Word: viruses
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...that it will continue to spread. "The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," warned Dr. Shigeru Omi, the Western Pacific regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO), during an international bird-flu conference last week in Ho Chi Minh City. "The longer the virus is circulating in animals, the greater the risk of more human cases?and consequently, the higher the risk of a pandemic emerging through genetic changes in the virus...
...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...
...stubborn spread of bird flu, first among poultry, then in a handful of human beings. So far, Cambodia hasn't reported any major outbreaks, but Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong, fears it may already be entrenched there. "This virus is not just endemic in Vietnam and Thailand," he says. "In countries like Cambodia they don't have a systematic surveillance program, so we don't know yet. But I'm sure the virus is endemic in Southeast Asia...
...could wreck regional control efforts. With the help of the WHO, Cambodian officials have begun to slowly step up surveillance and education programs. But to contain the disease, Cambodia and its neighbors would need to radically modernize their animal husbandry practices, separating species (ducks are able to spread the virus without showing symptoms), keeping birds in pens and properly vaccinating flocks. The trouble is, such measures would require hundreds of millions of dollars to educate and equip poor farmers?money that developing countries clearly can ill afford. Officials at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which co-sponsored...
...virus does not yet transmit easily from person to person, but recent research suggests that human infections may be more common than previously believed. The Feb. 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported that one person in Vietnam thought to have died of encephalitis last spring was actually infected with bird flu. The case was misdiagnosed because the patient did not show the respiratory symptoms typical of avian flu. Instead, the virus attacked the brain and the patient fell into a coma before dying. "We must have been missing cases," says Dr. Jeremy Farrar...