|
| |
| | Swine influenza: a zoonosis - (c) Veterinary Sciences Tomorrow |
 | | The involvement of reassortment in at least the human pandemics of 1957 and 1968 shows that it is a successful event from the virus' point of view and therefore can be expected to underlie the next possible human pandemic. | | | Kaplan, M.M. and Webster, R.G. (1977) The epidemiology of influenza. | | | Much of our knowledge about immune mechanisms operating against influenza virus has been gained from studies of man and rodents. |
|
http://www.vetscite.org/publish/articles/000041/print.html
(6958 words)
|
|
| |
| | EUROPA - Public Health - Threats to health - Communicable diseases - Surveillance - Influenza |
| | An influenza pandemic occurs when a radical change in influenza virus takes place. | | | With increased mobility of people, as well as conditions of overcrowding, epidemics due to a newly emerging influenza virus are likely to spread quickly all around the world and are at risk to eventually become a pandemic. | | | Animal husbandry systems where humans live in close cohabitation with poultry and pigs are considered the most likely source of new strains, capable to cross the species barrier from animal to man, through a mutation mechanism, and may cause a pandemic. |
|
http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_threats/com/Influenza/influenza_en.htm
(372 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Next Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from Hong Kong, 1997 |
| | Because influenza pandemic threats affect more than one country, facilitating multicountry studies could save critical time in the risk assessment process. | | | Although the 1918 pandemic strain was extremely pathogenic and was related to classic swine influenza virus, influenza diagnostic laboratories around the world do not use biologic containment procedures (biosafety level 3 or greater) to handle specimens. | | | Thus, the rules for pandemic planning need revision, recognizing that reliance on existing licensed techniques for vaccine production could entail unacceptably long delays, should a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza emerge and lead to a strain transmissible in humans (35). |
|
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no2/snacken.htm
(4211 words)
|
|
| |
| | WHO Avian influenza |
| | Meeting on avian influenza and human pandemic influenza | | | Donation of three million treatments of oseltamivir to WHO will help early response to an emerging influenza pandemic | | | - Avian influenza and the pandemic threat in Africa: risk assessment for Africa |
|
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en
(168 words)
|
|
| |
| | Influenza |
| | Pandemic Influenza Planning: A Guide for Individuals and Families (PDF, 8.06 Mb) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) | | | A task force of subject experts addresses the current situation, evaluates the structure and function of avian influenza viruses, outlines pandemic risk assesment, and provides references for further information. | | | Although much of the concern about a pandemic outbreak of high-pathogenic avian influenza centers on human health, the potential impacts on the international poultry trade are significant. |
|
http://www.avma.org/public_health/influenza
(416 words)
|
|
| |
| | NIAID Announces Contracts to Develop Vaccine Against H5N1 Avian Influenza |
| | "The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza again in Asia earlier this year, which resulted in 34 documented cases of human illness and 23 deaths, underscores the national and international imperative to develop new and improved medical tools to prepare for the threat of pandemic influenza,” says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIAID. | | | Likewise, the outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in humans in late 2003 and early 2004 did not result in a pandemic in part because it also did not spread easily from person to person. | | | If a pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza were to occur in humans, production of such a vaccine on a commercial scale could be used to protect laboratory workers, public health personnel at risk and, if needed, the general public. |
|
http://www2.niaid.nih.gov/Newsroom/Releases/flucontracts.htm
(652 words)
|
|
| |
| | Spanish Flu |
| | Kendal, Dr AP (School of Public Health, Emory University) and WP Glezen (Dept of Microbiology and Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine)-` Pandemic influenza and pregnancy: Lessons from the past and considerations about the use of live attenuated vaccines' | | | Schoenbaum, Dr S. (Harvard Pilgrim Health Care of New England, Providence)-`Lessons stimulated by the 1918 Pandemic on the transmission and impact of influenza' | | | Ellison, JG (Anthropology Dept, Univ of Florida)-`A fierce hunger: tracing the impacts of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in south-west Tanzania' |
|
http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/history/conf.htm
(892 words)
|
|
| |
| | Spanish flu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| | "Pandemic Influenza in Japan, 1918–19: Mortality Patterns and Official Responses". | | | The Spanish Flu Pandemic, also known as La Grippe, was an unusually severe and deadly strain of avian influenza, a viral infectious disease, that killed some 25 million to 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919. | | | Global mortality rate from the influenza was estimated at 2.5%–5% of the population, with some 20% of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent. |
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu
(2416 words)
|
|
| |
| | OIE - World organisation for animal health |
| | Global meeting to develop common approach on avian influenza and human pandemic influenza | | | The Meeting on Avian Influenza and Human Pandemic Influenza which was held in Geneva from 7-9 November 2005 was extremely useful on several counts. | | | Use of antiviral drugs in poultry, a threat to their effectiveness for the treatment of human avian influenza |
|
http://www.oie.int
(361 words)
|
|
| |
| | Influenza |
| | Seasonal influenza which we typically see during the winter months in Wisconsin is not the same as pandemic influenza or avian influenza (bird flu). | | | Influenza Information for Health Care Professionals and Other Partners | | | Influenza is a contagious disease that may be prevented by immunization. |
|
http://dhfs.wisconsin.gov/communicable/influenza
(203 words)
|
|
| |
| | Science in Medicine |
| | John Oxford leaves us with a warning: 'If we had another influenza pandemic, and we will have another influenza pandemic, I think it will make the HIV outbreak almost look like a picnic.' | | | Another unique feature of the 1918 flu pandemic was the age profile that it attacked. | | | Such antigenic shifts are possibly the key to creating highly infectious killer strains that could be the source of future flu pandemics. |
|
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/medicine/plague.html
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | influenza.html |
| | Despite the fact that it is called Spanish, this influenza, a type A disease, was a world-wide pandemic that probably originated in China. | | | The Plague of the Spanish Lady: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. | | | In an assessment of the toll the Spanish Influenza in Monessen, the Monessen News reported on November 26, that people between the ages of 30 and 40 were mostly the victims, while many did not die of the influenza itself, but of Pneumonia. |
|
http://users.telerama.com/~cass/influenza.html
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 |
| | The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. | | | One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). | | | What will be interesting to see is if modern medicine can aide in recovery of those affected if this is a similar flu. |
|
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/865567/posts
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic |
| | On the scale of a human life span, pandemic influenza is a rarity, but no-one seriously doubts that it will be back. | | | By their nature pandemics tend to take us by surprise. | | | The next influenza strain that ravages the human population will probably not be the one we were planning to encounter. |
|
http://www.ninthday.com/spanish_flu.htm
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | Spanish flu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| | The Spanish Flu Pandemic (also known as the Great Influenza Pandemic, the 1918 Flu Epidemic, and La Grippe) was an unusually severe and deadly strain of influenza, a | | | This was mainly because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, because Spain was not involved in the war and there was no wartime censorship. | | | There were many reports of places with no healthy health care workers to tend the sick and no able bodied grave diggers to inter the dead. |
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | WebMD with AOL Health - 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic Was Likely Bird Flu |
| | Now there's talk that the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed 20 million people worldwide, may have also been a form of bird flu -- but one that involved a genetic change in the virus. | | | This information has allowed them to reconstruct certain proteins of the 1918 influenza virus, such as the "hemagluttinin membrane glycoprotein," that were involved in this transformation process. | | | But this may not be the first of its kind. |
|
http://aolsvc.health.webmd.aol.com/content/article/81/97021.htm
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | Influenza pandemic: preparedness planning in Germany |
| | It is currently not possible to forecast reliably whether an influenza pandemic will occur next year or in 2, 20, or 30 years, or what the extent of the morbidity and mortality of the outbreak will be. | | | Complete immunisation of the entire population will not be possible during a pandemic; a decision therefore has to be made about whether most of the population should be provided with limited protection by receiving a single vaccine dose or whether a booster should be administered to provide fewer people with full protection. | | | The term pandemic refers to a massive worldwide accumulation of illnesses with a high infection rate and mortality, triggered by a new subtype of virus against which most of the population is not immune (not protected by past infections or vaccinations). |
|
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/em/v07n01/0701-221.asp
(439 words)
|
|
| |
| | ipedia.com: Spanish Flu Article |
| | The Spanish Flu (also known as the Great Influenza Pandemic and La Gripe) was an unusually severe and deadly strain of influenza that killed some 25 million to 40 million people (possibly significantly more) world-wide in 1918 and 1919. | | | This was mainly because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, because Spain was not involved in the war and there was no wartime censorship. | | | It is thought to have been the most deadly pandemic... |
|
http://www.ipedia.com/spanish_flu.html
(936 words)
|
|
| |
| | WHO Influenza |
| | Strengthening pandemic influenza preparedness and response [pdf 155kb] | | | - Responding to the avian influenza pandemic threat. | | | - WHO guidance on development of influenza vaccine reference viruses by reverse genetics |
|
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/en
(147 words)
|
|
| |
| | CDC - Influenza (Flu) The Influenza (Flu) Viruses |
| | If this new virus causes illness in people and can be transmitted easily from person to person, an influenza pandemic can occur. | | | Influenza A viruses are divided into subtypes based on two proteins on the surface of the virus: the hemagglutinin (H) and the neuraminidase (N). | | | For example, if a pig were infected with a human influenza virus and an avian influenza virus at the same time, the viruses could mix (reassort) and produce a new virus that had most of the genes from the human virus, but a hemagglutinin and/or neuraminidase from the avian virus. |
|
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/fluviruses.htm
(147 words)
|
|
| |
| | Pandemic - definition of Pandemic in Encyclopedia |
| | There have been a number of significant pandemics in human history, all of them generally zoonoses that came about with domestication of animals - such as smallpox, diphtheria, influenza and tuberculosis. | | | For example, the class of diseases known as cancer is responsible for a large number of deaths, but cancer is not considered a pandemic because it is not infectious (even though certain infectious agents are known to increase cancer risk). | | | The seventh pandemic began in Indonesia in 1961, called El Tor after the strain, and reached Bangladesh in 1963, India in 1964, and the USSR in 1966. |
|
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Pandemic
(1156 words)
|
|
| |
| | Influenza 1918, A Venus Connection? |
| | Readers are invited to review the following article which may have some bearing (in principle) on the 1918 influenza pandemic. | | | "Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. | | | The following quote is from the poignant article Monessen and the Spanish Influenza of 1918 by Cassandra Vivian (of Pennsylvania). |
|
http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918.htm
(1156 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Great War Society: Relevance Archive |
| | There is good evidence, however, that there is an occasional exchange of virus between animal and human populations, and that these may be the source of some of the more virulent influenza epidemics. | | | Though there are no samples of the pandemic's strain, antibody tests of the people who lived through it have given biologists a guess at the identity of the virus. | | | The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 killed an estimated 550,000 American, a ghastly toll, but one that, compared to the rest of the world, seems almost good fortune. |
|
http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/rel002.htm
(568 words)
|
|
|
