2008 Woodie Awards
Bird Flu Scare
Lori Lipkin
Issue date: 10/21/05 Section: Life & Times
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Not uncommon among chickens and other fowl, there are different types that routinely infect birds around the world.
This current outbreak (H5N1) is highly contagious among birds and rapidly fatal.
The strain is different in that it can be transmitted to humans causing severe illness and death.
It arrived in Southeast Asian nations in 2003 killing more than 65 people and the numbers are going up.
Experts have been pushing the urgency of this being a world health threat since it's introduction but efforts in the U.S. to battle the virus have reached a peak only in recent weeks.
U.S. Health Secretary Michael Leavitt believes that containment is the best defense, "to find it and find it soon and then work as an international community to contain it."
Leavitt, with top officials from the World Health Organization and several U.S. agencies, will visit Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam - the country hardest hit with 41 deaths.
Turkey and Romania are also reporting bird flu outbreaks raising fears that the disease is spreading outside of Asia. The strain is being tested to hopefully rule out H5N1.
The present fear is that H5N1 will mutate into a virus spreading easily among humans with the possibility of a pandemic situation killing millions.
This fear could become reality if a person infected with the human flu virus catches the bird flu.
The World Health Organization explains that the two viruses could recombine within the body producing a hybrid that could readily spread from person to person.
According to sources from WHO and CDC, the Center For Disease Control, H5N1 is easily spread from rural farm to farm among domestic poultry through feces of wild birds.
It can then survive up to four days at 71 F (22 C) and more than 30 days at 32 F (0 C). If frozen, it can survive indefinitely.
This outbreak has spread more rapidly to other countries unlike previous scares.
The increase of exposure to people in multiple locations also raises the chance that it will combine with a human influenza virus.