*FDA promises to expedite bird-flu drugs By ASSOCIATED PRESS The US government pledged to expedite production of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu as its maker negotiates with other companies to boost production. The drug is in high demand as countries prepare for a possible bird-flu outbreak.
***Dead birds to be tested for bird flu in Germany By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Veterinarians will examine on Tuesday about 25 wild fowl found dead at a lake in western Germany, police said, as EU officials prepared for an outbreak of bird flu.
Russia Confirms Dangerous Avian Flu Virus Spread, WHO Calls for Fast, Open Action Created: 25.10.2005 09:23 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:36 MSK MosNews
As Russia confirmed more cases of bird flu, a U.N. official said the best way to stop it was for donors to pay up and fight it where it began, among Asian fowl.
The latest case in Russia killed 12 hens at a private dacha in Tambov, 400 km (250 miles) southeast of Moscow, last week. Authorities culled 53 ducks and hens and imposed a state of quarantine. Tests confirmed it was the H5N1 avian flu strain which can infect humans, though not yet pass between them, officials said.
The European Union was poised to ban all imports of captive wild birds after a parrot died of H5N1 in quarantine in Britain, the Reuters news agency reported. More dead birds were found and taken for tests in Germany, Croatia, Hungary and Portugal as suspect cases multiplied.
But the numbers involved in Europe are still small and no humans there have been infected, unlike Asia where 61 people died after close contact with infected birds.
A World Health Organization official from Asia said Europe still had good prospects of stopping H5N1 reaching its tame bird population because it had reacted faster and more openly. “There is an excellent chance for Europe to contain the Asian flu,” said Shigeru Omi.
The U.N. food agency’s head said the world must focus on Asia, and on stopping the virus passing between birds, as the best way to prevent the nightmare scenario of it mixing with a human strain to cause pandemic deadly flu.
“Too much time has gone by and even now we seem to focus more on addressing a possible pandemic which is spread from human to human,” said Jacques Diouf, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “It’s good to be ready should this happen. But for the time being we have 140 million birds killed or dying or have died because of avian influenza, with $10 billion of costs ... and it is still there (in Asia) that we are having contamination to human beings,” he told Reuters in an interview in Canada.
He said the FAO had helped develop a $175 million strategy to control H5N1, which surfaced in South Korea two years ago, and had received pledges of $30 million in aid —- but donors had not yet handed over a single cent.
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