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Center for Disease Control keeps close tabs on bird flu

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is counting on flu surveillance mechanisms as well as anti-viral drugs to prevent a possible interspecies bird-flu outbreak.

The center's deputy director, Shih Wen-yi (施文儀), said yesterday that health officials had been sent to Changhua County to reinforce disease prevention measures after confirmation of a bird-flu case on a chicken farm in the area.

"Although bird-flu transmission has only been known to occur in humans after contact with infected birds, news of bird-flu-induced deaths in Vietnam serve as a warning. The focus of global disease prevention is no longer SARS, but rather bird flu," said the center's director general, Su Ih-jen (蘇益仁).

Noting that avian-flu cases have been reported among people in Hong Kong in recent years and that three people in Vietnam have died because of the disease, Su said Taiwan should be on its guard against a possible outbreak.

He said that the government has stepped up monitoring the health of the nation's chickens and ducks and that birds infected with the disease will be slaughtered immediately.

In terms of the center's prevention policies, Yan Jer-jea (顏哲傑), director of the center's Division of Immunization, said that agriculture officials were responsible for the monitoring of fowl for the flu, while health officials worked to prevent the transmission of the disease among humans.

Shih also said that the center kept a tight surveillance on virus strains commonly found in Taiwan.

"The CDC's flu surveillance system takes random samples from sick patients. A representative number of samples are sent to the lab to identify the virus strains that are commonly transmitted among humans at any given time," Shih said.

"We will put extra emphasis on the samples taken from the Changhua region and from people who work on chicken or duck farms. We can rule out bird flu if we can identify the sample as another virus common in humans," Shih said.

Yan said that in the event of interspecies transmission, anti-viral drugs would theoretically be effective in combating bird flu. He said that Taiwan had not had any reported cases of bird flu in humans, therefore the effectiveness of anti-viral drugs against the disease had not been proven.

The center also cautioned those who come into contact with birds or bird feces to immediately afterwards wash their hands with soap.

Although it was originally thought that only birds could be infected with the disease, interspecies transmission proved a reality in May, 1997, when the first human case of avian flu was reported in Hong Kong.

While it has been known for some time that a wide range of influenza viruses circulate among wild birds, only the H5N1 and H9N2 strains have been known to infect humans. Yan said that there are no vaccines against these virus strains.

Su said that monitoring of migratory birds last year led to the discovery of the H5 virus in some of the birds. However, the virus was not identified as the H5N1 strain and was not transmitted to fowl.

In addition, a duck smuggled into Taiwan in December last year was found to have been infected with the H5N1 virus subtype. All of the smuggled ducks were destroyed immediately, and the virus was contained, Su said.
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