Word: influenza
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...drowned two days before in a fishpond near their home in northern Vietnam's Thai Binh province, and Viet was undone by the death. At the funeral the family served raw duck blood and porridge?rural comfort food. Although they had heard that the avian influenza that swept Southeast Asia last year had returned, they thought the disease was confined to the south. The day after the funeral, Viet fell sick with flulike symptoms. He was hospitalized on Dec. 31, and tested negative for the H5N1 virus that causes avian flu. Viet deteriorated rapidly and died...
...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...
With 44 people infected and 32 dead from the avian flu, it wasn't a good year to spend time near ducks or chickens, particularly in Southeast Asia. Millions of fowl were culled in Thailand and Vietnam, which bore the brunt of this year's outbreak of H5N1 influenza, as fear of a widespread epidemic mounted. Public-health officials were particularly alarmed when the virus showed up in tigers, leopards and pigs, mammals that often serve as influenza bridges from animal reservoirs to humans. And in Thailand scientists identified one case of what they fear was human-to-human transmission...
...guidelines will also allow hospitals and health clinics to vaccinate all children aged six to 23 months, parents of children six months and younger, persons two to 64 years with any underlying chronic medical conditions, all women who will be pregnant during influenza season, and all residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities...
...before the flu hit, life expectancy in the U.S. was 51 years. In 1918, it was 39 years-a drop that was due almost entirely to the flu. Worldwide, 100 million or more may have died from the Spanish flu, including 20 million in India alone. And with avian influenza, it could happen all over again...