China’s Agriculture Ministry says that a new H5N1 bird flu outbreak in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of western China has been contained. Last Wednesday authorities reported an outbreak in a chicken farm in Hetian County.
The area lies along the route taken by birds that migrate from Africa to Asia and vice versa. Experts have found that the virus is similar to one that hit migratory birds in Tibet and western Qinghai a few months ago. This raises the possibility that this new outbreak came from migratory birds.
Authorities in China say they are taking measures to prevent transmission from migratory birds to farmed poultry.
More than 17,000 birds have been culled and the area has been disinfected. The Agriculture Ministry says no new outbreaks or suspected bird flu cases have been found near the farm.
So far, 24 Chinese provinces have been affected by the H5N1 bird flu strain since the beginning of 2004. There have been 18 human cases, of which 12 have died.
The World Health Organization says that it is vital to contain all outbreaks of bird flu infection among birds if we want to have a good chance of combating H5N1 and its chances of evolving into a virus that easily transmits from human-to-human. The more outbreaks among birds we can contain, the fewer human cases there will be – if there are fewer human cases we make it more difficult for the virus to find an environment where it can mutate.
For the H5N1 bird flu virus strain to become a serious threat to human health it will need to mutate. At the moment it does not infect humans easily, it very rarely jumps from human to human. However, if it infects a human who already has the normal human flu, it could then exchange genetic information with the human flu virus and acquire the ability to transmit from human-to-human easily – a mutation. Then, we could be facing a serious flu pandemic that would spread around the world within a question of weeks.
Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today