Rare Nipah Virus Outbreak Kills 5 in Eastern India
The Associated Press (Posted by International Herald Tribune | Asia –Pacific)
08 May 2007
Area: India
The rare, animal-borne Nipah virus has killed five people in an eastern Indian state, prompting authorities to declare a state of alert, officials said Tuesday. A health official and four members of a family have died from the illness since early April, said Mohan Basu, a doctor in West Bengal state's Nadia district.
The Nipah virus is usually spread by fruit bats or pigs. There have been no known cases of human-to-human infection, according to the World Health Organization. The last major Nipah outbreak occurred in Malaysia, where 265 people were infected in 1998-99. The virus was then blamed for 105 human deaths. Nearly a million pigs, believed to have spread the disease, were slaughtered before the Malaysian outbreak was controlled.
CLA Wants WAG to Make Badger Culling a PriorityTumpline Stackyard
08 May 2007
Area: Wales
CLA Wales is calling on the Welsh Assembly Government to introduce badger culling in order to bring the TB epidemic in cattle under control. Wales Director Julian Salmon wants the new Countryside Minister to make culling a priority once he or she is appointed. His comments follow a report in the Sunday Telegraph that the Independent Scientific Group is due to report to DEFRA within weeks and is expected to acknowledge that culling badgers can be an effective means of controlling the disease. The Wales TB Action Group would take any decision in Wales but Mr Salmon feels it would not make any sense to introduce a culling policy on one side of the border and not on the other.
"We will be calling on the new Countryside Minister to make this issue a priority and to get to grips with TB in cattle and in wildlife", added Mr Salmon. "The disease has to be tackled in wildlife as well as in cattle if a solution is to be found.” We have to face reality on this and unless you address the reservoirs of TB in both domestic and wildlife then it is a waste of time. It is a huge economic and emotion problem for farmers in Wales and so far no one has seemed willing to address a problem which has seen herds built up over generations wiped out".
No More Bulldozing Threatened Tortoises
My Fox – Tampa Bay
08 May 2007
Area: Tampa Bay, Florida, USA
Thousands of gopher tortoises have been plowed under, and paved over by developers in the last sixteen years. State wildlife officials have given their approval, but there are big changes coming down the road. The Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission gives builders two choices if they find gopher tortoises on their property: move the tortoises, or pay the state a fee and just pave over them. A lot of developers took the so-called 'pay for pave' option because it was quick and easy.
Certain tortoises didn't fare well, but biologists say the pay to pave program helped the species in general. "With that permitting program, we conserved 22,000 acres of habitat, which has supported literally thousands of tortoises and protected them into perpetuity," said Greg Holder, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official.
Relocating tortoises has always been easier said than done. The tortoises get a potentially deadly upper respiratory illness. Scientists were afraid by moving them, the disease would spread. They also say their chance of surviving is lower after they have been moved.
West Nile Virus Spotted in DuPage Mosquitoes
Chicago Tribune
08 May 2007
R Working
Area: DuPage County, Illinois, USA
DuPage County was home to an unwelcome debut this week: the year's first appearance of mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus, Illinois health officials said Tuesday. The disease appeared in mosquito samples that the DuPage County Health Department collected Monday in Naperville, Lisle and Woodridge, said Melany Arnold, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health.” It’s a couple of weeks earlier in reporting, but it's not out of line," Arnold said.
The disease-bearing insects first showed up in the county in 2006—four years after the virus was discovered in Illinois—but this year the mosquitoes made their first appearance there.
China Tells Little About Illness That Kills Pigs, Officials Say
The New York Times – Asia Pacific
08 May 2007
Area: China
A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that the Chinese government was providing little information about it or the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused death and illness in pets in the United States. The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.
The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is next to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus when it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.
Thermal Stress and Coral Cover as Drivers of Coral Disease Outbreaks [free full-text available]
PLoS Biology. 2007 May; 5(6): e124
JF Bruno et al
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