Summary
Avian flu is a major threat to the public's health right now, and officials are aware that they are unprepared for what lies ahead. The CDC said their preparation up to this point has focused on vaccines for more common flu strains, and most researchers will be unable to switch gears should an epidemic rise. Avian flu is more contagious than SARS and kills faster than AIDS.
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http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=7691191
Details
Avian flu poses the single biggest threat to the world right now and health officials may not yet have all the tools they need to fight it, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.
Vaccine efforts are still focused on garden-variety influenza, which kills 36,000 Americans every year, and it would be impossible, in case of an avian flu epidemic, to switch gears quickly to make a special avian flu vaccine, CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said.
"This is a very ominous situation for the globe," Gerberding told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, calling it the "most important threat that we are facing right now."
"I think we can all recognize a similar pattern probably occurred prior to 1918," she said, referring to the 1918 pandemic of influenza, which also passed from birds to people and killed between 20 million and 40 million people globally.
The H5N1 avian flu, which first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 and has since popped up twice, is evolving and can jump directly from birds to people, killing an estimated 72 percent of diagnosed victims, Gerberding said.
Gerberding said influenza was far more infectious than severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, which swept out of China in 2003, killing 800 people and causing global concern before it was stopped.
Health experts have also pointed out influenza kills much faster than diseases such as AIDS, taking tens of millions of lives in the space of weeks or months.
"We have this highly pathogenic strain circulating widely in poultry and ducks.
There are really wonderful opportunities for this virus to either reassort (mix) with human strains of influenza or with other avian species," she said.
Hong Kong authorities stopped H5N1 in 1997 by sacrificing much of the poultry population in the territory.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, and he has authored and published several downloadable personal preparedness courses including a downloadable course focused on safety and self defense. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He's also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates.
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Tuesday, March 01, 2005
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