Bird Flu

So-called 'bird flu', or avian flu to give its formal name, refers to a large group of viruses that primarily infect birds. On rare occasions these viruses can infect other species, like pigs and humans. The strain of avian flu that has arrived in Britain, known as H5N1, is particularly worrying in this respect.

For some years now, health experts have been monitoring the H5N1 strain because it is an extremely virulent bird flu virus which has some ability to infect humans. Since the middle of 2003 this virus has caused the largest and most severe viral outbreaks in poultry on record and it continues to spread.

In 2004, experiments showed that H5N1 could kill wild waterfowl, long considered a disease-free natural reservoir of the virus. Since then cats, pigs and mice have all shown susceptibility to the strain. In Thailand, 147 zoo tigers died after being fed raw chicken carcasses that were H5N1-infected.

The 2006 discovery of an infected dead cat in Germany got European cat lovers bolting their cat flaps. No human case has been linked to exposure to an infected cat to date. No outbreaks have been reported in domestic cats and all evidence suggests that cat infections occur in tandem with H5N1 outbreaks in domestic or wild birds, probably as a result of scavenging on infected birds.

Wild bird populations were first found to be susceptible to the H5N1 strain in 2005 when 6345 dead birds were collected from Lake Qinghai in China. The virus is carried along winter migratory routes and has since turned up in poultry and wild birds across much of Southeast Asia, in some African countries, Russia, much of Europe and Britain.

Seasonal Flu »»

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