Word: h5n1
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...race to develop a vaccine for bird flu, Vietnam has been a dark horse with early success. Vietnamese scientists have produced a prototype vaccine for the H5N1 avian-influenza strain and are planning human testing in August?just a few months behind top researchers in the U.S. There's good reason for the haste: 70% of the world's bird-flu deaths in the last two years occurred in Vietnam, and the government worries that the country could someday be ground zero of a pandemic if the flu mutates to become easily transferred among humans...
...next few years. It has a moral obligation to its own people, and to the world, to rectify the situation as soon as possible." DR. DAVID HO, U.S. aids researcher, warning in an article in the medical journal Nature that China is dangerously unprepared for an outbreak of the h5n1 virus...
...virulence, but the human death rate in hard-hit northern Vietnam has fallen to 34% this year, down from almost 80% for the entire country in 2004. Good news? Not if you're an epidemiologist. Investigators for the World Health Organization (WHO) have raised concerns that even though the H5N1 bird-flu virus appears to be weakening, it may be adapting better to human beings?potentially opening the door to a flu pandemic...
...Such dire predictions about a disease that is so far believed to have killed just 42 people might seem hyperbolic, if not for the fact that it has already proven devastating among poultry. Since the virus known to scientists as H5N1 first emerged as a major concern in 1997, more than 140 million chickens and ducks across Asia have either died or been culled in a vain attempt to eradicate the disease. Bird infections lead directly to human infections?most recently a 21-year-old Vietnamese man who was confirmed with bird flu last Friday...
...which can be mass-produced if needed. Health officials also plan to fund a year-round supply of the chicken eggs needed to grow the vaccine virus strains. In addition, they are stockpiling the antiviral drug Tamiflu, which is effective in preventing and treating even new viral strains like H5N1. --By Alice Park