Life is Healthy

• Bengkulu still on bird flu alert
• Two children believed infected by bird flu
• Bird flu continuing to menace Cirebon district
• Bird flu kills hundreds of chickens in Jambi
• Bird flu spreading in Kerinci district

• Bird flu continuing to menace Cirebon district
• Bird flu spreading in Kerinci district
• Bird flu spreads further in Japan
• Bird flu threatens Samarinda
• Japanese PM urges hard efforts to fight bird flu

Seaweed Derivative Shown to Inhibit H1N1 Virus

HOBART, Australia, May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- In a breakthrough that offers new hope for the containment of influenza outbreaks, an Australian biotechnology company has isolated a natural extract from seaweed which has been shown to inhibit the H1N1 virus.

The extract - known as Maritech® 926 - is a fucoidan compound derived from the Undaria pinnatifida species of seaweed. In vitro tests performed under contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US, have shown that Maritech® 926 can inhibit the H1N1 influenza virus at extremely low concentrations.

Developed by biotechnology company Marinova Pty Ltd, Maritech® 926 is a natural polysaccharide which has immediate market potential in nutritional supplements, hand washes and nasal delivery products which target the spread and prevention of viral conditions. Scope also exists for the compound to be included in pharmaceutical and medical device applications. As a result of these findings, Marinova has filed for patent protection over the application of Maritech® 926 and other fucoidan extracts in a range of anti-viral applications.

In announcing the findings and patent filing, Marinova's Senior Scientist, Dr Helen Fitton, said: "Fucoidan extracts such as Maritech® 926 are known to have significant inhibitory effects on a range of coated viruses. We are particularly excited by the fact that these seaweed extracts have now been shown to have an inhibitory effect on H1N1 at extremely low concentrations. With H1N1 already becoming resistant to some other antiviral agents, we believe that Maritech® 926 offers a potent, natural alternative which supports the immune system against viral attacks".

About Marinova:

Marinova Pty Ltd is an Australian biotechnology company, with extensive research and manufacturing facilities in Hobart, Tasmania. The company is dedicated to creating innovative and chemically consistent extracts from marine plants for use in medical, nutritional and skin care applications. Using its proprietary solvent-free Maritech® process, Marinova has the unique ability to supply high-purity fucoidan ingredients which not only meet HACCP, ISO9001, GMP and Organic quality requirements, but also comply with FDA and European pharmaceutical standards.

For further information or comment please contact:

Dr Helen Fitton
Senior Scientist
helen.fitton@marinova.com.au

Mr Antoine Valterio
Business Development Manager
antoine.valterio@marinova.com.au

Marinova Pty Ltd
Phone: +61 3 6248 5800
Fax: +61 3 6248 4062

Email: info@marinova.com.au

Web: www.marinova.com.au

SOURCE Marinova Pty Ltd

An Indonesian worker sorts chickens at a chicken market in Jakarta. (EPA Photo/Bagus Indahono)

The Jakarta city administration said it would consider ways to ease the impact of the relocation of poultry slaughterhouses, as about a thousand chicken traders again protested against the plan on Tuesday.

Mara Oloan Siregar, assistant to the city secretary for economic and administrative affairs, said that the administration would hold discussions with chicken traders to find ways to prevent them from suffering losses as a result of the move.

“We will improve the relocation procedure and the agency will map [the location of] chicken traders and shelters so they can be arranged properly,” he said after meeting with chicken traders’ representatives at City Hall.

As the meeting was going on inside, about a thousand protesters rallied outside the building and at the adjacent City Council building to demand the city drop its relocation plan. The protesters threw dead chickens into the front yard of the City Council building to symbolize their objection to the plan to relocate 1,950 slaughterhouses and 210 shelters to just five locations in the capital.

The relocation, set to begin next month, is based on a 2007 bylaw on poultry control, husbandry and distribution, which states that poultry brought to markets in Jakarta must already be cut, cleaned and frozen to help prevent the spread of bird flu.

The traders have held frequent protests in recent weeks.

Edy Setiarto, head of Jakarta’s Agriculture and Fisheries Agency, said that even though the relocation would be carried out, there would be no raids on slaughterhouses that remained open on April 24 — the deadline for traders to sign up for the relocation.

“We will move the traders gradually and will also improve publicity relating to the bylaw and the relocation plan,” he said.

The Jakarta Poultry Traders Association (HPUJ) has claimed that 64,000 chicken traders employing 75,000 people may be forced to close down as a result of the move, because they would not be able to afford the costs of freezing, packing and distributing chicken from the new locations.

One of the protesters, Budi Prasetyo, 44, a chicken vendor in Rawa Badak market in North Jakarta, said he was worried the bylaw would add to his transport costs and force him to sell chickens that were no longer fresh.

“I slaughter chickens at my house. It takes less than 15 minutes to get to the market so my chickens are sold fresh,” he told the Jakarta Globe.

HPUJ head Siti Maryam told the city administration that if the traders’ demands were not met, they would stop selling in the market for several days.

But Edy said a strike would only affect consumers and the smaller traders. “The small traders are not the only ones selling chicken. If they strike, big traders could take advantage,” he said.

Oloan reiterated at the meeting that the bylaw was meant to make poultry trading more orderly and hygienic, in order to prevent the spread of bird flu.

As of March 2010, Indonesia still had the highest number of bird flu cases worldwide at 163 confirmed cases and 135 deaths. Dien Emawati, head of Jakarta’s Health Agency, said Jakarta had the highest number of bird flu fatalities at 37.

Hasyim Widhiarto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 03/18/2010 4:22 PM

Despite massive protest over the city administration’s plan to remove all fowl slaughterhouses from inner city areas, Jakarta husbandry, fishery and maritime agency have ensured they would execute the plan right on schedule.

“There will be no delay on the relocation plan,” agency head Edy Setiarto told a press briefing Friday.

“We are now working to prepare the five official slaughterhouses, physically and systematically, as well as registering vendors who sign up for the relocation.”

Earlier this week, vendors staged a large protest outside the City Council to denounce feared job losses and declining income ahead the plan to relocate fowl slaughterhouses as mandated by a 2007 bylaw on bird control.

The relocation will start on April. 24.

Under the bylaw, only five city-appointed slaughterhouses will be allowed to operate – in Rawa Kepiting, Cakung and Pulo Gadung in East Jakarta; in North Petukangan in South Jakarta, and the privately owned PT Kartika Eka Dharma in West Jakarta . Some are still under construction.

Antara News, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 04:49 WIB

Garut, W Java (ANTARA News) - The bird flu viruses attacking Indonesia have been classified as "highly pathogenic avian influenza" (HPAI), a veterinarian said here Tuesday.

In the West Java district of Garut alone, there were at least 75 cases of HPAI between 2006 and 2010 in which more than 2,893 chickens suddenly died, Dida K.Endang said.

The attacks of bird flu viruses in 48 villages of Garut district over the past four years had sparked fears of human infection, said the head of Garut`s veterinary office.

To protect local residents from the worst possibilities, a total of 7,000 infected chickens were culled.

Local authorities paid the owners a compensation of Rp12,500 (US$1,4) for every culled chicken, Endang said.

However, not all people welcomed the amount of compensation. Instead of giving the positively infected chickens for culling, they hid the poultry and just handed over small chickens, he said.

As a result, the efforts to control and halt the spread of bird flu viruses in Garut district were not so successful. This condition was worsened by the lack of locals` health awareness, he said.

Instead of burning the infected chickens, many Garut residents throw them into rivers, creeks, or ponds. Worse, some even consumed the infected chickens, he said.

In curbing the spread of the dangerous viruses, he urged the people to report any suspicious bird flu cases immediately to 12 bird flu surveillance teams.

The team members would have gone to the suspicious spots within 24 hours. The people could also report the condition to the heads of neighborhoods or villages, he said.

The West Java provincial government had targeted that by 2014 the province would have been free from bird flu viruses, Endang said.

The habit of throwing the bird flu-infected chickens into the river was not only found in Garut but also in such other West Java towns as Bogor.

This situation had also made Head of Bogor City`s Health Office Triawan Elan deeply concerned.

"We have asked local residents, who find chickens suddenly die not to throw them into the rivers but to burn them," Triawan Elan said recently.

He warned that the threats of bird flu viruses remained real after tens of chickens in Caparigi suburb suddenly died.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), avian influenza or "bird flu" is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs.

The WHO has warned that the infection with avian influenza viruses could spread very rapidly through poultry flocks.

Indonesia has 33 provinces. Only three have been confirmed free from the threat of bird flu viruses.

Indonesia has been dealing with bird flu since 2005. However, the H5N1 type influenza is also known to have attacked chicken and birds in other Asian countries, such as Thailand, Cambodia, China, and Vietnam.

A genetically mutated avian flu virus is believed to be behind a string of deadly outbreaks in bird populations over the past two years, a scientist said on Tuesday, warning that the new virus had the potential to be more lethal than its ancestor should it infect humans.

Virologist I Gusti Ngurah Mahardhika said the government’s vaccination program with a large number of poultry farms in the past few years may backfire because the mutation was partly suspected to have been caused by an outdated vaccine.

“I have strong evidence that the old vaccine seed [already developed by the country’s vaccine makers] cannot stop the new virus,” said Mahardhika, who is also head of the Biomedical and Molecular Biology Laboratory at the Udayana University’s Veterinary Medicine School.

He said isolated virus samples taken from already vaccinated farms in Java, Sumatra, Bali and Sulawesi from 2008 to 2009 were compared with samples from their ancestor H5N1 virus taken from Legok, Banten, in 2003.

“From the study, we found genetic differences of up to 8.7 percent from the ancestor virus,” he said.

The Legok virus is still being used by most vaccine producers here as the vaccine seed and the recent mutations may mean the seed virus is outdated.

The genetic differences in the virus samples are mostly represented by changes in the acid composition, or RNA [ribonucleic acid], which “have never been found before [in the 2003 virus samples].”

Genetic mutations, according to Mahardhika, could be triggered by either natural causes or vaccine resistance.

In the case of samples he studied, Mahardhika said the changes pointed more to the possibility of vaccine resistance rather than natural causes.

“Flu viruses are highly mutagenic and their RNA structure can quite easily undergo changes, or a deletion. The vaccine also has a masking effect whereby it only provokes immunity in the birds’ respiratory systems although the virus can still be found in the bird’s saliva. So now we can see a seemingly healthy chicken but its droppings and saliva are full of this virus,” he said.

The most recent viral outbreak in poultry populations was reported on Monday from Pekanbaru where thousands of chickens died in several villages. In one of the villages in Indragiri Hulu, two toddlers — aged three years and six months old — are suspected of having been infected.

A Web site jointly developed by Surabaya’s Airlangga University and Kobe University in Japan, www.birdflucorner.wordpress.com, reported that the two neighboring toddlers had had a history of contact with dead chickens.

Indonesia has been the hardest hit by the spread of avian flu, both in humans and poultry. The first outbreaks in bird populations were reported in 2003 with the virus spreading to humans two years later. At least 125 people have died of this bird flu.

So far, human infections can only result from direct contact with dead fowls and there is no scientific evidence that the virus is able to transmit from human to human although suspicions were raised after a few cluster cases were found in which a number of members from the same family had became infected. Simple hygienic practices such as hand washing help prevent infections.

Microbiology clinic professor with the University of Indonesia, Amin Soebandrio, concurred with Mahardhika’s findings, saying he had suspected that such changes would come.

“Research has also been carried out by my students on a similar issue using only 2004 virus samples. And genetic changes are apparent.”

Amin said further study must be done to check whether the changes directly affect the resistance of the virus to the vaccine being used by the government.

“We need to see whether the changes increase the capacity of the virus to infect the human respiratory system,” he said. “If that’s the case, it’s more than likely the virus will also be resistant to the antiviral we are now using to treat patients with avian influenza.”

Tjandra Yoga Aditama, the director general of disease monitoring at the Ministry of Health said the public should not worry too much about these findings because it did not mean a new virus had been created.

“Viruses always have the potential to mutate — that’s common in nature — but these studies don’t meant we’ve found a new strain of virus,” he said.

Memed Zoelkarnain, spokesman for the National Commission for Avian Influenza and Pandemic Prevention, said the findings must be studied further in a bid not to scare people and called on the media to be sensible when reporting on this issue given the findings are preliminary.

“We don’t want to frighten the public,” he said.

Memed, also a veterinary doctor, said Mahardhika should double check with “all vaccine makers” because there was more than one vaccine maker in the country but only a few of them used the 2003 vaccine seed.

Antara News, Monday, February 1, 2010 13:35 WIB

Sukadana, East Lampung (ANTARA News) - Bird flu (Avian Influenza) has broken out in three subdistricts of East Lampung and is spreading to other parts of the region, local residents here said.

"Earlier, bird flu cases were mostly found only in three sub districts, namely Sukadana, Purbolinggo and Marga Tiga. Now , however, more sub districts are affected ," Saefudin (40), a local resident of Batanghari Nuban, East Lampung District, said here on Monday.

In addition to the three subdistricts, the bird flu virus or H5N1 had also spread to Batanghari Nuban and Labuhan Ratu subdistricts, East Lampung.

The H5N1 virus was first detected at Terbanggi Marga village, Sukadana sub district; Sukadana Baru village, Marga Tiga sub district; and Tambah Dadi village, Purbolinggo sub district. However, it has spread to other villages, such as Gunung Tiga village, Batanghari Nuban sub district; and Rajabasa Lama village, Labuhan Ratu sub district.

In January 2010, some 1,176 chickens had died of bird flu in East Lampung.

The East Lampung district authorities have conducted spraying of insecticides in and round caches where chickens had been found infected by the bird flu virus.

Despite the bird flu attack, there was no human case found in the district.

Antara News, Monday, February 1, 2010 15:00 WIB

Purbalingga (ANTARA News) - Bird flu killed around 5,500 chickens in Purbalingga district, Central Java, during January 2010, a local official said.

Some 5,000 dead chickens were found at Tumanggal village and 500 at Pasunggingan village, both in Pengadegan sub district, Purbalingga, Hartono, head of the Purbalingga animal husbandry office, said here on Monday.

The local authorities have conducted measures such as insecticide spraying, rapid test and vaccination to prevent the bird flu or H5N1 virus from spreading to wider areas.

Last year, there were four cases of bird flu and around 6,000 chickens were killed by the virus

Antara News, Friday, January 29, 2010 13:12 WIB

Sukadana, Lampung Province (ANTARA News) - Bird flu (Avian Influenza or the H5N1) virus has stricken three sub districts in East Lampung District, killing at least 1,176 chickens.

"In the current rainy season, chickens are prone to various diseases, including bird flu," Dewanto, head of the East Lampung district animal health unit, said here on Friday.

Some 1,176 chickens had died in seven villages since early January 2010, while in 2009 there had been only 708 dead chickens in 11 villages.

The affected villages include Sukadana, Purbolinggo, and Marga Tiga, East Lampung.