General discussion about bird flu
- By:groshan fabiola
It is well known that Asian countries are affected by avian (bird) flu. The highly contagious virus spreads rapidly among the poultry leading to a quick death. More than that, it was noticed that the virus might affect humans too.
Specialists are concerned about the spreading of the virus among the people. Their theory says that the bird flu virus could merge with a human flu virus and can lead to highly infectious, rapidly fatal flu virus.
For this reason most of the Asian countries are culling the poultry stocks to prevent a further spread of the virus.
Avian flu is a health problem that mostly affects the birds. It is used to describe the influenza viruses. Nowadays 15 subtypes of influenza A viruses are known to possibly spread among the bird populations.
From all these types of avian flu only a few may lead to a highly contagious and rapidly fatal disease. These dangerous viruses are known as highly pathogenic avian influenza. These viruses are responsible for the worries of the specialists because it is believed that they are the ones that may affect humans.
In the moment when it was certitude that avian flu infects humans, in 1997, the specialists began to ask themselves questions. They believed that the avian flu virus could merge with a human flu virus and create a new type of virus that could be contagious as human flu virus, helping to spread easily among humans and deadly as the bird flu virus. The great concern was about another flu pandemic.
The flu pandemic represents a highly infectious form of a flu virus that spreads rapidly and affects a large number of persons. For example we can talk about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 which caused more than 40 million deaths all over the world.
It is believed that avian flu virus could merge with a human flu virus only if the person gets in contact with birds that have the bird flu virus. If the person already has flu there is a chance for the viruses to merge inside the human body. If the new virus has the avian flu’s genes that make it rapidly fatal and the human flu’s genes that allow it to be passed from person to person, it may lead to a flu pandemic.
There is no evidence about this fact presented earlier so we might say that a highly infectious flu virus for humans has not been produced yet.About the author:
So, if you want to find out more about bird flu prevention or even about symptoms of bird flu please click this link http://www.bird-flu-info-center.com/