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- Detect avian flu.
- No vaccine has ever cured a virus in medical history.
- Why the bird flu gets more dangerous.
- Inadequate medical facilities
- Avian influenza history.
- Influenza pandemics: can they be averted?
- Who is at risk for influenza?
- Don’t take any risk.
Detect avian flu.
Avian influenza in humans can be detected with standard influenza tests. However, these tests have not always proved reliable. In March 2005, the World Health Organization announced that seven Vietnamese who initially tested negative for bird flu were later found to have carried the virus. All seven have since recovered from the disease. Currently (6/05) the most reliable test (microneutralization) requires use of the live virus to interact with antibodies from the patient's blood; because live virus is required, for safety reasons the test can only be done in a level 3 laboratory.
No vaccine has ever cured a virus in medical history.
Antiviral drugs are sometimes effective in both preventing and treating the disease, but no virus has ever been really cured in medical history. Vaccines, however, take at least four months to produce and must be prepared for each subtype. Further, as a result of widespread use of the antiviral drug amantadine as a preventive or treatment for chickens in China starting in the late 1990's, some strains of the avian flu virus in Asia has developed drug resistance against amantadine [4]. Chickens in China have received an estimated 2.6 billion doses of amantadine since early 2004. This use of amantadine for poultry goes against international livestock regulations, but China kept it secret until recently, in a manner reminiscent of the secrecy around the early spread of SARS. More info at: Wikipedia.org
The bird flu gets more dangerous, but less lethal
This is what concerns the WHO and the CDC. These are the people who are experts in infectious disease and who know the history of pandemics. If this virus kill rate drops even further, down to about 25 percent, it will become even more deadly in a global sense. It will become more of a pandemic threat because the virus will easily slip out of the country -- out of China, Korea, and Thailand or wherever it happens to be at the moment. It will slip out, infect some tourists or business travelers, get onto airplanes and into airports and then move very rapidly from one country to another.
Inadequate medical facilities
First off, there are not enough hospital facilities in any country, not even developed countries, to handle the massive influx of patients expected from a bird flu pandemic. If this thing gets out and starts infecting a percentage of the population, health authorities are basically going to start turning away patients at medical facilities. They will have to.
Avian influenza history.
Avian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza virus. The disease, which was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago, occurs worldwide.
During a 1983–1984 epidemic in the United States of America, the H5N2 virus initially caused low mortality, but within six months became highly pathogenic, with a mortality approaching 90%. Control of the outbreak required destruction of more than 17 million birds at a cost of nearly US$ 65 million. During a 1999–2001 epidemic in Italy, the H7N1 virus, initially of low pathogenicity, mutated within 9 months to a highly pathogenic form. More than 13 million birds died or were destroyed.
Influenza pandemics: can they be averted?
Based on historical patterns, influenza pandemics can be expected to occur, on average, three to four times each century when new virus subtypes emerge and are readily transmitted from person to person. However, the occurrence of influenza pandemics is unpredictable. In the 20th century, the great influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which caused an estimated 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide, was followed by pandemics in 1957–1958 and 1968–1969.
Experts agree that another influenza pandemic is inevitable and possibly imminent.
Source for more information:
Of the 16 subtypes known, only subtypes H5, H7 and H9 are known to be capable of crossing the species barrier from birds to humans. It is feared that if the avian influenza virus undergoes antigenic shift with a human influenza virus, the new subtype created could be both highly contagious and highly lethal in humans. Such a subtype could cause a global influenza pandemic, similar to the Spanish Flu that killed over 20 million people in 1918 (though a variety of sources quote average figures even higher, up to 100 million in some cases). Many health experts are concerned that a virus that mutates to the point where it can cross the species barrier (i.e. from birds to humans) will inevitably mutate to the point where it can be transmitted from human to human. It is at that point that a pandemic becomes likely. Influenza viruses that infect birds are called “avian influenza viruses.” Only influenza A viruses infect birds. All known subtypes of influenza A virus can infect birds.
However, there are substantial genetic differences between the subtypes that typically infect both people and birds. Within subtypes of avian influenza viruses there also are different strains (described in “Strains”). Avian influenza H5 and H7 viruses can be distinguished as “low pathogenic” and “high pathogenic” forms on the basis of genetic features of the virus and the severity of the illness they cause in poultry; influenza H9 virus has been identified only in a “low pathogenicity” form. Each of these three avian influenza viruses (H5, H7, and H9) can theoretically be partnered with any one of nine neuraminidase surface proteins; thus, there are potentially nine different forms of each subtype (e.g., H5N1, H5N2, H5N3 ... H5N9).
Who is at risk for influenza?
Anyone can get influenza, but the risk of complications is highest is these groups:
• Persons aged 65 years and older
• Residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities
• Adults and children with long-lasting disorders of the lungs or heart, including children with asthma
• Adults and children with diabetes, kidney disease, or weakened immune systems
• Women who will be in the second or third trimester of pregnancy during influenza season
• Health-care workers, household members, and others who are in contact with persons at high risk for influenza and influenza-related complications.
Don’t take any risk.
Get your body in shape
Why you may need an intracellular vitamin analysis?
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