Word: flu
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Almost since the day the H5N1 virus was first discovered, India has loudly proclaimed itself free of the bird flu it causes. The discovery that 50,000 chickens have died of H5N1 in the western state of Maharashtra has confirmed what many long suspected: that for a vast country with a chicken population of around 2.4 billion producing 33 billion eggs a year on 160,000 farms, the arrival of a disease thought to be spread by migratory birds was only a matter of time...
...Some suspect bird flu has been in India for a while, but merely gone undetected. Indeed Maharashtra's Animal Husbandry Minister himself suggested the outbreak began in mid-January. "As they died, truck drivers just dumped them on the highways," says Anees Ahmed. "The damage would have been less if we had been informed on time, but we were not kept in the picture." Nor does India's record on dampening the spread of other diseases inspire confidence. While some southern states, which are generally richer and have better healthcare, have won commendation from health experts for their efforts...
...sheer number and severity of Africa's ills puts bird flu in perspective. Medical resources in Africa are cruelly finite?death tolls rise and fall according to how well those resources are allocated. Africa has no shortage of candidates to compete for triage: an estimated 6,600 Africans die of AIDS every day, 3,000 die of malaria, 24,000 of hunger and poverty. As long as bird flu primarily remains a threat to birds, it just doesn't compare with these everyday scourges. Even South Africa, the nation best equipped to respond to bird flu, faces...
...This does not mean the world should neglect to take prudent steps to fight bird flu?a pandemic could become the greatest health catastrophe the modern world has ever faced. Avian flu is already beginning to cause real economic pain. When infected wild birds were detected last week in European countries, poultry sales across the continent plummeted. But a handful of dead swans on the Danube and a bad quarter for chicken sellers in Rome isn't why we're spending billions to fight bird flu. We want to stop the big one. A report released last week...
...hardly the only frightening pandemic predictions circulating these days. Last month, two doctors in Minnesota published a modest paper in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. The authors point out that even in a weak pandemic there would be far fewer mechanical ventilators than the number of desperately ill flu patients who would need them to survive. "In this situation," they write, "triage of resources would be needed to offer 'the greatest good for the greatest number.'" That means that the very sick or the very old would probably be denied ventilator support?even removed from the machines?in favor...