Word: h5n1
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Bird flu may have fallen off the media radar lately, but that doesn't mean the threat has passed. Poultry continue to die from the H5N1 virus, and human cases have lately popped up in Egypt, Laos and Cambodia. The frontline in the war against the disease remains the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia, which has recorded more bird flu fatalities - 75 deaths, including 18 this year - than any other country. But the world only has a partial idea of what's happening with bird flu in Indonesia. That's because the country stopping sharing samples of the H5N1 virus...
...dispute has centered on future flu vaccines that might be used from Indonesian viruses, but in reality that question could be moot. If H5N1 in Indonesia were to mutate significantly tomorrow and begin passing easily from human to human, triggering a pandemic, the virus would spread around the world rapidly. Scientists would begin working on a vaccine based on the pandemic virus, but it currently takes about six months to produce a new flu vaccine. (By contrast, the most recent influenza pandemics in 1968 and 1957 crossed the globe in about four months - and that was before widespread jet travel...
...almost all from the developing world, die from diseases that could be easily prevented with a vaccine. For most of us, those needless deaths prick our consciences and motivate us to open our wallets, but they don't threaten our own health. Avian influenza is different. Though the H5N1 virus is spreading and killing mainly in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, the possibility that bird flu could mutate and become a pandemic is a serious threat to us all. That's why Jakarta's fight with the World Health Organization (WHO) over how an avian-flu vaccine should be developed...
...every nation to track bird flu as it changes. But Jakarta got the attention of WHO officials, who came to the Indonesian capital earlier this week for an emergency meeting at which Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari called the current distribution system "more dangerous than the threat of an H5N1 pandemic itself." On March 27 the two sides reached a temporary compromise: Indonesia would resume sharing virus samples with the WHO, but for now that access wouldn't be extended to the drug industry. That means scientists can once again track the virus as it mutates, but companies...
...most, has barely been used. It's only been in prescription drug-happy Japan, where the government effectively made Tamiflu free, that the drug became popular before bird flu made it a household word. But because Tamiflu has been one of the few drugs to show effectiveness against H5N1 avian flu, it has become the key pharmacological component in international pandemic preparation plans. If a pandemic were to strike tomorrow, tens of millions of people could soon be given Tamiflu. So while it is unlikely that the drug will be withheld due to the nebulous concerns out of Japan...