PanAfrica: Avian Flu - Global Sharing of Virus Samples
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Posted by allAfrica.com)
01 August 2006
OFFLU, the OIE/FAO joint network of expertise on avian influenza, will systematically make avian influenza virus sequences accessible to the entire scientific community. With this gesture OFFLU reiterates its call to the world's scientists, international organisations and countries for a global sharing of virus strains and sequences.
Since its launch in April 2005, OFFLU has been mainly working on promoting the key objectives "to exchange scientific data and biological materials (including virus strains) within the network, and to share such information with the wider scientific community". Under this new impetus, strains will be sent to the U.S. National Institutes of Health for sequencing and deposited in full transparency on the free-access database, GenBank.
On 14 March 2006, the Scientific Committee of OFFLU, made up of the world's leading veterinarian experts on avian influenza, revised its terms of reference to put new emphasis on the need for further collection, characterization and exchange of avian influenza viruses, and for the expansion of the genomic database for animal influenza viruses.
Massachusetts Officials Issue Tularemia Precautions
CIDRAP News
01 August 2006
For the seventh year in a row, cases of tularemia are being reported on Martha's Vineyard, where six cases of the rare respiratory form of the disease have occurred so far..
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) in a Jul 27 press release said that the patients, ages 33 to 67, became ill between May 13 and Jul 5. All have been successfully treated and are recovering. Four of the six are employed as landscapers.
The MDPH added that cases of tularemia have occurred on Martha's Vineyard every year since 2000, when an outbreak infected 15 people and caused one death.
Tularemia in the United States is usually linked to insect bites or handling carcasses of small animals, particularly rabbits. The disease is caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis, one of the six biological agents deemed most likely to be used by terrorists.
Rules to be Considered for Vermont's Game Farms
Rutland Herald
31 July 2006
Louis Porter
Tucked away in rural parts of the state are at least two game farms where people can go, plunk down money and shoot anything from wild boars to elk — all inside large fenced-in enclosures.
While laws stipulate those game farms should be regulated by the state, no rules ever have been established to do so.
But now the state's Fish and Wildlife Board is trying again to take on the complex and contentious task of putting those rules in place.
In large part, the new push for rules is because of the arrival of chronic wasting disease — an illness similar to mad cow disease — which strikes deer and their relatives. Although chronic wasting disease has not yet been shown to cross over and harm humans, experts worry it could.
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