World May Have Averted Bird Flu Pandemic

No need to worry, according to this article, we may have "dodged the bullet" this time.

World May Have Averted Bird Flu Pandemic

A bird flu pandemic may have already been averted by large-scale chicken culls and containment of infection, Australia's chief medical officer John Horvath says.

But he warns the nation must be prepared, regardless, for the spread of a deadly influenza strain that has the potential to spread rapidly from human to human.

About the Bird Flu:

But while it has three of the four elements needed to cause a pandemic - it can infect humans, cause severe disease and there is little immunity to it - it apparently cannot transmit efficiently from human to human.

"It may be that the world has already averted an influenza pandemic by actions it has taken in response to H5N1, such as extensive culling of poultry and isolation of infected humans," Prof Horvath wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Talking about the threat of the Bird Flu spreading world wide.

"There's the quandary: the potential threat has horrific proportions but it is not clear whether anything will actually happen," he wrote.

So, I guess everybody can breathe a little easier now with this knowledge.

Hopefully everything that was done has prevented this from becoming the global catastrophe it could have been.

[edit on 24/11/06 by Keyhole]