To Human Bird Flu Transmission Is A Fact

World Health Organisation Confirms Humans Can Pass H5N1 To Each Other

Human To Human Bird Flu Transmission Is A Reality

Professor Paul Reynolds has told an international medical conference that "potentially lethal bird flu is being passed from person to person."

The story below was up on the Australian ABC News site on December 4, but has since been pulled. This link takes you to a Google cache version of the story :

A total of 1,600 doctors and scientists from 42 countries have attended a lung disease conference on Queensland's Gold Coast. The conference convenor, Professor Paul Reynolds, says human victims of avian flu in the past have contracted the disease from direct contact with sick birds, but that is changing.

"It's usually very close household contacts at this stage," he said. "Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to tease out if people are living together in a village whether the transmission has truly been person-to-person or the fact that the people involved have happened to come into contact with the same infected birds, but there are certainly some case reports emerging that are highly suggestive that direct person-to-person transfer is occurring."

Then there is this interesting story from 2004 where World Health Organisation officials flatly ruled out the possibility of human to human transmission, without further mutations. As we've reported here recently, those mutations have now occurred :

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that new tests show there is no evidence that the deadly bird flu has passed from person-to-person.

It says DNA tests on a 23-year-old Vietnamese woman who died of the virus showed no evidence she caught it from her sister, who also died.

The WHO originally reported the results last week but then recalled them, saying they had in fact tested a different woman.

Health experts say the bird flu virus must mutate before it can pass from person-to-person, although people can clearly catch it from birds.

Meanwhile, the father of a six-year-old boy who was the first in Thailand to die of bird flu, is to sue the government, for covering up the presence of the disease.

Chamnan Bounmanut says he would not have lost his son if the government had told the public the truth about the epidemic.

The government has denied any cover-up, saying provincial authorities "screwed up" in not recognising the disease.

The government says it acted swiftly last month once it realised bird flu had arrived in Thailand.

World Health Organisation Confirms Bird Flu Virus Now Spreading From Human To Human

Is this how the pandemic begins? With a small story that barely grabs headlines finally confirming that the H5N1 virus has 'learned' how to spread from one human to another?

We have mentioned before that the WHO was moving towards confirmation that "clusters" of bird flu victims in Indonesia could prove human to human transmission was taking place, but this is the first story we've seen that claims it as a fact :

THE H5N1 strain of bird flu has finally managed to spread from person to person, according to officials of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Until now, it was spread from birds to humans. They warned that if the bird flu virus mutated to easily spread between humans, it could spark a global pandemic, killing millions.

According to a new study of deaths in Indonesia last year, bird flu could have spread between humans on several occasions. Person to person infection was suspected but could not be confirmed.

In the village of Sumatran, seven family members contracted the H5N1 strain of bird flu, one of the biggest clusters in the world. They died before being tested.

In Thailand, when a mother was hospitalised with avian influenza, her daughter, who lived away from bird-rearing contracted the virus when she came to visit her in hospital.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, US also examined a second family cluster outbreak in Turkey last year, but did not have the evidence to confirm or refute human-to-human transmission.

The researchers have for the first time proved that the virus has spread between a "cluster" of people.

Indonesia, with 84 bird flu deaths, the highest toll in the world, has tried to downplay fears of the spread.

The head of research at the Indonesian health ministry, Triono Soendono, said the findings were "just one" piece of research.

But the WHO assistant director for communicable diseases, David Heymann, said it was likely the Sumatran virus was spread by human-to-human contact.

"We believe there has likely been transmission through intimate or close contact," he said.

Dr. Sam Okware, the commissioner, community health, who is also the chairman of the National Task Force on the disease, said it was sad news.

"But we are also improving capacity and training for surveillance to handle it every day. The laboratory at the Virus Research Institute is ready," he affirmed.

Got your food and water stockpiles ready? You know, just in case.

Indonesia Rejects US Study That Claimed Human To Human Spread Of Bird Flu

Indonesia has labelled "misleading" a US study that claims the H5N1 virus spread amongst members of the same North Sumatran family, killing seven, in April 2006 :

Indonesia's Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the research findings had "misled the public".

"It's pure logic... If there had been human-to-human transmission, it would have already swept the country and killed thousands," Supari told a news conference.

"Our scientists have already determined that the 2006 outbreak on North Sumatra was not a case of human-to-human transmission."

Bird flu is endemic in bird populations in most parts of Indonesia, where millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity to people.

While it is largely an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate and spread from human to human, turning into pandemic that could kill millions.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the disease.

Supari said tests done in WHO laboratories in Atlanta on virus samples from Bali showed the virus had jumped from animal to humans.

"There is nothing to worry about, so far Atlanta has not issued any alarm," she said after the news conference.

The US study's claims should be questioned, examined and debated, but I'm not too sure if Supari's "pure logic" argument is altogether correct.

While contact with infected poultry would appear to be the most likely way for a human to become infected by H5N1, there have been other instances where bird to human, and then human to human spread is the most likely scenario for how others have become infected.

In the case of the North Sumatra outbreak, in April, 2006, some 80% of family members who showed symptoms of infection are believed to have died from the virus, and only one member of the family traveled outside of the fairly isolated village where the deaths occurred.

Also, Indonesian and WHO medical specialists were on the ground within days of the scale of the outbreak becoming known, and most of the villagers were put onto anti-virals, and quarantined.

The North Sumatran H5N1 deaths may well have been the result of human to human spread of the virus, but as the local population was small, isolated and fairly quickly locked down, there would appear to be little opportunity for the virus to continue to spread and infect, and kill.

Clearly, Supari would be right if the bird flu virus had mutated into a far more easily communicable and deadlier strain. But from the WHO statements I recall reading at the time, they reported no significant mutation in the virus samples they collected from the dead and samples from those who became infected but survived.

See This Story For More On The Controversial US Study That Claimed Human To Human Transmission In Indonesia

Bird Flu Pandemic : How Close Did We Come?

Another story covering the US research that claims human to human transmission of the bird flu virus did occur in Indonesia in 2006, when eight members of the same family caught the virus, killing seven.

From ABC News Australia :

It is the nightmare possibility that health authorities have been fearing ever since the disease first appeared.

It happened in Indonesia last year and reveals the world only narrowly avoided a global bird flu pandemic.

Researchers from the University of Washington have studied the case of a woman on the Indonesian island of Sumatra who caught the H5N1 bird flu virus from poultry in May last year.

Professor Ira Longini, who led the research, says they have confirmed that not only did she pass the virus on to her 10-year-old nephew, it was then transmitted to other relatives.

Seven of eight family members who caught the disease were soon dead.

"This proves there is person-to-person transmission in this case, in that setting, in Indonesia, northern Sumatra," he said.

Professor Longini says this shows there is a serious threat of a bird flu pandemic.

"It could happen and will happen eventually, and this simply confirms this particular H5N1 virus is capable of person-to-person transmission," he said.

"The other thing it says is that we need to be very vigilant to find these clusters, to assess whether there's transmission and to stop transmission as quickly as we can each time they arise.

"We're going to see strains of influenza that are capable of causing pandemics arising, probably avian strains, and that will happen for sure, there's no doubt about it."

Professor Longini says in this case, a pandemic may have been averted because of the quick action of health authorities or, statistically at least, it could have been luck.

He said because the sample group was so small, it was impossible to say how fast the disease could have spread in the workplace or the street.

But he says that in the home, it was a fast mover.

"It had about a one-third chance of transmitting from person to person due to close contact in that household setting," he said.

Other scientists say the research confirms their suspicions about the disease.

Dr Alan Hampson is a member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Pandemic Taskforce and an adviser to the Australian Government on influenza.

"This study has looked at the dynamics of the spread of the virus in the family environment in Sumatra and has come down with the conclusion that it clearly does show person-to-person transmission," he said.

"We had already believed that that was probably the case and we haven't had confirmation through analysis of the viruses.

"The information relating to those viruses is information that's held in Indonesia, so we haven't seen that, but what we do believe, from people who have seen the information, is that that too indicated that it was person-to-person spread and that the virus was changing as it spread from one person to another, as we would expect it to do."

Dr Hampson says the Sumatra case could have become a pandemic.

"If it had gone further, we do know that the virus is very good at adapting, so while on the one hand it may have to go through a number of steps, if its passage is from one person to another, then that chance is there," he said