Health Articles : Infections : Bird Flu
Bird Flu Virus : Bird Flu Threat
Bird Flu TransmissionStudies have revealed that the avian H5N1 an airborne virus which is found to be the main causative agent of the avian flu ..... Bird flu pandemic could kill 2 million Americans and 150 million people worldwide. Claims like that surely do get your attention. At any rate, they have surely gotten people's attention in Washington, D.C., where our solons are posturing and bloviating about what the Feds should to do to protect us. Earlier this month, the Senate passed the legislation authorizing $3.9 billion to the purchase of the antiviral drugs. President Bush met with the experts and generally hectored all five remaining U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Bush also suggested that he would use the military to enforce the quarantines in the event of an outbursts and the Sen. Chuck Schumer is once again trying to suspend a pharmaceutical company's patent, allegedly to protect the public's health.
The arrival of this new bird influenza virus, the H5N1 strain, is what's provoking these alarums. But the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic disturbs these discussions. The 1918 outbursts killed between 20 million and 50 million people worldwide including some 500,000 to 675,000 Americans. Since 1918 there have been many other flu pandemics. The Asian flu killed almost 70,000 Americans in 1957-58 and the Hong Kong flu killed 34,000 in 1968. Today, around 36,000 Americans die out of influenza and of its complications annually. So far, while the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed tens of millions of birds, it has infected only 116 people, killing 60 of them. Approximately all of the infected people got the disease from intimate exposure to poultry.
The fear among virologists and epidemiologists is that the H5N1 strain will mutate into a type that can be transmitted from person to person. Throughout history the more virulent kinds of influenza derived from birds. Flu viruses constantly mutate and change, which is why a new shot of vaccine is required each year to immunize people against that year's dominant strains. The genes that code for the surface molecules that help the flu viruses enter and infect the host cells mutate in ways that keep the flu virus ahead of the human immune systems. The two chief surface molecules included with infections are hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, the "H" and the "N" that define different flu strains.
Bird Flu InformationThe World Health Organization (WHO) has reported an outburst of a highly pathogenic avian influenza .....
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