After years of steady decline, bird flu is making a comeback in many foreign countries.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, in a news release, “urged heightened readiness and surveillance against a possible major resurgence” of the flu. Since the flu’s H5N1 virus crossed over from birds to humans in 2003, it has infected 565 people, and killed 331.
So far this year, the World Health Organization says, 49 human cases of avian flu have been reported, leading to 25 deaths. In all of 2010, there were 48 cases and 24 deaths worldwide.
As NPR reports, the culling of hundreds of millions of domestic poultry helped suppress the avian flu virus in most countries where it emerged. But the virus has remained entrenched in a half-dozen countries, including Vietnam and Indonesia. Other particularly vulnerable countries are Bangladesh, China, Egypt and India.
Migrating birds appear to be spreading the H5N1 virus from one country to another. “Wild birds may introduce the virus, but peoples’ actions in poultry production and marketing spread it,” said the Food and Agriculture Organization’s chief veterinary officer, Juan Lubroth.
The organization called on countries to step up their surveillance and preparations against the flu.
The Los Angeles Times reports, citing a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, that human cases of bird flu never have been reported in this country. Still, Lubroth said, “no country can consider itself safe.”
The virus hit a peak in 2006 in bird populations, and was found in 63 countries. It nearly disappeared by 2008, but then started to reemerge.
So far this year eight people have died from avian flu in Cambodia alone. The most recent fatality was a 6-year-old girl who died in Cambodia earlier this month.
ROBERT T. NELSON
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