 |
Archive |
|
||||||||
World on alert as bird flu (H5N1 virus) reaches EuropeFor the last two months health authorities and government leaders around the globe have been holding hastily arranged cabinet meetings and medical conferences in a desperate attempt to prepare for what many fear is an inevitable influenza pandemic that the world is ill prepared to cope with. As communicable disease experts carefully scrutinize daily medical reports for the first signs of the impending pandemic, public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, and strategies to quarantine and treat the ill. Unfortunately, all of these plans will take several years to implement, and the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, on an almost daily basis. Driving this unparalleled level of international cooperation is the simple fact that a global influenza pandemic has nothing in common with the relatively mild forms of flu that appear every year. Common influenza is caused by well-known strains of flu that have circulated through the human population for decades or longer. Since humans already possess broad immunity to these garden-variety strains, they can only cause reinfection by slightly altering their genes from year to year, usually resulting in only mild discomfort. Pandemic influenza, on the other hand, is a rare and deadly form of virus that can only arise after a new strain from an animal source mixes its genes with a common human bug to produce a completely new strain that is highly contagious, extremely deadly, and to which people have absolutely no prior immunity
Global Medical Community not Prepared for PandemicThe "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 100 million people. If such an outbreak were to occur today many health experts predict that the combination of increased population density (3 times higher than in 1918) and rapid global travel could spread the virus across the globe in a matter of days and make containment almost impossible. The problem would be further exacerbated by the shortage of effective antiviral drugs and vaccines. According to even the most optimistic estimates, current supplies of vaccines and drugs are far too low to control a major outbreak, let alone contain a full-fledged global pandemic. Writing in the July 31, 2005 Washington Post, reporter David Brown points out that “if the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent. Theoretically, antiviral drugs could slow an outbreak and buy time. The problem is only one licensed drug, oseltamivir (Tamiflu), appears to work against bird flu. At the moment, there is not enough stockpiled for widespread use. Nor is there a plan to deploy the small amount that exists in ways that would have the best chance of slowing the disease.” Currently there is no vaccine that can protect against the H5N1 avian flu virus because scientists do not yet know what the final strain will be. According to The Guardian some manufacturers are working on general H5N1 vaccines which they hope would provide some protection in the event of a pandemic, but these remain unproven. Making matters even worse, a new strain of the bird flu virus recently isolated from an infected Vietnamese girl has been determined to be resistant to Tamiflu, the aforementioned drug that health officials are counting on to combat an avian influenza pandemic. In light of a lack of adequate treatments, U.S. public health specialists are drawing up unprecedented countermeasures to slow the spread of a pandemic, including vaccinating only children; mandatory closing of schools or office buildings; and imposing quarantines on infected families to prohibit them from leaving their homes. And around the globe authorities are drafting similar drastic measures to contain an outbreak, including restricting international travel, shutting down public transit systems and nationalizing supplies of critical medical equipment, such as surgical masks. Herbal Formula Effective in Hong Kong Health CrisisWhile Western health experts and drug companies try to cope with a lack of vaccines and antiviral drugs, emergency health authorities in China have been quietly stockpiling a unique anti-viral herbal formula that has already been shown to be effective for protecting those at highest risk of infection during a viral outbreak — the front-line doctors and nurses who risk their lives to control the outbreak. When SARS first appeared in Hong Kong in March 2003, the disease proved incredibly difficult to treat. Antibiotics and standard antiviral drugs, including a powerful combination of the anti-viral drug ribavirin and steroids, turned out to be totally ineffective. Compounding the SARS crisis was the alarming discovery that front-line healthcare workers were especially vulnerable — up to 25% of all cases were the very doctors and nurses caring for the ill. Confronted with a deadly, highly virulent virus that was resistant to conventional treatments, Hong Kong health authorities desperately sought out any means for treating the new disease. Then in mid-April officials noted a curious anomaly — even as doctors and nurses at Western-style hospitals continued to become sick, their medical peers staffing the traditional Chinese medicine clinics throughout Hong Kong were remaining healthy and infection-free despite working in close proximity to infected patients. As the authorities quickly learned, the clinic workers were boosting their immune systems to prevent infection by taking a unique antiviral herbal formula that had been produced by medical experts at the city’s Chinese University. Within days hospital authorities had rushed 40,000 doses of the formula to at-risk health care workers across the city, while a special team of epidemiologists from the University of Hong Kong monitored the workers to track their exposure to the virus. After two weeks the researchers reported the blood samples revealed that not even a single health worker had contracted the infection after taking the herbal formula. Additionally, the blood samples showed that the formula was significantly boosting the workers immunological functions, indicating an ability to prevent viral infection at the very earliest stages of exposure. The epidemiological team concluded that their evaluation indicated that the herbal formula was a suitable preparation for preventing influenza-like infections. Natural Antiviral Herbal Support for Colds and FluThe formula used in Hong Kong was based on the work of one of the leading experts of modern Chinese medicine (and the inventor of Vital Cell), Dr. Dexin Yan. In 1990 Dr. Yan launched an intensive study of the effects of three traditional cold and flu formulas. The first, Yin Chiao, was shown to be effective for stopping a cold if taken at the first sign of an infection. The second formula, Gan Mao Ling, was found to significantly reduce the duration of a cold or flu if taken after infection had already set in. And the last formula, Zhong Gan Ling, turned out to be extremely effective for treating the flu, especially when present with a high fever. Dr. Yan combined the best elements of all three formulas. Additionally, he increased the amount of three important medicinal herbs, ilex, isatis, and forsythia, that new research has shown exert powerful, antiviral actions. Dr. Yan then went to the next step, adding elements from a fourth formula, Pe Min Kan Wan, which acts as an effective nasal decongestant. After extensive testing and clinical evaluation to determine the precise percentage of each herbal ingredient, Dr. Yan finally arrived at a single formula that stops colds or flu when taken at the first sign, and speeds up recovery when taken after a cold or flu has already started. Best of all, reports from Dr. Yan’s patients revealed that the formula was especially effective at alleviating such common symptoms as nasal congestion, headaches and stuffy head symptoms, without the side effects of over-the-counter medications.
|
Anti-Viral
Formula now Available in the United States
The content provided by this site is for informational purposes
only and has ©2008 cassmd.com, all rights reserved. |