AvianBirdsFlu.com: key facts about Avian Influenza commonly called Bird Flu that created world health crises rivaled only by Plague and HIV.
Home Page News Virus Pandemic Vaccine Sympotms Links H5N1 Strain Forum	Bird flu. Information The bird flu is an infectious bird disease, caused by one of the strains of A infection virus, which resembles a normal human virus. Symptoms are also similar: high temperature, headache, ailment, congested pipes, mild cough. This infection is dangerous because of its complications: viral pneumonia, nephros, liver and blood-forming organ affection. They are complications which cause death. Scientists suppose that migrating birds, especially those plying between China and the far east regions of Russia are playing the key role in the spread of the infection. It’s considered that all birds are susceptible to this disease though some kinds of birds are less susceptible than others. Thus, migrating waterfoul-wild ducks mostly-are a natural reservoir of the bird flu and these birds are less susceptible to the disease. Poultry, including hens and turkeys, are especially susceptible to an epidemic. The virus doesn’t usually attack other kinds of animals except birds and pigs. Out of 15 subtypes of the bird flu a special anxiety of the World Health Organization representatives is caused by the H5N1 virus. This high-pathogenic virus is dangerous for human beings. A human being can be infected at a close contact, however it’s not clear, whether the virus can transfer from one human being to another. Until recently it was considered that the viruses of the bird flu are not dangerous for human beings and in the case of a contamination cause slight symptoms of conjunctivitis, trifling ailment and sometimes slight symptoms of respiratory disease. The first confirmed case of contamination of people with the bird flu happened in Hong Kong in 1997, when the H5N1strain caused the severe respiratory disease at 18 persons, 6 of them died. For the last two years in the Southeast Asia more than 120 persons were infected by the dangerous virus, the half of them died. The separate outbreaks of the bird flu are registered in Turkey, Romania and Croatia.. The first and still the single case of the bird flu in the European Union was registered on the Greek island of Inusses. In South America the hotbeds of the bird flu are discovered in one country - Colombia. On the 30th of June, 2005 the Russian Agriculture Control Authority confirmed the presence of the bird flu in Russia.. It could have been brought by migrating birds, flying back in summer from South Asia. One more of subtypes of the bird flu, which is capable of fast mutation and “crossing” with human being influenza virus, was detected by scientists. This is the H3N2 influenza virus. In the Southeast Asia this virus caused death of hundreds million birds, but the most dangerous is that the virus got into the pig population. 45 cases of the disease were registered among human beings, 70 per cent of the diseased died. Mixing of simultaneously circulating viruses of “human” and “bird” flu can lead to a mutation. A mutated virus can be easily transmitted from one human being to another. If it happens, the humanity will be threatened with a pandemic development ( global epidemic). According to Russian scientists, flu pandemic will be caused, most probably, by the H3N2 virus mutation. Scientists have calculated that flu pandemics (giant epidemics) can appear 3-4 times a century in average, when a new subtype of the flu appears and human-to-human transmission starts. There is a theory that the Spanish influenza, which desolated a half-Europe in 1918-1919, was caused by a virus, similar to the bird flu germ. The Spanish influenza was followed by the pandemics in the years 1957-1958 and 1968-1969, all of them were caused by the mutated viruses. Now epidemiologists are unanimous: the time of a new formidable epidemic came. The world is on the verge of an epidemic disaster-if the final mutation of the bird flu into the “human” flu happens, 80 per cent of the Earth population, namely up to 4 billion people and more, will die. Mortality, caused by this virus, is heavier than mortality, caused by plague or black smallpox, and a hundred times more dangerous than the atypical pneumonia. The only hope of the humanity is that the virus has not mutated into a hybrid of the virus of a human being and an animal yet, so that people are not able to infect each other.