Word: birde
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...What role can drugs play in tackling a swine flu outbreak? Over the last few years, concern over a bird flu pandemic spurred many governments to stockpile antivirals. While the current swine flu outbreak remains limited in scope, health agencies will likely offer antivirals as a prophylaxis only to those who may have been exposed to the disease: asymptomatic passengers on the same flight as a sick Spanish man, for example, have been given Oseltamivir as a precaution. In New Zealand and Mexico, where there are confirmed cases of the disease, the drug has been made available over-the-counter...
...patient sheds (because the patient is not as severely ill) and shortens the length of time he or she sheds virus at all. Taking this into account, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in London has used mathematical modeling to show that antivirals would help slow the spread of a bird flu virus originating in Asia. While the model should hold true for a swine flu arising in Central America, as well, no one knows for sure as the drugs have never been used to tackle an epidemic or pandemic before. (See pictures of bird...
...originated in pigs. There's been no evidence yet of pigs getting sick in either Mexico or the U.S. (Despite several countries' bans on pork imports, it's important to remember that the disease cannot be contracted by eating pork.) The original reservoir for flu viruses is actually wild birds, which can spread infection to domestic birds and people - as we saw with the H5N1 avian flu in Asia - and to pigs. Pigs make particularly good biological mixing bowls since they can be infected by bird-, swine- and human-flu viruses and provide a hospitable environment for the viruses...
...recent years, since the ongoing H5N1 bird-flu virus first surfaced, health officials have focused mostly on Asia as the breeding ground for the world's next pandemic flu virus. But Daszak points out that Mexico, where people, pigs and poultry can exist in close proximity, is an overlooked hot spot for new viruses. Given the booming global livestock trade - more than 1.5 billion live animals have been shipped to the U.S. from all over the world in the past decade - it's possible that the A/H1N1 virus originated in an Asian bird that was exported to Mexico, where...
...most likely missed its chance to contain the virus. When the WHO's pandemic alert system was first conceived, phase 4 was intended to indicate the moment when a new flu virus had been identified and could spread effectively from person to person (as Asia's H5N1's bird flu virus, which reached phase 3, has never been able to do), but was still limited enough that health officials could launch a global effort to contain it and snuff it out with antiviral drugs...