Encouraging Health

See your doctor immediately if you develop flu symptoms, including a fever, cough and body aches, and have recently traveled to a part of the world where bird flu occurs.

Be sure to let your doctor know when and where you were traveling and whether you visited any farms or open-air markets.

Doctors have rapid tests to identify the flu virus, but the tests can’t distinguish between avian flu and other influenza A viruses. For that reason, specimens from anyone with a suspected case of bird flu are sent to state health labs or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for analysis.

Complications

Most people with bird flu have signs and symptoms of conventional influenza. Some also develop life-threatening complications such as viral pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, which causes the air sacs in your lungs to fill with fluid, leading to severe breathing difficulties. More than half the people who have contracted bird flu have died.

But the greatest complication of bird flu is still hypothetical — the emergence of a new viral strain that spreads easily from person to person. If a person were simultaneously infected with human and bird flu viruses, the reassortment of genetic material could produce an entirely new subtype with a preponderance of human genes. This could make the virus highly contagious and, with little natural immunity among the world population, especially lethal.

So far this hasn’t happened. A few cases of person-to-person transmission have occurred, but they were limited in scale. Still, some health officials fear that it’s just a matter of time before avian viruses figure out a way to spread easily among people.

Treatment

Several bird flu vaccines are in the works, and at least one may be available in early 2007. Although that vaccine seems to protect against the H5N1 strain currently circulating, it’s not known whether it will be effective against a mutated form.

For now, the primary treatment option remains the flu drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu), that works by preventing the virus from escaping its host cell. It’s not clear how effective Tamiflu will ultimately prove against H5N1. In Southeast Asia, resistance to it seems to be developing quickly. Another antiviral flu drug, zanamivir (Relenza), may be an alternative.

These drugs must be taken within two days after the appearance of symptoms, something that may prove logistically difficult on a worldwide scale, even if there were enough to go around. Because they’re in short supply, it’s not entirely clear how flu drugs would be allocated if there were a widespread epidemic.

Prevention

The international effort to prevent the spread of bird flu focuses on the health of both birds and humans. Measures to help control the virus among domestic poultry include:

Culling. Since 1997, when the first human cases of bird flu appeared, hundreds of millions of sick or exposed birds — primarily chickens — have been destroyed. In many cases, affected farms were also quarantined. The WHO considers this approach the first-line defense against avian viruses.
Surveillance programs. Some nations have instituted strict vaccination and surveillance programs for poultry farms and markets, taken steps to prevent bird smuggling, and put in place programs that quarantine new birds until they’re proved healthy and that require poultry farmers to disinfect boots and tires.
Banned birds. Many countries have banned or restricted the importation of birds and hatching eggs from regions with bird flu epidemics. In February 2004, the CDC banned the importation of poultry into the United States from most Asian nations.

bird flu, medical advice, prevention

bird flu, medical advice, prevention