| In todays' paper the bird like flu epidemic is once again in the news.
Doctors advise that when this flu arrives in the USA it will be fatal; and very little is being done to prevent it from becoming Global.
Experts met this week at the Worlds Health Organization headquarters in Switzerland.
A vaccine is unlikely to prevent global spread of a pandemic strain of flu virus., but it could save ;millions of lives.
To do so would cost, and would the world be ready to foot this kind of expense?
I researched an article about this Avian Flu and am posting it below/ Jeeze we don't have enough problems to worry with we have to worry about Bird Flu.
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Fears that bird flu outbreak could go global
January 16, 2004 - 4:56PM
health officials worry that a strain of influenza that's killed several people in Hanoi, Vietnam, and millions of chickens in Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan could trigger a deadly worldwide epidemic.
So far, one essential factor seems to be missing, experts added gratefully: While the disease has jumped from birds to humans, it hasn't spread from person to person.
If that happens, US and global infectious disease officials say, the new bird flu could trigger a pandemic, a global epidemic fatal to millions, such as those that struck in 1918, 1957 and 1968. In each of those years, a bird or pig flu virus jumped to humans and proved so different from human influenza that victims had no immunity to it.
Thirteen people in Vietnam have died of what officials suspect is a flu to which humans lack natural immunity. Health officials have confirmed avian flu - meaning flu from birds - in the deaths of two children and an adult. The other 10 deaths and five living patients are yet to be confirmed as avian flu.
The disease is proving nearly 100 per cent fatal in chickens and is spreading to pigs and ducks in Vietnam, according to the World Health Organization. It's been confirmed in chickens in Japan and South Korea and is considered a likely cause of chicken deaths in Taiwan. Hundreds of thousands of poultry in those countries are being destroyed to control the disease.
The WHO said today that this strain of bird flu - called H5N1 - was "of particular public health concern" because it's so deadly to chickens and people, and has very high potential to mutate and become more infectious among humans.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is very concerned and will send doctors to Vietnam next week, agency spokesman David Daigle said.
"We're all worried," said Dr Paul Glezen, the head of the Influenza Research Centre at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "The more it spreads in poultry, the more hits there are going to be in humans. It just raises the odds."
The "good news" is that so far the disease has spread only from chicken to person and DNA sequencing shows that the virus has yet to acquire human genes, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said today.
But it's also human flu season in Vietnam. If someone gets sick with both human and bird flu, the super-adaptable influenza viruses can merge and become contagious person to person. If that happens, today's WHO announcement said, it "would mark the start of an influenza pandemic".
The disease could spread worldwide at epidemic proportions in less than three months, Baylor's Glezen said.
If doctors verify that the disease spreads from person to person, the US government will activate its new flu-pandemic plan to try to limit it, said Dr Bruce Gellin, a top Health and Human Services official in Washington. So far it hasn't been needed.
Flare-ups of bird flu in Hong Kong in 1997, 1999 and 2003 and in the Netherlands last April were effectively contained by quickly killing chickens. Each episode killed at least one person.
Doctors have been unable to create a vaccine for the new bird flu, Glezen said.
Where is Medical Investigation's top ace Neal McDonough when we need him.??? | |
