Watching for signs of bird flu's arrival
Posted by rose on January 7th, 2009In Orange County: Health officials put together a team of 22 physicians to detect any human cases of the flu.
Jerry W. Jackson Sentinel Staff Writer
Orange County is stepping up its monitoring for bird flu with the state's largest team of surveillance physicians -- doctors on the front line making house calls, working in clinics or staffing pediatric offices.
"It's a nice, early-warning system for us," Bill Toth, spokesman for the Orange County Health Department, said Monday of the 22 physicians in the county's "sentinel monitoring system."
With millions of tourists passing through Orlando annually, the county is at risk and needs to add to the roster of physicians who keep a sharp eye out for flu and are likely to spot the first cases, Toth said.
"We need it," Toth said, as a government study warned Monday that the bird-flu virus spreading around the world is mutating into more variations that increase the risk of infection in humans. It has not been found in the United States.
One of the house-call physicians participating in the monitoring program in Orange County, Dr. Patrick Hennessey, said he has been alerting business groups and hotel operators for more than a year to be prepared if the killer flu does strike.
Hennessey and other physicians who make house calls for hotels, resorts and vacation villas in the Orlando and Lake Buena Vista areas with Eastcoast Medical Network Inc. are on the "front line" looking for serious strains of flu every year, Toth said. But their role now is more critical than ever.
"Often, we see new strains of influenza and other imported infectious diseases before ERs [emergency rooms]," Hennessey said.
The house-call physicians recommend that hotels and other properties they serve urge ill guests to stay in their rooms to minimize chances of the flu spreading. Then the physicians go to the rooms and check for symptoms. Throat cultures are dispatched to labs and the results are forwarded quickly to county, state and federal health agencies.
"It's very critical, what they do," Toth said of the sentinel physicians, some of whom work at walk-in clinics such as CentraCare in the high-traffic tourist areas while others are local pediatricians who see the first cases of sniffles among children. Other counties also have flu sentinel physicians.
Two years ago, Toth said, house-call physicians in the program in Orange County were the first in the state to confirm cases of influenza A, the type that typically causes the most problems for people.
But now the deadly H5N1 strain circulating in Asia, Europe and Africa has health authorities on alert worldwide for the potential of a pandemic.
The strain, which mainly attacks birds and fowl, has shown some signs that it might be a precursor to a human killer worldwide. So far, it has not developed human-to-human transmission, but it has had a high mortality rate among children and adults exposed to the virus through contact with chickens.
At least 177 people who live or work in close contact with fowl have caught the flu, and 98 died.
Fearing that the U.S. may be hit with the lethal strain, the departments of the Interior and Agriculture said March 8 they would ramp up testing of birds beginning in April. About 100,000 migratory birds are expected to be tested this year.
Researchers are finding more human cases of the disease caused by a variant that had only been seen in birds before 2005, said Rebecca Garten, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who led a recent study.
More surveillance is needed to track new forms of the virus that may acquire the ability to spread from person-to-person, Garten said.
The research was presented Monday in Atlanta at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Government officials said this month that federal labs are working on a second bird-flu vaccine to provide more protection against new strains, but neither vaccine is currently available for widespread public use.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-birdfludocs2106mar21,0,4254216.story?coll=orl-home-promo
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