[Pepper]

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Japan today reported its first human case of bird flu after a man working with infected poultry in western Kyoto caught the disease, the Associated Press reported, citing the nation's Health Ministry.

The ministry examined 86 people who may have been exposed to bird flu, and one tested positive for antibodies for the disease, with four other people posting inconclusive results, AP said. The man's only symptom was a headache, AP reported.

The potential transmission of bird flu between humans is the World Health Organization's worst fear, Francois Xavier Meslin, the group's chief of animal diseases, said yesterday.

An Asian outbreak of avian influenza, known as bird flu, killed at least 32 people this year. The H5N1 bird-flu strain, which is potentially fatal to humans, has been passed from infected poultry to people in contact with them, without any confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission.

(AP, 12-22)

Link (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aPZw85s3iGFc&refer=top_world_news)

[Pepper]

Thursday, December 23, 2004 at 08:04 JST
TOKYO — A former chicken farm employee has been found infected with the bird flu virus after an outbreak of flu among poultry in February in Kyoto Prefecture, in the first case of human infection from avian influenza in Japan, the health ministry said Wednesday.

Four of the five were employees at a poultry farm near Kyoto which took few precautions dealing with an outbreak in February, the ministry said. The other person was a city official who helped disinfect the farm

All five had tested positive for avian influenza through blood tests since April and one of them showed an increase in antibodies confirming an infection, the ministry said.

The infected male employee, who had taken two tests, suffered from a sore throat for a few days after taking anti-virus medication.

The four other people have not been confirmed with bird flu because they took only one test each but "it is highly possible that they have been infected," the statement said.

None of the five developed symptoms peculiar to influenza and they "are not expected to pose public health problems as there is no possibility that they will develop such symptoms or infect other people," the statement added.

Following the outbreak at the poultry farm, Asada Nosan Co, some 240,000 chickens and 20 million eggs were destroyed to contain the disease.

In August Asada Nosan's president Hideaki Asada received a one-year jail term, suspended for three years, for failing to report the outbreak, which was only uncovered after suspicious neighbours informed authorities.

His father — the chairman of Asada Nosan — and mother were found hanging in an apparent double suicide in early March after coming under intense media scrutiny for continuing to ship produce.

The attempt to cover up the outbreak was seen as having led the farm employees to work without wearing sufficient protective clothing or gear.

Experts say avian influenza has entrenched itself in much of Asia and is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Twelve people have died of the virus in Thailand in the past year and 20 in Vietnam.

The agriculture ministry said in June that wild migratory birds from the Korean peninsula might have brought bird flu into Japan.

In its final report on the outbreak, a ministry research team said DNA samples taken from the bird flu strain detected in Japan were virtually identical to those from the virus in South Korea.

The agriculture ministry announced Wednesday that poultry imports from South Korea would be stopped until further notice.

The imports "would be suspended temporarily to take the surest measure" against the latest suspected outbreak of bird flu in South Korea, an agriculture ministry spokesman said.

The Japanese government has confirmed four outbreaks of bird flu, including the Kyoto case, domestically since January — the first in the country since 1925.

The health ministry said it had taken several months to determine the human infection because it was being careful due to the lack of established methods to test for the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain. (Wire reports)

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=322820

[CanadaSue]

The report itself is pretty near identical to what we've seen so far. The mod's comments are worth repeating here thought:

***[These results appear to confirm that 5 poultry workers participating in
the culling of avian influenza virus-infected poultry in Feb 2004 experienced asymptomatic infection and exhibited specific immune responses. It is not clear why one of the 5 is regarded as a confirmed case and the other 4 as probable cases, nor why there has been a lapse of 10 months in reporting this finding. Further clarification is awaited, in particular regarding the nature of the diagnostic tests and the level of the immune responses relative to a control population. This report emphasizes again the need to obtain data on seroprevalence and seroconversions in the human population of Thailand and Viet Nam exposed to outbreaks of avian influenza in poultry in order to put the apparently high fatality rate in these countries in perspective. - Mod.CP]***

http://www.promedmail.org/pls/promed/f?p=2400:1001:8810431468446084328::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,27511

Yeah, I'd LOVE to see largish scale sampling of Thai & Vietnamese living in H5N1 affected areas. I'm convinced the TRUE death rate is far lower but we can't begin to determione that without human sampling.

Also dying to know why Japan waited 10 months - not helpful at all when countries do this.