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Are you prepared for those nasty stomach viruses that can sometimes invade your home? You know the ones where you are up all night holding your baby’s head, not to mention cleaning up the beds, steam cleaning the carpet and doing laundry in the wee hours of the morning. Multiply this by every member in your home and it is not a day at the beach. I want to help you turn a rough night into just a bad dream instead of a nightmare.

When the bug attacks your family, it is usually in the middle of the night and you can’t run to the pharmacy; you need to have the necessary supplies at your fingertips. Keep in mind that you can get dehydrated very quickly when this happens. So what do you need? Grab an old beach bag and gather up.

Ask your doctor what is best and keep it on hand. When my son was little, a sports drink was just about the only thing that would replace electrolytes. Now there is Pedialite and Popsicles for the children and many other kinds of sports drinks. There are some over- the-counter medicines that will help to stop the throwing up and queasiness. (We used Emotrol.)

So what do you do? After the initial explosion, it is time to clean up. The longer it stays on the bed and in the carpet the worse this is going to be; a small handheld carpet steamer is going to make your life easier. While cleaning up you still have to make a place for your babies to rest: a little air mattress that blows up quickly can be put in the bathroom or close by. Poor babies! (By the way, nothing says “I love you” like a clean toilet at this time.) Also a handy garbage can for those times that you can’t get there! You may even want to give them a little incentive for hitting the bucket.

At times when the whole family is in distress, it’s good to have a sheet in your Control Journal that outlines what to do in case you are the one who is sick and your spouse is in charge. Barking out orders when you feel bad doesn’t come across well. If it’s written down and you have things on hand, there’s no panic.

What foods do you keep on hand? My pediatrician always told us to only feed the baby clear soups and diluted juices. This means no noodles. One food that my granny used to fix for us was a very simple potato soup. Take a potato and grate it in a saucepan, add water to cover over it a little and a bit of salt and cook until it is done; only a few short minutes. Remember don’t feed your family grape juice or red cranberry juice; that makes an even bigger mess to clean up. There are white versions of both. Dry toast, crackers and plenty of TLC and you will be back to normal in a few hours. Put these things in your beach bag.

Use the Internet to read up and print out the signs for dehydration. Keep this in your Control Journal. The one sign I know is about the skin on top of your hand. If you pinch it, it will stay pinched up. Keep your doctor’s phone number in your Control Journal, too. As children’s little throats get raw, try to get them to drink some water that is cool; maybe one ice cube in it, just before they throw up. The cool water actually feels good to the back of the throat, especially if they have nothing else in their tummy but hot stomach acid. This works for morning sickness too. I am not a doctor or a nurse, but we all have to play these roles when this hits our family. Talk to your doctor about medications, set up an emergency sheet for your Control Journal that tells anyone what to do and then just stay calm and watch for signs of dehydration. Don’t forget your doctor’s phone numbers on this sheet, and wash your hand often.

When the stomach flu rages in your home, those old towels become valuable. As you upgrade your regular towels, keep a few of the old ones for times like this. An old beach towel makes a great cover for that air mattress and another one will make a blanket to cover up with. It is never fun when you are dealing with the whole family in sick mode, but you can get through it. The sand bucket can catch those accidents when your baby can’t make it to the bathroom. Then you can use the little sand shovel to scoop up the misfires. What a day at the beach!

Marla Cilley, a k a FlyLady, is the author of Sink Reflections (Bantam Books Trade Paperback). For more help, please go to her Web site: www.FlyLady.net. (c) 2005

Copyright C 2005 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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Worldwide Computer Products News-21 October 2005-New version of AVG anti-virus software announced by AVG UK(C)1995-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

Grisoft, manufacturers of the range of AVG Anti-Virus software products, has announced that AVG UK, its official UK partner, has launched a new upgrade to its AVG antivirus software family, AVG 7.1.

According to the company, the upgraded version of the software from AVG includes a number of new features such as; new remote administration features, improved file scanning, smaller update files, detection of unwanted applications, adding event history logging and additional configuration options for AVG Resident Shield.

In addition the product also provides support for Windows 64-bit Edition, although this is only applicable to customers with the full version of AVG Anti-Virus and does not extend to users of AVG Free.

Upgrades to version 7.1 can be made through the standard update process by existing AVG customers. According to the company, the upgrade is available as two updates, a "Recommended Update", available immediately, and a second update available on 24 October, which will include a number of additional components.

AVG 7.1 is available immediately and is free of charge to existing customers holding a current AVG licence.

((Comments on this story may be sent to info@m2.com))

COPYRIGHT 2005 M2 Communications Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

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M2 PRESSWIRE-18 October 2005-Emerging Stock Report: Fighting Viruses With Mother Nature(C)1994-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD RDATE:18102005 During 2004 approximately five million adults and children became infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the virus that causes AIDS. By the end of the year, an estimated 39.4 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS.

The Emerging Stock Report is following Amazon Biotech, Inc. (OTCBB:AMZB) up 44.4 today on respectable volume. The company recently announced that it has acquired the rights to purchase a controlling interest …

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LONDON — Bird flu can be expected to spread to other countries, but the biggest threat of it mutating into a human virus that could kill millions remains in Asia, the World Health Organization said Monday.

The U.N.’s flu czar, meanwhile, called for resources to be focused on the continent that has seen its flocks devastated by the virus and 60 people killed since 2003.

Local authorities moved quickly to stamp out the disease where it was found in Romania and Turkey in recent days, but in Asia the virus has become widespread and the continued mixing of people and domestic fowl creates conditions more favorable for its mutation into a strain that could catastrophically affect humans.

“There’s no question that we will expect further outbreaks of avian disease in different countries,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response at the WHO. “The Americas, Africa and the Middle East are also very much in our minds.”

The comments came as Greece reported preliminary tests found bird flu in a turkey and had narrowed down the virus to the H5 type. However, further tests are needed to confirm the finding and determine whether the virus is the deadly H5N1 strain from Asia that experts are tracking.

The strain was confirmed in Turkey on Thursday and in Romania on Saturday. It also has been detected in Russia. The spread is being blamed on wild birds migrating from Asia to Africa.

Health experts are trying to eliminate poultry outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu strain for fear it could mutate into a human virus capable of killing millions of people. The more virus there is, the more opportunities there are for it to mutate.

“These introductions in Europe do represent a worrying development . . . The pandemic risk is increased by the very extension of the bird disease,” Ryan said. “This just adds more complexity to what is already a serious issue.”

Experts believe a human flu pandemic derived from a bird virus is inevitable, but it is unknown whether the deadly H5N1 strain now spreading from Asia to Europe will be the culprit.

However, if a human pandemic strain is going to emerge from the H5N1 virus, Asia will likely be the cradle because containment efforts there have not been so successful, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said.

“The disease is highly endemic in many bird populations at the moment and humans will continue to be at risk for a significant period of time,” Ryan said.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, completing a fact-finding tour of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia over the weekend, said the mission had painted a clearer picture of how daunting it would be to contain an outbreak in Asia, where people and animals living closely together is rooted in the culture.

“Can we create a network of surveillance sufficient enough to find the spark when it happens, to get there fast enough?” he asked. “The chances of that happening are not good.”

The outbreak was first acknowledged publicly in Korea in 2003, but experts believe the virus already had been circulating in the region for some time. Other Asian countries affected by the epidemic include Japan, Myanmar and China. More than 150 million birds have either died from the disease or been slaughtered to stop its spread, but the disease has persisted.

So far, 117 people in Asia, mostly poultry farmers, have caught the disease and 60 have died. Nearly all infections have been traced to direct contact with infected birds.

In Vietnam, which has been hardest hit by the virus, the United Nations’ point man on bird flu, Dr. David Nabarro, said Monday that wealthy countries jittery about the threat of a human pandemic should dig into their wallets to help poor Asian countries prepare for the worst.

A human pandemic could cause “billions, even trillions” of dollars in damage, he contended.

“I think that this is a very strong set of economic arguments that do mean that it is right for the world to invest quite generously in the actions required to both delay the pandemic and, then if it comes, to make sure we’re ready for it,” he said.

Ryan of the WHO said Monday that to characterize this as an Asian problem or a European problem is to politicize it.

Each country must protect itself and decide how much help it can give to other countries, “in enlightened self-interest to protect themselves in the long run,” he said.

“There’s both a national responsibility to prepare for the pandemic and global responsibility to help those countries on the front line, particularly on avian disease control and on surveillance and containment activity on the human side of things,” Ryan said.

Copyright C 2005 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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Byline: Gavin King

Oct 16, 2005 (Centralian Advocate - ABIX via COMTEX) — Nurses are being brought in from Victoria to help cope with a serious rotavirus outbreak among indigenous children in Central Australia. The paediatric ward at Alice Springs Hospital has swelled to 28 patients, and Dr Rob Roseby said the outbreak was one

of the more serious in many years. Nurses at the hospital have been working …

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Byline: Paul Sellars

Oct 12, 2005 (The Weekly Times - ABIX via COMTEX) — Farmers should not rely on calicivirus to get rid of their rabbit populations, according to Dr Ron Sinclair. Sinclair, a research officer with South Australia’s Plant & Animal Control Commission, says that farmers must also rip and fumigate rabbit warrens to

ensure rabbit populations that had been affected by calcivirus did not re-establish themselves. Calicivirus has been present on the Australian …

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Scientists have resurrected the influenza virus that killed an estimated 50 million people in 1918, the worst pandemic in history.

They used a process known as ‘reverse genetics’ to reconstruct a living flu virus from dead fragments retrieved from stored hospital tissue samples and a corpse that had been buried in the frozen tundra of Alaska for 80 years. Tests on animals and human lung cells showed that the reconstructed virus retained the highly lethal properties that made the 1918 strain of influenza such a killer.

Scientists working for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, said the virus was being kept in one of its high-security laboratories.

The reconstructed virus quickly killed laboratory mice and chick embryos when they were infected with the agent. It also grew rapidly in cultured human lung cells.

In contrast, most flu viruses that infect humans today show none of these lethal characteristics, said Terrence Tumpey, whose study is published today in the journal Science.

The influenza outbreak of 1918 was the largest of the three flu pandemics of the 20th century. A separate study in the journal Nature reveals that the 1918 virus was in effect an avian flu virus that had jumped the species barrier into humans.

Copyright 2005 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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Scientists have pieced together the 1918 flu virus, resurrecting for the first time the cause of a pandemic that killed tens of millions worldwide.

Two research teams report separately today that the virus, which was re-created using genetic information from a 1918 victim exhumed from Alaskan permafrost in 1997, offers clues to the virulence of the avian flu strain that has killed 65 people in Southeast Asia and is the focus of a global meeting of health experts today in Washington, D.C.

Doctors say the research might provide information that could help prevent the next pandemic. “We have to understand much better how pandemics like this evolve their virulence,” says Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Like avian flu, the 1918 virus is closer to the current bird flu viruses than those adapted to pigs or humans. Studies in mice suggest that it’s …

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Byline: Danielle le Grand

Oct 05, 2005 (The Weekly Times - ABIX via COMTEX) — The influenza A virus (H3N8) is unlikely to spread to Australia. The virus has killed a number of greyhounds in the US, after jumping

from horses to dogs. According to Cynda Crawford, of the University of Florida, the virus could cause a respiratory disease. The mortality rate is between five and eight per

cent. Victorian veterinarian Ray Ferguson, the secretary …

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