topic of the month?

[Suvash]

so friends,
discussion has started......
i also read that the mass death of the chicken was due to RANIKHET and not the most feared "BIRD FLU"...thank god..it was a relief for us..

so ranikhe is a differential diagnosis for bird flu...
what are other DD for bird flu....
can anyone of you post?
and what kind of disease is ranikhet?

i would be more than happy to learn about that...

[suman]

it's really a big relief that we don't have bird flu yet....but as india have got it and due to a lot of carelessness and no responsibleness among the nepalese leaders it can get into nepal quite soon.....since there has not been sufficient publicity abt it among all the rural areas....can't tell we r still safe.......nyewayz hope bird flu won't enter nepal.....n as other ppl said yah i too have left chicken.........

[Pal]

suvas,
i think better to know about the Bird Flu Symptoms before going for Differential diagnosis, Bird flu can cause a range of symptoms in humans. Some patients report

• fever,
• cough,
• sore throat and
• muscle aches.

Others suffer from

• eye infections,
• pneumonia,
• acute respiratory distress and
• other severe and life-threatening complications.

Now, i think we can talk about DD right suvas

[rajeeb]

Yesterday I saw BBC News ...In Germany they have found H5N1 in Cat ....I was shocked ..Here is the detail ..
Bird flu: Are pet cats at risk?

By Henri Astier
BBC News


No need to lock up your cat

The discovery of a German cat who died of bird flu - the first mammal found with the H5N1 virus in Central Europe - raises stark questions for pet owners across the world.
How easily can avian flu jump from birds to domestic animals? If a pet gets sick, should the owners be worried about their own health?
Scientists have known for at least two years that felines could catch the deadly bird flu virus.
It was found in 2004 in Thailand in two domestic cats. Big cats who had been fed infected chicken carcasses in a Thai zoo were also killed by H5N1.
And last year, wild civet cats died after contracting the virus.
Cats tend to go for sick birds, so it is not unexpected if cats catch and kill infected birds


Dr Paul Hunter
University of East Anglia

So the discovery of the dead German cat in an area where dozens of birds had died from H5N1 does not come as a big surprise.
Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia in the UK, points out that like all predators, felines hunt weaker animals.
"Cats tend to go for sick birds, so it is not unexpected if cats catch and kill infected birds," he told the BBC news website.
No alarm
The risk of cats getting the H5N1 virus is real. But according Dr Hunter, it is "not huge".
He notes that in affected areas in Asia, where people live in close proximity with poultry, hundreds of thousands of humans have handled infected birds - and yet less than 200 are known to have contracted the virus.
The H5N1 strain does not jump easily to other species - and this applies to cats as well.
"Do not expect large-scale mortality," Dr Hunter says.
How about humans being at risk? Dr Hunter argues that there is little cause for alarm on that count as well.
"The risk of your cat getting bird flu from a bird is small, the risk of your getting it from your cat is equally small. A small risk within a small risk is a very small risk," he says.
Poultry could provide the best vehicle for the virus

But the issue - both for pets and humans - is whether the H5N1 virus mutates within the host population, making it easy to spread among individuals.
This has not happened yet - but if a mutated H5N1 made infection from cat to cat easier, this could be bad news for humans too.
According to a 2004 paper by Dutch virologist Thijs Kuiken, cat-to-cat transmission is possible and could provide an "opportunity for this avian flu to adapt to mammals".
But for the time being experts are telling people not to panic.
"The thought to hang on to at the moment is the current strains of the virus appear to be really inefficient at infecting non-bird species," says the head of the British Veterinary Association, Frieda Scott-Park.
"And indeed the virus has been circulating throughout large swathes of the world already, and there haven't been numerous deaths from the disease in domestic mammals."
Poultry risk
So there is no need for owners to keep their cats indoors.
The infected poultry must be disposed of quickly


Diana Bell,
Biologist

But according to Diana Bell, a biologist at the University of East Anglia who has studied the civet infections in Vietnam, there are things humans can do to help to protect domestic animals.
Many of the carnivores who have contracted bird flu so far, she says, have done so by eating poultry rather than wild birds.
The danger is that pets, particularly cats, ferret out scraps of infected meat.
"The infected poultry must be disposed of quickly so there is no possibility of carnivores having success in digging them up," she told the BBC News website.
The lesson for pet owners is: Don't worry too much - but if you live near an infected poultry farm, make sure the bird carcasses are well out of your pet's reach.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4761024.stm

[Suvash]

ya pal,
now we can talk of dd...
so what could be them then?

"The risk of your cat getting bird flu from a bird is small, the risk of your getting it from your cat is equally small. A small risk within a small risk is a very small risk," he says.

thats quite relieving and assuring...

but still we need to be careful....

[RAAZ]

Hey, anybody's got new updates about Bird Flu in INDIA?

[Anup'da]

hey suvash

ranikhet is affecting chickens, but i hope it don't affect human unlike birdflu, so is it really a differential diagnosis? i'm confused, somebody can help!!!!

anup'da
kmc 7th batch