Word: h5n1
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...health officials so worried? There is currently no vaccine against H5N1, so it could spread easily in populations with no immunity to the virus. So far, there have been no confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission (all victims so far have contracted it from chickens or ducks). But because the virus is so unstable, it may only be a matter of time before it becomes efficient at moving from person to person. Even if a vaccine were available, it would take months before the correct combination of viral-strain types could be incorporated into the shot. In the meantime...
...were health authorities, who initially feared that the Nguyen family cluster meant the H5N1 virus?which usually only spreads from bird to human in isolated cases?might now be moving from person to person. Since the disease first began jumping from birds to people in 1997, scientists have been worried that the lethal virus could mutate to gain the ability to transmit from one person to another as easily as a normal human-flu virus. That would open the door for a global influenza pandemic that could kill millions...
...poultry populations in almost half of the country's 64 provinces. Most worrisome of all, the increased poultry sales and mass travel that mark the coming Tet Lunar New Year festival (beginning Feb. 9) are the perfect ingredients for an explosive rise in infections?and every infection gives the H5N1 virus the opportunity to further adapt to humans. "If something is going to cook, Tet is when it's going to happen," says Dr. Robert Webster, an avian-flu expert at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis...
...Given enough time, Vietnam should be able to tighten control over its poultry trade. The trouble is, bird flu may not wait that long. The disease is already endemic in much of Asia, and a recent WHO report 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...