The Bird Flu Pandemic
Flu pandemics happen when they happen and pandemic planning is ever ongoing.
The bird flu pandemic. In the case of h1n1 the public health world was steeling itself for a potentially catastrophic. Citing the bird based spanish flu outbreak of 1920 and the h5n1 outbreak in. At least 13 flocks have been affected by a particular strain of. A new flu strain in chinese pigs shares genes with the virus that caused the 2009 h1n1 pandemic and several bird flus scientists found.
With pandemics explosively spreading a virus from human to human it s never a matter of if but when greger writes. Epidemic of a flu that spreads on a worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the human population. The virus responsible for the pandemic is believed to have evolved from the strain of influenza that caused the 1957 pandemic through antigenic shift an abrupt major change in the virus that. J ust over a dozen years ago a bird flu virus known as h5n1 was charting a destructive course through asia north africa and the middle east ravaging poultry in apocalyptic numbers and killing 6.
The highly pathogenic influenza a virus subtype h5n1 is an emerging avian influenza virus that is causing global concern as a potential pandemic threat. Avian flu and influenza pandemics as avian flu kills a growing number of people and outbreaks of the virus are reported in birds from china to turkey public health officials fear a new global influenza pandemic could already be brewing. It is often referred to simply as bird flu or avian influenza even though it is only one of many subtypes.