Word: h5n1
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...most serious known health threat facing the world is avian flu." LEE JONG WOOK, World Health Organization director-general, on the H5N1 virus that killed at least 36 people in Asia...
AVIAN FLU The possibility of a flu pandemic dominated the news for much of the fall, although the death toll from the virus that has health officials most worried--the so-called H5N1 strain--remains vastly greater in birds than humans. So far, 132 people in Southeast Asia and China are known to have been infected, and more than half of them have died. Meanwhile, millions of chickens and ducks have been slaughtered in a last-ditch attempt to keep the virus from spreading--an effort made more difficult by migrating flocks of wild birds that have carried the virus...
Poultry was on the lunch menu and on the agenda at World Health Organization (WHO) this week as animal and health experts from 100 countries discussed how to respond to the avian flu virus that has killed 65 people in Asia. The fear, of course, is that the H5N1 virus will kill millions more if it mutates into a form that can be transmitted from human to human-the WHO conservatively estimates that in this worst-case scenario, the virus will infect between one quarter and one third of the world's population, and kill between 2 million...
...failing to prepare: Over the past month alone, the number of governments that have put in place pandemic response plans has risen from 20 percent to 60 percent. "We've reached a greater consensus and clarity on what has to be done to control the spread of the H5N1 virus," Dr. David Nabarro, United Nations Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza told TIME. "If we continue to make inroads, we'll end up with a smaller and less virulent pandemic that we expected...
...Despite the almost palpable aura of optimism in the WHO's hallways as the conference concluded on Wednesday, the danger of a pandemic remains present and real. Nobody knows when or whether H5N1 will mutate to humans and unleash the dreaded pandemic, and whether we will be prepared in time to minimize its impact. At least now, however, the alarm has been sounded-and heard...