International avian flu specialists gathered in Taipei yesterday to give an update on the spread of the disease.
Masato Tashiro, director of the Department of Viral Diseases and Vaccine Control at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, warned that cases in which the virus transmitted from birds to humans had begun to rise recently and human-to-human virus transmissions are likely to be seen in the near future.
"Avian-human transmission happens sporadically, but the number of cases are increasing," Tashiro said, "Flu viruses are constantly undergoing mutations, which could result in human-to-human virus transmissions, which is the worst case scenario."
Despite this tendency, Tashiro said efforts should still be made to contain bird to human transmissions.
Tashiro is heavily involved in influenza research for the WHO. He said the organization has been monitoring how the virus changes and had developed vaccines from the bird flu strain which caused the outbreak in Vietnam in 2004.
However, it has been found that the viruses prevalent in Indonesia and China recently are different from the Vietnamese strain, he added.
The WHO has since developed another group of vaccine candidates, of which one is now designated as the prototype. It has been distributed to pharmaceutical companies for mass production. The drug is currently undergoing clinical trials, Tashiro said.
According to Tashiro, the vaccine was developed from modified pathogenic viruses. He said the process of producing the vaccine is challenging, given that the viruses are highly contagious and might accidentally contaminate the vaccine producers as well as the inoculated chicken eggs.
While storing an adequate amount of Tamilflu is essential in preventing an outbreak, Tashiro said much more needs to be done.
"The WHO's containment strategy requires a lot of preparation, it includes a surveillance system as well as a reporting and information mechanism," Tashiro said, "But infrastructure in many Asian countries is not organized enough."
Tashiro added that an avian flu case needs to be contained within three weeks. After three weeks, the infection will accelerate to the extent that makes it difficult to contain.
The symposium took place as China's Guangdong Province reported on Thursday the death of a man from suspected avian flu. The Swiss government also confirmed on Friday that it had found the H5N1 strain in dead wild birds.
Medical professionals from Hong Kong, Vietnam and Taiwan attended the symposium and shared their experiences in combating epidemic diseases, including bird flu and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
Chou Jih-haw (
Chou said an outbreak in Taiwan would have a serious impact on the poultry industry, adding that the government is now more concerned about birds smuggled into the country and patients who may not seek medical attention immediately after any suspected cases emerge.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS