In response to World Health Organization advice that the avian influenza pandemic threat is real, Finland is preparing to vaccinate its entire population against the disease.
Some of the pros and cons of this decision are outlined and argued here . The comments are also worth reading.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The Finns are actually doing a bit more than that. They have got their act together and are screening wild birds for presence of flu. It was this screening program that they detcted sick migratory seagulls in Northern Finland not far from the home of Santa in Rovaniemi. Luckily these birds didn’t carry the H5N1 starin but a less deadly version of the flu which is not harmful to humans.
Another interesting lateral thought from the Finns is to use the Sauna in the fight against the virus. See link below;
Sauna to keep bird flu at bay in Finland 06/09/2005 http://www.eubusiness.com/Health/050906095516.ouea8jly
Saunas are a favourite haunt of athletes seeking out a good sweat, but officials in Finland are now recommending the steamroom as a way of keeping the deadly bird flu out of the Nordic country.
The agriculture ministry has advised travelers to areas hard-hit by the disease to disinfect themselves in the high temperatures of the sauna.
“We issued a general recommendation for poultry producers to prevent the spread of the virus with the sauna,” ministry expert Sirpa Kiviruusu told AFP.
The government urged travelers returning from places in southeastern Asia, where the virus has claimed 61 lives, and Russia, where numerous poultry farms have been infected, to disinfect their clothing, shoes and luggage in a sauna.
The latest issue of Nature ( Vol 437, 6/10/2005) contains some further alarming news derived from forensic DNA analysis of the extinct 1918 strain of avian influenza virus derived from preserved tissue samples of people that fell victims to the flu. The complete decoding of the three genes in the virus postulated to be critical to it jumping the species barrier and becoming airborne have revealed striking similarities with the comparable genes in the H5N1 strain.
The conclusions from these comparisons are; 1) that a flu virus of avian origin doesn’t have to mix with a human influenza virus and pick up larger sections of the human virus genome to adapt to its new host. Just a few critical changes in the original genes are required. 2) H5N1 has already acquired a few of the same changes as the 1918 strain but not all of them.
The quest is now to introduce changes in the H5N1 strain, in a high security laboratory, based on what we know about the 1918 strain and see which of the remaining mutations are the critical ones. This information could be used to develop new vaccines targeting the critical regions specifically or possibly to create new anti-viral drugs that block the actions of the mutated genes. However it is a race against time. To buy some time we need to reduce the number of times the virus replicates in birds and acquire new changes. Infected birds need to be rapidly identified and culled in Indonesia and other countries in our region with large population of infected poultry. Wild birds need to be screened for novel types of H5N1. I hope that the meeting in Brisbane that Australia has called to discuss this situation with its neighbours will consider to take direct action in stopping the bird flu at is source and at the same time fund research into the comparative study of the 1918 strain and the H5N1 strain.