From China View:

KATHMANDU, March 5 (Xinhuanet) — Over 2,000 pigs have died of an unidentified disease in some villages of Morang district in eastern Nepal in the past two months, an official said Sunday.

The disease, first seen in Dangihat and Karanari village of Morang district, some 300 km east of Kathmandu, claimed the lives of over 1,000 pigs in Letang village alone, Shambhu Yadav, an official of the District Livestock Services Office (DLSO), said, adding that eight boars and four buffaloes also died of the disease.

“The disease is believed to be air borne but we have not launched any investigation into it,” Yadav noted.

Earlier, it was suspected that swine fever was the cause of the deaths but outbreak of avian flu in India has terrified the farmers of Morang district located close to India.

Farmers have been disposing the carcass of diseased animals in the nearby forest and the environment has been polluted there, according to Yadav.

Fever, dysentery, yawning and lack of appetite are the symptoms of the disease, Yadav added.

At least the 300 dead ducks in Guangzhou were due to infections by Infective Serositis and not the H5N1 virus, however it is reported that a 32 year-old local resident died from H5N1.

It’s the 2,000 pig deaths, and the speculation that this infection is airborne that raises all the red flags! Add in China’s secrecy and this looks dicey!

But, we’re ready for the pandemic, right? Federal, State and Local agencies have our back? Not according to Michael Brown, former head of FEMA and current Hurricane Katrina scapegoat for the Bush administration in an interview with Chris Wallace this AM on FoxNews Sunday. Hey GW, I love ya man, but to me, Fran Townsend’s coming off as an attack poodle for Chertoff and Homeland Security and Brownie’s making a lot of sense.

Chris, I think we’re worse off. If you look at what’s happening in FEMA, they still have — Chief Paulison is now talking about the hundreds of vacancies they can’t fill. There’s still this confusion about what FEMA is supposed to do and not do.

The partnerships between FEMA and state and local governments have been broken and will continue to be broken by the path that the secretary is headed down. So I think we’re worse off today than we were even before Katrina.
(…)
Not yet. And I think what they need to do is recognize that FEMA — despite the politics of it, FEMA needs to be pulled out of the Department of Homeland Security because it has a different mission, it has a different culture, and until it’s independent, with its own budget and its own relationships with state and local government, it will continue to falter.
(…)
I’m telling you that they ought to demand right now that FEMA be pulled out. These people on the Hill ought to pull FEMA out right now, make it independent, and cut out the baloney.

Hurricane Katrina was a disaster of Biblical proportions. An H5N1 pandemic would make that two for two. If we haven’t figured out and fixed what went wrong with our response system for something that involved a handful of our Gulf states, how can we possibly manage something that will be killing tens of thousands — all over the entire country?

The most frightening reality of all is that the Federal Government has proved that it can’t react timely on events of the scope of Katrina, or of an H5N1 pandemic. In fairness, it probably never will have that ability. But for the good of us all, it must pro act, especially in insisting on state and local agencies to plan for what they will be called on to do. An avian flu pandemic will be in the hands of the first responders: paramedics, doctors, nurses, police, local health agencies . . . their efforts will determine if the death toll will be in the thousands, or hundred-thousands — or worse.

Let’s hope that they are as brave as those gallant police and firefighters that raced up the towers on 9/11! (db)

Technorati Tags: Avian Flu, H5N1, Nepal, KATHMANDU, Morang district, pig deaths, FEMA, Michael Brown, FoxNews

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Avian Flu, Media Doin' It Right, Stupid Political Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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