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Mike · Site Admin Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 4512 Location:

90,000 company employees received this Health & Safety Bulletin yesterday.

Avian Influenza advice
The following information should be cascaded to colleagues in all countries working in offices, factories and other plants and on customer sites. Please print out and post this on notice boards for those without access to a computer. Further advice will be issued as required by the evolving situation.

Avian influenza A (H5N1) is a viral infection that usually affects wild birds but can infect and cause serious disease among poultry, such as chickens. While it is unusual for humans to get avian influenza virus infections directly from poultry or wild birds, a number of human infections and outbreaks caused by certain avian influenza A viruses have been documented since 1997.
Most cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) virus infection in humans are thought to have occurred from direct contact with infected poultry in the affected countries in Asia. Therefore, care should be taken to avoid contact, when feasible, with live, well-appearing, sick, or dead poultry and any surfaces that may have been contaminated by poultry, or their feces or secretions. Transmission of H5N1 viruses to two persons through consumption of uncooked duck blood may also have occurred in Vietnam in 2005. Therefore, consumption of uncooked poultry or poultry products, including blood, should be avoided.
However, a few cases of person-to-person spread of H5N1 viruses are thought to have occurred. For example, one instance of probable person-to-person transmission associated with close contact between an ill child and her mother is thought to have occurred in Thailand in September 2004. More recently, possible person-to-person transmission of H5N1 viruses is being investigated in several clusters of human cases in Vietnam. So far, spread of H5N1 virus from one ill person to another has been very rare, and transmission has not continued any further beyond one person.
To minimize the possibility of infection, observe precautions to safeguard your health. Specifically, travelers should avoid all contact with poultry (e.g., chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, quail) or any wild birds, and avoid settings where H5N1-infected poultry may be present, such as commercial or backyard poultry farms and live poultry markets. Do not eat uncooked or undercooked poultry or poultry products, including dishes made with uncooked poultry blood.
As with other infectious illnesses, one of the most important preventive practices is careful and frequent hand-washing. Cleaning your hands often, using either soap and water (or waterless, alcohol-based hand rubs when soap is not available and hands are not visibly soiled), removes potentially infectious materials from your skin and helps prevent disease transmission.
When preparing food:
· Separate raw meat from cooked or ready-to-eat foods. Do not use the same chopping board or the same knife for preparing raw meat and cooked or ready-to-eat foods.
· Do not handle either raw or cooked foods without washing your hands in between.
· Do not place cooked meat back on the same plate or surface it was on before it was cooked.
· All foods from poultry, including eggs and poultry blood, should be cooked thoroughly. Egg yolks should not be runny or liquid. Because influenza viruses are destroyed by heat, the cooking temperature for poultry meat should reach 70°C (158° F).
· Wash egg shells in soapy water before handling and cooking, and wash your hands afterwards.
· Do not use raw or soft-boiled eggs in foods that will not be cooked.
· After handling raw poultry or eggs, wash your hands and all surfaces and utensils thoroughly with soap and water.
If you believe you might have been exposed to avian influenza, take the following precautions:
· Monitor your health for 10 days.
· If you become ill with fever and develop a cough or difficulty breathing, or if you develop any illness during this 10-day period, consult a health-care provider. Before you visit a health-care setting, tell the provider the following: 1) your symptoms 2) if you have had direct poultry contact, and 3) where you traveled.
· Do not travel while sick, and limit contact with others as much as possible to help prevent the spread of any infectious illness.
There appears to be little risk for travelers and expatriates at this time. Most or all humans infected have been in close contact with sick birds.
· There is no need to alter travel plans.
· Consider having a seasonal influenza vaccination. Although this will not protect you against avian flu, it reduces the risk of seasonal influenza. Thus it reduces the chance of becoming co-infected with both seasonal and avian influenza; such co-infection could result in a pandemic strain of flu.

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