The Truth About Bird Flu Preparation

With "Flu Season" upon us and with the increasing warning about the potential Bird-Flu Pandemic, more and more people are wanting to know all the facts they can about this mysterious disease.

The history of this strand of virus has been well documented and many would do well to read as much of the following as they can:

Even now, we're seeing symptomless bird flu carriers in Vietnam. This is particularly frightening to observers of the situation, because now we're finding out that people can carry the bird flu virus and not show any symptoms, which means they could be stealth carriers and unknowingly transmit the virus to others. Obviously this means that lots of people could be picking up the bird flu virus from those individual carriers if it becomes transmittable between humans. In this scenario, it would be very difficult for the CDC or the World Health Organization to track the origins of that particular outbreak. Currently H5N1 has not mutated into a human-transmittable form, but that is expected to take place at some unpredictable time in the future, and at that point, symptomless carriers of the virus could become a real problem.

Essentially, the bird flu situation looks to be getting worse. We're seeing more infections in Vietnam and symptomless carriers, and countries are doing little to actually prepare for the virus. They have plans in place and claim to be stockpiling a vaccine that doesn't even exist. The only thing they are really stockpiling is Tamiflu, which is not very effective against H5N1 and will be in short supply if an outbreak actually occurs.

Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns.

The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Read the book online here.