14:48 AEST Sun Aug 2 2009
Thousands of people have been placed under quarantine in a town in northwest China after a man died of pneumonic plague and 11 others were confirmed infected with the deadly lung infection, health authorities say.
The 32-year-old herdsman died in Ziketan in Qinghai province, the provincial health bureau said in a statement posted on its website on Saturday. It did not say when he died.
Most of the others infected are relatives of the deceased and are in stable condition in a hospital, the bureau said.
The town of 10,000 people has been placed under quarantine and a team of experts has been sent to the area, it said.
Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing, according to the World Health Organisation.
It is caused by the same bacteria that occurs in bubonic plague - the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages.
While bubonic plague - which is usually transmitted by flea bite - can be treated with antibiotics if diagnosed early, pneumonic plague is one of the deadliest infectious diseases. According to the WHO, humans can die within 24 hours of infection.
The Qinghai health bureau statement warned that anyone who has visited Ziketan and surrounding areas since July 16 and has developed a fever or a cough should seek treatment at a hospital.
Passengers leave swine flu-hit ship
20:07 AEST Sat Aug 1 2009
The majority of 3,600 passengers on a luxury cruise liner with more than 60 crew struck down with swine flu have been allowed to disembark.
Local authorities had initially prevented them from disembarking after the ship put into Marseille on Saturday.
Local authorities had initially barred passengers on the Voyager of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean, from going ashore when the ship arrived shortly before 7 am (0500 GMT).
But after a team of medics carried out an enquiry on board, the majority of passengers were given permission to disembark.
Local official Philip Ramon said authorisation to go ashore had been given because the risk was deemed "extremely marginal." Only one passenger, whose nationality was not given, was confirmed to have had swine flu and had now fully recovered, he said.
About 150 people remained on board in isolation, he added.
These included 62 members of the crew, who had presented symptoms of A(H1N1) flu, and another 60 people who had been in contact with them, five passengers and around 15 other passengers who had been in contact with them.
"Nobody today is showing any symptoms," Ramon added.
The cruiseliner, which left Barcelona last Sunday for a weeklong Mediterranean cruise via Naples, Italy, was due to arrive back in the Spanish port on Sunday.
Swine flu's potency revealed in report
12:01 AEST Sun Aug 2 2009
Swine flu's potency is revealed in a report detailing the first six Australians who were infected with the virus and then needed emergency hospital care.
The six were admitted to the intensive care wards of three hospitals across northwestern Melbourne just as the influenza A(H1N1) virus was becoming established in the country.
The list includes an 18-year-old pregnant woman who went into premature labour after vomiting for four days and then, after successfully giving birth, she required emergency respiratory treatment.
Also on the list are two men who otherwise had "no identifiable risk factors" - such as asthma, smoking or obesity - which could explain the severity of their swine flu reaction.
"Here, we present the first six cases of H1N1 influenza ... in which patients required admission to intensive care in Australia," a group of doctors write in the Medical Journal of Australia.
"These cases highlight the small but significant risk of life-threatening respiratory failure associated with H1N1 influenza.
"All patients experienced a rapid (but reversible) decline in respiratory function, with most requiring complex respiratory support."
The patients are not identified but the report details their symptoms in the days before admission, and the extensive treatment they required during their hospital stay.
All were treated with Tamiflu, an anti-viral drug which stops the virus from spreading to new cells in the body, and all but the young mother spent more than 10 days attached to a mechanical ventilator.
The woman went to hospital after four days of cough, fever and vomiting though she initially went home after being rehydrated using an intravenous drip.
Doctors had discussed with her the possibility of a swine flu infection.
"She returned several hours later in premature labour," the doctors write.
"Twenty-four hours after delivering a 26-week live infant, she developed hypoxic respiratory failure ... (and) required a high level of inspired oxygen therapy by face mask."
Tests showed the mother, but not her baby, had the swine flu.
Those also in the list were:
- A 28 year-old woman who was overweight. She arrived at a hospital's emergency department after five days of a sore throat and lethargy, followed by two days of shortness of breath, coughing and chest pain.
- A "previously well" 24-year-old man who also had abdominal pain and vomiting, and who needed ventilation for 15 days.
- Another otherwise healthy man, aged 41, who suffered through a week of coughing and back pain before going to hospital with a fever.
- A 60-year-old man who went to the hospital suffering from an exacerbation of his lung disease where it was found he had the swine flu.
- And 26-year-old overweight man with a history of mild asthma who was on the ventilator for 10 days.
The doctors note the swine flu was a "benign disease" but that it could lead to severe respiratory complications.
"In our series, prompt diagnosis and intensive therapy was associated with favourable
outcomes," they also write.
Saturday
Revealed: Burma’s nuclear bombshell
Hamish McDonald Asia-Pacific Editor
August 1, 2009
BURMA’s isolated military junta is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, according to evidence from key defectors revealed in an exclusive Herald report today.
The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Burma, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards.
Two defectors were extensively interviewed separately over the past two years in Thailand by the Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball and a Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist, Phil Thornton, who has followed Burma for years.
One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years’ training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
Their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign ‘‘regime change’’.
Their story will ring alarm bells across Asia. ‘‘The evidence is preliminary and needs to be verified, but this is something that would completely change the regional security status quo,’’ said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand’s Institute of Security and International Studies, yesterday.
‘‘It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state – that is, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its immediate neighbours.’’
Washington is increasingly concerned that Burma is the main nuclear proliferation threat from North Korea, after Israel destroyed in September 2007 a reactor the North Koreans were apparently building in Syria.
Professor Ball said another Moscow-trained Burmese army defector was picked up by US intelligence agencies early last year. Some weeks later, Burma protested to Thailand about overflights by unmanned surveillance drones that were apparently launched across Thai territory by US agencies. These would have yielded low-level photographs and air samples, in addition to satellite imagery.
At a meeting with Asian leaders, including some from Burma and North Korea, in Thailand last week, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and other foreign ministers won promises from the Burmese they would adhere to United Nations sanctions on North Korean nuclear and missile exports.
China and other Asian nations had recently helped persuade Rangoon to turn back a North Korean freighter, the Nam Kam 1, that was being shadowed by US warships on its way to Burma with an unknown cargo. A month ago, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese for allegedly trying to export illegally to Burma a magnetic measuring device that could be used to develop missiles.
Professor Ball, who has studied the Burmese military for several years, said the evidence from two well-placed sources demanded closer study: ‘‘All we can say is these two guys never met up with each other, never knew of each other’s existence, and yet they both tell the same story basically.
‘‘If it was just the Russian reactor, under full International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, which the Russians keep insisting is their policy and the Burmese may have agreed to with that reactor, then the likelihood of them being able to do something with it in terms of producing fissionable fuel and designing a bomb would be zero.
‘‘I’d be more worried about a meltdown like Chernobyl … It’s the North Korean element which adds the danger to it.’’
North Korea’s interest could be a combination of securing a supply of uranium from Burma’s proven reserves, earning hard currency, and keeping its plutonium extraction skills alive in case it agrees to fully dismantle its own Yongbyon nuclear complex. ‘‘Do they want another source of fissionable plutonium 239 to supplement what they get from their Yongbyon reactor?’’ Professor Ball said.
August 1, 2009
BURMA’s isolated military junta is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, according to evidence from key defectors revealed in an exclusive Herald report today.
The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Burma, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards.
Two defectors were extensively interviewed separately over the past two years in Thailand by the Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball and a Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist, Phil Thornton, who has followed Burma for years.
One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years’ training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
Their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign ‘‘regime change’’.
Their story will ring alarm bells across Asia. ‘‘The evidence is preliminary and needs to be verified, but this is something that would completely change the regional security status quo,’’ said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand’s Institute of Security and International Studies, yesterday.
‘‘It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state – that is, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its immediate neighbours.’’
Washington is increasingly concerned that Burma is the main nuclear proliferation threat from North Korea, after Israel destroyed in September 2007 a reactor the North Koreans were apparently building in Syria.
Professor Ball said another Moscow-trained Burmese army defector was picked up by US intelligence agencies early last year. Some weeks later, Burma protested to Thailand about overflights by unmanned surveillance drones that were apparently launched across Thai territory by US agencies. These would have yielded low-level photographs and air samples, in addition to satellite imagery.
At a meeting with Asian leaders, including some from Burma and North Korea, in Thailand last week, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and other foreign ministers won promises from the Burmese they would adhere to United Nations sanctions on North Korean nuclear and missile exports.
China and other Asian nations had recently helped persuade Rangoon to turn back a North Korean freighter, the Nam Kam 1, that was being shadowed by US warships on its way to Burma with an unknown cargo. A month ago, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese for allegedly trying to export illegally to Burma a magnetic measuring device that could be used to develop missiles.
Professor Ball, who has studied the Burmese military for several years, said the evidence from two well-placed sources demanded closer study: ‘‘All we can say is these two guys never met up with each other, never knew of each other’s existence, and yet they both tell the same story basically.
‘‘If it was just the Russian reactor, under full International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, which the Russians keep insisting is their policy and the Burmese may have agreed to with that reactor, then the likelihood of them being able to do something with it in terms of producing fissionable fuel and designing a bomb would be zero.
‘‘I’d be more worried about a meltdown like Chernobyl … It’s the North Korean element which adds the danger to it.’’
North Korea’s interest could be a combination of securing a supply of uranium from Burma’s proven reserves, earning hard currency, and keeping its plutonium extraction skills alive in case it agrees to fully dismantle its own Yongbyon nuclear complex. ‘‘Do they want another source of fissionable plutonium 239 to supplement what they get from their Yongbyon reactor?’’ Professor Ball said.
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