http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/may/14/report-us-unready-for-bird-flu-20170514/" rel="nofollow - http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/may/14/report-us-unready-for-bird-flu-20170514/
WASHINGTON -- If the United States were suddenly facing a
potential avian influenza pandemic, just one U.S. manufacturer could be
counted on to make human pandemic flu vaccine here. And although the
chickens that lay the eggs used in the process are themselves
susceptible to the virus, until an emergency arises, only voluntary and
often inadequate measures by poultry producers are in place to protect
flocks, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The report, scheduled for release this week, comes at a time
of heightened public health worries about bird flu. One of the
deadliest strains, H7N9, is causing a surge in human infections in China
this season. Of the nearly 200 people who have died, most had direct
contact with poultry or poultry markets.
Health officials worldwide are closely monitoring the
disease's spread because of the big increase in cases and worrisome
changes in the virus. Of all emerging influenza viruses, H7N9 has the
greatest potential to cause a pandemic if it evolves to spread easily
from human to human. It also poses the greatest risk to cause serious
disease.
Controlling the virus in poultry is the main way to reduce
human infection and prevent a pandemic, the accountability office report
says. It focuses primarily on U.S. Department of Agriculture actions
after bird flu outbreaks in 2014 and 2016, which resulted in the deaths
of millions of domesticated poultry in 15 states and $2 billion in costs
to the federal government and U.S. economy. Despite the lessons
learned, the report concludes that federal agencies face "ongoing
challenges and associated issues" in mitigating the potential harm of
avian influenza.
Bird flu outbreaks this spring in Tennessee, Alabama and
Kentucky have led officials to euthanize more than 200,000 animals.
Those viruses are different from the H7N9 virus currently spreading in
Asia, according to USDA officials.
Among the report's findings:
• Unless the agency is responding to an
emergency, the Agriculture Department doesn't have the authority to
require poultry producers to take preventive biosecurity measures to
keep avian influenza from spreading from farm to farm. When the agency
asked 850 poultry producers to turn in self-assessments on such
measures, less than 60 percent said they had key practices in place to
reduce contamination -- such as having workers shower or change into
clean clothes immediately after arriving at a poultry site to reduce the
risk of introducing a bird flu virus. comment: Where there is smoke, there is often fire and we have seen in the past with large outbreaks of Avian in poultry there are soon outbreaks in humans. On March 5, workers noticed an unusually high amount of dead birds in
one of eight barns on a chicken farm in Lincoln County, TN., that
supplies Tyson Foods. State officials were called in and it was
determined that the broiler chickens were suffering from a highly
pathogenic avian influenza called H7N9 (scientists classify bird flu by
subtype and strain; genetically related strains in a subtype are called a
lineage). Although the H7N9 is the same subtype as the Chinese version
affecting humans that first emerged in 2013, it’s a different lineage
and, thankfully, doesn’t infect people. comment: Another sweeping outbreak in the poultry in the U.S. is an event that will happen "not if, but when" And the fact they are carrying a new strain of H7N9 which could mutate and infect humans would be a real problem. Still the fatality rate is about 35% and that in Pandemic form would far exceed the infamous outbreak in 1918. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic Medclinician
------------- "not if but when" the original Medclinician
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