Bird flu virus?

Health officials detected the harmful H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu virus, in nearly three thousand live chickens sold in a Hong Kong market Saturday, June 7. All the chickens were promptly slaughtered.

The Hong Kong secretary for food and health also said that if health workers detect the bird flu virus in other chickens in another market, they will be forced to assume that the risk of a wider outbreak is much higher. In such a case, the secretary said they will have to cull all poultry in all the other markets.

The H5N1 virus was detected in routine testing on chicken waste samples. These were collected on June 3. The entire market, which adjoined a residential district, was declared an infected area and all sales of chickens and other live poultry were promptly suspended.

Health authorities also imposed a 21-day ban on live poultry imports from mainland China. Wild birds in Hong Kong are occasionally infected with H5N1 virus, but the last major outbreak of bird flu occurred in 1997 when six people were killed. This forced the government to slaughter 1.5 million live poultry.

Since 2003, over 240 human deaths worldwide have been caused by bird flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). So far, the virus kills humans only in its pure form.

Health experts all over the world have been concerned about the possibility of H5N1 bird flu virus mutating into a form that can be transmitted easily among humans.

In a report made public June 6, new research conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the H5N1 has the capability to combine with conventional human flu virus. Such a combination would be a nightmare strain. This could trigger a pandemic and kill millions of people globally.

The combined strain has been produced only in the laboratory. But it does show how strains could mix and mutate, and the possibility of such things occurring in nature is always there. The research result shows only that there is a potential for the nightmare strain, but it does not say what is going to happen.

Last June 4, researchers in Hong Kong reported the development of a possible alternative for bird flu. The WHO currently recommends the antiviral agent, Tamiflu, as treatment for bird flu. The Hong Kong researchers developed a drug cocktail that could be effective.

It consists of an antiviral drug called zanamivir and two anti-inflammatory drugs, celecoxib and mesalazine. It has been tested only on mice and will need tests on humans before it can be used as an alternative treatment.