Million Hit By Illness Worse Than Swine Flu In Ukraine

A deadly plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbors into a state of panic.

A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.

President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”

In a TV interview, the President added: “Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine – two seasonal flus and the Californian flu

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Scientists Discover New Virus Invading US Honeybees

The invading bee virus newly discovered in the U.S. is called Varroa Destructor Virus -1 VDV-1. First definitively identified in Europe in 2006, VDV-1 is carried by both honeybees and the tiny varroa mites that affect them. VDV-1 is related to a family of paralytic viruses that causes a breakdown of some membranes.

In silkworms the virus causes flaccid disease, which causes the worms to digest themselves internally.
The virus was discovered using a technology developed for battlefield detection of viruses. This technology, called Integrated Virus Detection System / Proteomic Mass Spectrometry, reveals virus by size and peptide information contained in a sample and compares that information against known genetic sequences.

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Mystery Fever ‘Virus’ Kills 210 In India

The reports of 35 more patients falling to the mystery fever in Kanpur Dehat villages on Tuesday put the administration on tenterhooks.

While senior officials miserably failed to confirm the toll as teams of state health department and experts of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, who were rushed to Kanpur by the Centre to collect samples, too failed to shed light on the disease.

The deadly virus has, so far, claimed 210 lives across 350 villages of Akbarpur, Rasoolabad, Bhognipur and Sikandara tehsils of Kanpur Dehat, leaving villagers panicky. While they have helplessly watched their near ones dying, health experts have no idea about how to check spread of the killer virus.

After making its presence felt in about 350 villages of Kanpur Dehat within a couple of weeks, the virus is now spreading its tentacles into bordering districts of Mainpuri, Etawah, Farrukhabad and Kannauj.

“We are actually at a loss as how to tackle it,”said a paediatrician at the District Hospital. The hospital is already struggling to cope with the heavy influx of patients suffering from fever and viral infection.

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