Word: avian
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...living quarters and sold live at unhygienic wet markets. In neighboring countries Thailand and Vietnam, such conditions led to the stubborn spread of bird flu, first among poultry, then in a handful of human beings. So far, Cambodia hasn't reported any major outbreaks, but Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong, fears it may already be entrenched there. "This virus is not just endemic in Vietnam and Thailand," he says. "In countries like Cambodia they don't have a systematic surveillance program, so we don't know yet. But I'm sure...
...that developing countries clearly can ill afford. Officials at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which co-sponsored the Ho Chi Minh City conference, have appealed for international help with little success; wealthy donor nations contributed only $18 million of the $100 million needed last year to combat avian flu in Asia. "Given the size of the problem, that's just glaringly insufficient," says Dr. Samuel Jutzi, director of the FAO's animal production and health division...
Where has bird flu been found so far? Cases of the most powerful form of avian flu, caused by the H5N1 virus, have been reported in Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam...
...strengthen disease surveillance, stockpile antiviral drugs like Tamiflu, and boost research on a human vaccine that will soon go into clinical trials. In Thailand, where 12 people have died of the disease since the beginning of 2004, the government last week launched a $117 million fund to fight avian flu over the next three years, with an 800,000-strong team of volunteers. Experts say that kind of initiative is needed from every country. "We live in a highly integrated world," says Dr. William Aldis, head of the WHO's Bangkok office. "The worst country in the world...
...showed that the H5N1 virus has become progressively hardier and more lethal, with a human mortality rate of 75%. Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, says he's shocked by the virulence of avian flu in the patients he has helped treat: "I've never experienced anything like it in terms of its destructive power. It is staggering in terms of how much lung tissue is destroyed." Nguyen Thanh Hung, one of the few to survive avian flu, says the disease is pure misery...