Sunday, December 12, 2004

Guardian Unlimited/Special reports -- Warning as bird flu crossover danger escalates

Guardian Unlimited/Special reports: Warning as bird flu crossover danger escalates

Thousands of Asians have had their livelihoods devastated because their poultry has become infected by the H5N1 varient of the bird flu virus. Tens of thousands of ducks and chickens have been infected and tens of millions have been culled this year in a bid to stop the disease spreading. Economists believe this price tag for China alone has been 31 billion British pounds. The figure for the whole of South-East Asia is double that.

Health officials, however, for they are desperate to stop the disease spreading - not just to other poultry but to humans. The farms of South-East Asia, where humans and animals live beside each other in tiny yards and huts, have become a vast reservoir for the H5N1 virus, and that chills not just local officials but the world's health authorities."

The lethality of the H5N1 virus is high in the few reported cases, it is believed there is little resistance in the world population to this new variety, and modern travel can make spread of viruses rapid.

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people.

Robin McKie, Jo Revill, John Aglionby and Jonathan Watts, The Guardian Unlimited, December 12, 2004

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