Tidbits From All Over

There is not much new news this morning, and given that the Moslem world (where much of the H5N1 action resides) has been celebrating their Sabbath, and the long Memorial Day weekend, isn’t terribly surprising. Weekends are generally black pits for news, and holiday weekends are usually worse.

But, there are few items to catch up on.

WHO puts Tamiflu maker on alert to ready global stockpile of bird flu drugs

(05.27.06, 11:02)
YnetNews

"The World Health Organization has for the first time asked the maker of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu to ready the global stockpile after human-to-human transmission was suspected in a family cluster in Indonesia, a WHO official said Saturday.

Obviously someone's getting nervous here.

* * * *

WHO governments agree to boost flu alert plans

GENEVA (AFX) - The World Health Organisation's member states agreed to immediately bolster global alert measures to ward off a threatened flu pandemic. In a resolution adopted unanimously by the WHO's annual assembly, the 192
nations agreed to voluntarily implement international rules to cope with public health emergencies a year early just for influenza.

This move by the WHO moves up a timetable set last year calling for `transparent' reporting of flu cases, which wasn't to be mandated until June 2007. It will be interesting to see if this really happens, or if these member countries simply follow the lead of WHO, as demonstrated by our last tidbit . . .

WHO Tests Show 10 Year Old Dies of Bird Flu.

A 10-year-old Indonesian girl who died on Tuesday in the city of Bandung was killed by the H5N1 bird flu virus, a senior health official said on Saturday, citing results from a WHO-accredited laboratory in Hong Kong.

"The girl is confirmed by the WHO as well as the local lab," I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of communicable disease control, told Reuters.

The girl's 18-year-old brother, who also died on Tuesday, tested positive locally for H5N1 this week, but was not considered a bird flu case by the Hong Kong laboratory.

Once again, the WHO is keeping the `official' death toll down by requiring that their labs confirm any testing done locally. They claim the brother's test was `borderline', and so he is not counted.

Hummm. The little sister and big brother both have the same symptoms. They both die the same day. And they both test positive for the H5N1 virus in local labs.


But officially, only one died of Avian flu. Nice.


Apparently, the sample taken from the boy and sent to the Hong Kong lab was either taken improperly, transported improperly, or the test was botched by the WHO lab. And that gives them leeway to throw the 18 y.o. victim out of the official count.


The folks at the WHO are charged with saving the world from a lethal pandemic. Shame we couldn't find an organization that can add 2+2 and come up with a number somewhere reasonably close to 4.