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Update on Avian flu: 24th February 2006
Editorial
Filed 24 Feb 06
©www.land-care.org.uk
The European Commission on 22 Feb gave France
and Holland permission, if they wished to do so, to vaccinate free-range
poultry against avian flu where the risk of infection is the highest.
About the same time Germany had the dubious distinction of being
the first country in the EU where a commercial poultry farm suffered
multiple deaths from the virus, necessitating the cull of the whole
flock.
The German army has been brought in to look for
and collect the large numbers of dead wild aquatic birds that were
wintering in the vicinity: that is, along the northwestern shores
of the Island of Reugen located in the Baltic Sea off the coast
of Germany.
France has ordered a supply of avian flu vaccine
from Intervet. The vaccine is of the attenuated type based on a
different strain (H5N2) enabling distinction to be made between
infected and vaccinated birds.
On 15th February a research team based at the
University of Pittsburgh USA published a paper describing the development
using genetic engineering. They modified the common cold virus to
incorporate the critical components of the deadly H5N1 virus obtained
from the epidemic in Vietnam between 2003 and 2005. When tested
under laboratory conditions this living recombinant vaccine proved
highly effective in controlling experimental infections in poultry
and in mice. The vaccine is produced by cells in culture, enabling
large quantities to be produced quicker than other types of vaccine
(1).
India is to cull 700,000 chickens in the western
part of the country in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus
following the detection of the first cases.
Cairo zoo has been closed following the death
of zoo birds from avian influenza.
References
1. Irvine, James (2006). New research
into Avian flu vaccine.
See SCIENCE Homepage, filed 24 Feb 06, www.land-care.org.uk
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