New info on Avian flu

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060115/ap_on_he_me/flu_drugs_resistance


We have been 'inserviced' to death on keeping an eye out for any sort of flu symptoms. We now have a kit we are to use on anyone who shows flu symptoms. We get a nasal culture (yeah, I get to dig in a sick persons nose about 2 inches and get a good, wet, green hunk of phlegm) and put it in a reactive agent and it will show poz/neg in 10 minutes to confirm a case of the true flu.

Anyone testing positive is to be isolated in a private room and only the RN caring for that patient is allowed to go in.

We have also stock-piled a small supply of Tami-flu. We have to count it between shifts like it is Oxycontin or something. And God forbid if one is missing....


From the cases in Turkey, it looks as if this one has the same potential to do damage as the Spanish flu that hit the world in 1918.

I've been a RN for 19 years now and I just get a sick gut feeling that the CDC is hiding something they don't want the general public to panic over.

 

Makes ya wonder doesn't it??

 

We've been discussing contingency plans for about three months now and David's been bored to tears over the whole bird-flu pandemic briefings over at the Hospital. I think it's just a world wide response to the bird flu.

 

Rutrow...

Not exactly the avian type but....

CDC: Two influenza drugs don't work

Doctors asked to stop prescribing amantadine and rimantadine

Saturday, January 14, 2006; Posted: 9:02 p.m. EST (02:02 GMT)

CDC Director Julie Gerberding said the flu virus's resistance wasn't expected to be "quite as dramatic."

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- With flu season reaching its peak, two drugs typically prescribed to fight the virus will be ineffective this season and should not be prescribed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Saturday.

The CDC found in tests that the antiviral drugs amantadine and rimantadine were ineffective 91 percent of the time against H3N2 influenza, the dominant strain this season.

However, two other antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza are still effective, said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding. Amantadine and rimantadine are older, less-expensive and less commonly prescribed drugs.

There has been a global trend toward drug resistance, but Gerberding said health officials didn't expect the resistance "to be quite as dramatic so soon." (Watch Dr. Marc Siegel explain how the strain became resistant to some drugs -- 2:44)

"We don't know exactly why resistance has risen to these drugs," Gerberding said, adding that the flu virus may have mutated, but there is no evidence to support that. "Flu constantly evolves, and we are always one mutation away from drug resistance."

There is no "magic bullet" to prevent drugs from becoming ineffective against certain flu strains, she said.

There is plenty of Tamiflu and Relenza for this flu season because the CDC stockpiled the drugs in case of an influenza pandemic, Gerberding said.

The flu is widespread in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Oregon and Colorado.

The season, which can begin as early as October and stretch into May, typically is most widespread in December, January and February.

 

Kansas just had their first death due to flu.

BTW, I saw that article on yahoo a little bit ago...

 

It won't be too long before antibiotics/antiviral drugs will no longer protect us. Heaven help us when that actually happens.

 

they keep warning us we may be facing an another epidemic of 1918

 

It'll eventually come to that. People have been misusing antibiotics for decades. Part of the fault are non doctors that don't complete their pills and part of the problem are doctors for over suscribing the damn things in the first place. It won't be terrorism/nuclear war/asteroids that deal the final blow to mankind, it will be little one celled creatures that we helped create.

 

I heard that the bird flu isn't as potentially deadly as thought at first, not everybody dies after catching it.

 

not everyone died from the Spanish flu of 1918 that caught it either.