New bird flu cases suggest the danger of pandemic is rising

[Guest guest]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/new-bird-flu-cases-suggest-the-danger-\

of-pandemic-is-rising-1667526.html

 

Infections in Egypt raise scientists' fears that virus will be spread by humans

 

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

 

 

First the good news: bird flu is becoming less deadly. Now the bad: scientists

fear that this is the very thing that could make the virus more able to cause a

pandemic that would kill hundreds of millions of people.

 

 

This paradox - emerging from Egypt, the most recent epicentre of the disease -

threatens to increase the disease's ability to spread from person to person by

helping it achieve the crucial mutation in the virus which could turn it into

the greatest plague to hit Britain since the Black Death. Last year the

Government identified the bird-flu virus, codenamed H5N1, as the biggest threat

facing the country - with the potential to kill up to 750,000 Britons.

 

The World Health Organisation is to back an investigation into a change in the

pattern of the disease in Egypt, the most seriously affected country outside

Asia. Although infections have been on the rise this year, with three more

reported last week, they have almost all been in children under the age of

three, while 12 months ago it was mainly adults and older children who were

affected. And the infections have been much milder than usual; the disease

normally kills more than half of those affected; all of the 11 Egyptians so far

infected this year are still alive.

 

Experts say that these developments make it more likely that the virus will

spread. Ironically, its very virulence has provided an important safeguard. It

did not get much chance to infect other people when it killed its victims

swiftly, but now it has much more of a chance to mutate and be passed on.

 

The WHO fears that this year's rise in infections among small children, without

similar cases being seen in older people, raises questions about whether adults

are being infected but not falling ill, so acting as symptomless carriers of the

disease. Its investigation, due to start this summer, will see if this is

happening by testing the blood of people who may have been in contact with

infected birds, but who have not themselves become sick.

 

John Jabbour, who works with WHO in Cairo, told Reuters last week: " There is

something strange happening in Egypt. Why in children now and not in adults? We

need to see if there are sub-clinical cases in the community. " He added that if

the research did find such cases, they would be the first to be discovered

anywhere in the world.

 

Though he stressed that there was still no evidence of the disease passing from

person to person, other experts are also becoming alarmed. Professor Robert

Webster, of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee - who is

the world's leading authority on the disease - told The Independent on Sunday

that, while he himself had not seen firm data, the WHO in Egypt was raising " a

very, very important issue " which should receive " maximum attention " . He added:

" I hope to hell they are wrong. If this damn thing becomes less pathogenic, it

will become more transmissible. "

 

And Professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary, University of London, said that any

evidence that H5N1 was becoming less deadly would be serious, as the greatest

cause for concern was the disease's ability to spread.

 

Even a much less virulent strain of the virus could result in a devastating

pandemic. Studies show that an outbreak that killed as few as 5 per cent of

those it infected could still cause hundreds of millions of deaths around the

world.