The world is facing a serious threat if flu virus H51N, manages to mutate and make human to human infection possible. At present the virus is contained within SE Asia, with transferrence to humans occuring where humans are in direct contact with chickens and chicken blood, which is used in many villages.

See link: http://www.healthpolitics.com/archiv...spg=PPC&bhcp=1


Cause for concern, you damm well bet it is. Most scientists expect the virus to mutate, and jump from human to human. Once an outbreak occurs, there will be no stopping it, with today's global economy, it will be around the globe in days.

Cheers


Ian

Today, the Gov's chief medical officer said, that a pandemic was inevitable, but we don't know if it will be next winter or in ten years time. Estimates of Global moratality rates from said pandemic range from 50 million to 150 million.

Ian

If anyone is interested these are my sources for a research paper I wrote earlier this year on influenza A evolution.

GAMMELIN M., et al, (1990) Phylogenetic Analysis of Nucleoproteins Suggests That Human Influenza A Viruses Emerged from a 19th-century Avian Ancestor, Mol. Biol. Evol 7:194-200. (Full text free here: http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/repri...fdd3459e9bbfe6 accessed 01/05/05)

REID A. H., et al., (1999) Origin and evolution of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza hemagglutinin gene, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96:1651-1656. (Full text free here: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full...ce21469eaaa 1 accessed 02/05/05)

SUBBARAO, K., et al. (1998) Characterization of an Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Virus Isolated from a Child with a Fatal Respiratory Illness, Science, Vol 279, Issue 5349, 393-396. (Full text free here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../279/5349/393? accessed 02/05/05)

SUZUKI, Y., and NEI, M. (2002) Origin and Evolution of Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin Genes, Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:501-509 (Full text free here: http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/4/501 accessed 28/04/05)

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON TAXONOMY OF VIRUSES (2002) Orthomyoxoviridae (available from the ICTVdB Index of Viruses website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ICTVdb/Ictv/fs_ortho.htm accessed 01/05/05)

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) (2005) Influenza (available from the WHO website: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs211/en/ accessed 02/05/05)

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) (1999) Influenza A(H9N2) in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China - Update (article available from WHO website: http://www.who.int/disease-outbreak-...13apr1999.html accessed 05/05/05)

__________________
-Scott

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. -- Bertrand Russell

Thanks, all very interesting material, the worry is of course is that if H51N merges with a human flu virus strain, a new virulent strain capable of jumping from human to human will will be around the world in days. I think that everybody should be concerned.

Cheers

Ian

hi guyes
bird flue spreds repidily, and directly which causes bird flue easy,the huge crowds could lead to a possible spread of the deadly bird , reason the air noise polution etc. Every effort must be made to limit the spread of the virus to wild noise polution.for more sutable way to save humans life is restrict every type of solution.for more information see relenza information you can get more information from folowed link.