Word: flu
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...start would be to trace how, when and where the H1N1 virus emerged from pigs into people (or vice versa - over the weekend, Canada confirmed reports that a swine worker in Alberta passed the H1N1 virus to pigs). The H1N1 virus contains human, avian and swine flu genes, and genetic analysis indicates that it reassorted years ago, meaning it could have been in pig populations for some time before the virus gained the ability to transmit easily from person to person. If we had had tight surveillance of flu infections among swine, we might have noticed that something...
...where the CDC has confirmed 286 cases of H1N1 in nearly every state, health officials noted that the illness remained mild. Still, officials point out the need to maintain strict surveillance for new cases, in the U.S. and especially in countries in the southern hemisphere, where flu season is about to begin. (See the top five swine flu...
...unlike diseases like foot and mouth, swine flu is not an infection that is automatically reported to national health authorities. Flu is common among pigs but not much more deadly than it usually is among people. (The H5N1 bird flu virus, by comparison, destroys poultry populations.) That means that flu infections in swine herds can easily fall under the radar, as seems to have been the case with the new H1N1. Though there were sporadic reports of flu infections passing from pigs to people over the past few years, "we hadn't seen anything that tipped us off that this...
...then moved to America and Mexico with pigs before infecting the first human. "It's going to take several weeks and maybe months to get a clearer picture," says Juan Lubroth, a senior officer at the FAO. "There's just a lot that we don't know." (Read "Swine Flu: Don't Blame...
...poor cousin to human health, chronically underfunded. But if we are serious about heading off new infections, we need to increase available resources and make sure that veterinarians are looking out for new diseases in livestock and wildlife in the same way that the WHO's global flu network is constantly monitoring the world's human population for new influenza strains. As we've seen with H1N1, once a new flu has emerged and begun spreading among people, it's likely too late to contain. "What we need to do is upstream surveillance in animals and wildlife," says William Karesh...