- SINGAPORE (Reuters) -- While the world focuses on battling the spread of
the deadly bird flu, nearly 150 different strains of the virus with the
potential to cause a global pandemic were laying in wait, scientists warned
on Wednesday.
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- "It is dangerous just to focus on
H5N1," Hiroshi Kida, of Japan's Hokkaido University, said on the sidelines
of a bird flu conference in Singapore organised by the Lancet medical journal.
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- Kida said H5N1 virus -- responsible for
113 deaths around the world -- was one of at least 144 potential different
strains which posed a threat to humans.
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- The different strains were possible because
of combinations of proteins within the virus.
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- All the strains were present in ducks,
which act as carriers often without showing any flu symptoms, he said.
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- "None of the ... subtypes can be
ruled out as potential candidates for future pandemics," Kida told
the conference.
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- Bird flu viruses are a threat to humans
because we have no natural immunity to most of them and because they can
jump directly from birds to people -- just as one strain did in 1918, triggering
a pandemic in which an estimated 50 million died.
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- In 2003, an outbreak of highly pathogenic
H7N7 bird flu infected 89 people in Holland and killed one. Bird flu strains
H9N2, H7N2 and H7N3 have also infected people.
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- But it is fast-spreading H5N1 that has
scientists most worried at the moment. It is known to have killed at least
113 of the 205 people it has infected and killed or led to the culling
of about 200 million chickens.
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- Virologist Malik Peiris told the conference
the assumption that H5N1 will wear itself out if it triggers a pandemic
might be wrong.
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- "If this virus becomes a pandemic,
will it attenuate its virulence in humans? I think that would be a rather
optimistic assumption to make," said Peiris of the University of Hong
Kong.
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- During past pandemics, flu viruses quickly
evolved to effectively wear themselves out and kill only a small percentage
of people. (BIRDFLU-VIRUSES; editing by David Fox; World Desk Singapore,
+65 6870 3925)
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