H5N1: AVIAN Flu death in Vietnam

A 38-year-old woman has become the first victim of bird flu in Vietnam in 2010, bringing the country's toll from avian influenza to 58, the health ministry said Friday.

The woman died Tuesday in the southern province of Tien Giang after two days of unsuccessful hospital treatment, said the ministry in an online statement.

The victim had killed and cooked sick waterfowl, the statement added.

Vietnam's last death from the H5N1 virus was in December.

At present, outbreaks of bird flu among poultry have been reported in five provinces.

Vietnam ranks second after Indonesia for the highest bird flu death toll, according to the World Health Organization.

The H5N1 virus typically spreads from birds to humans via direct contact, but experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, with the potential to kill millions in a pandemic.

Jack Pitchford: Death of Hanoi Hilton hero

Jack Pitchford stands in his Natchez, Miss., living room in front of a picture of the Wild Weasels, an Air Force squadron during the Vietnam War.

Pitchford, a fighter pilot from Mississippi who survived seven years in the Vietnamese prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton, has died. He was 82.

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H1N1: Virus Mutation Increases Death Toll by 1,000 per week

Geneva (AFP) Nov 27, 2009 - The number of swine flu deaths showed a sharp jump compared to a week ago, but the World Health Organisation said Friday that the epidemic may have peaked in parts of the northern hemisphere. The number of deaths reported to the WHO was up 1,000 from a week ago, reaching at least 7,826 worldwide since the A(H1N1) virus was first uncovered in April, fresh data showed.

The number of deaths reported to the UN health agency showed the biggest rise in the Americas, where 5,360 deaths have now been recorded compared to 4,806 a week ago but Europe also posted a substantial increase percentage-wise with at least 650 fatalities now reported, representing a surge of 300 deaths or 85 percent from data posted a week ago.

The WHO said influenza activity appears to have peaked across North America, although in Canada, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is increasing. In European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine and Iceland, influenza activity also appears to have reached a peak, added the WHO.

Further Mystery Surrounds Plague Death of Scientist

A follow up Story to the Death of a Chicago Scientist caused by Plague - Previous Story

Before Malcolm Casadaban died on September 13, the 60-year-old microbiologist at the University of Chicago had been suffering from flu-like symptoms.

Another victim of swine flu? Perhaps - but an autopsy revealed he had plague bacteria in his blood.

Casadaban was reported to have been working with a weakened vaccine strain of Yersinia pestis, intended for the development of vaccines against plague.

However, doctors are not sure the bacilli in Casadaban's blood were the cause of death, or how they got there. So what's going on?

Y. pestis has been linked to the medieval Black Death, though proof has been elusive. We do know that it kills several thousand a year by causing bubonic plague, and it is considered a potential biological weapon.

The University of Chicago has not revealed which strain the Yersinia was, but says it should have been safe:

This strain is not known to cause illness in healthy adults and has been used in some countries as a live-attenuated vaccine to protect against plague. It has been approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for routine laboratory studies. The weakened strain does not require the special safety precautions required for work with virulent strains.

But the case reminds me of misgivings that have been voiced about weakened strains, which might not be as safe as they seem.

The strain seems likely to have been EV76, which is used as a vaccine in Russia and Madagascar. It is considered unlikely to revert to the virulent strain - but even without reverting, it kills some mice immunised with it.

Worse, up to a fifth of people vaccinated with EV76 develop flu symptoms such as fever, headache, weakness and malaise, according to Rick Titball of the University of Exeter, UK, a leading Yersinia expert. Some even need hospitalisation, he says, though no deaths have ever been reported that we know of.

Of course, we don't yet know whether these findings have any bearing on Casadaban's tragic death. For that we'll need to which strain was in his blood and whether it was the bacteria that killed him.