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Experts: bird flu bigger threat than SARS
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-08-26 21:33 Bird flu now poses a bigger
and more worrying threat to people than SARS, medical experts in southern China,
the region where Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome first surfaced, said on
Friday, Reuters reported.
The main reason, they said, was that humans had learned how to effectively
control the spread of SARS, but had not done the same for bird flu, which can be
spread by wild birds.
Bird flu has killed 62 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of
millions of fowl.
The World Health Organisation has warned that bird flu has the potential to
trigger a global pandemic if the virus mutates and becomes easily transmittable
between humans.
"Bird flu has not been effectively contained. The threat of it mutating so
people can transmit it is still there, and the threat is very large," said Zhong
Nanshan, one of China's leading SARS experts.
"Bird flu is more dangerous" than SARS, he said in the southern city of
Guangzhou.
SARS emerged in southern China, swept through the province of Guangdong, and
spread globally in 2003, infecting 8,000 people and killing 800 of them.
Fears of a global outbreak of bird flu have grown since the deadly strain of
bird flu, once largely confined to Asia, was found in eastern Russia and
Kazakhstan.
It was not clear, however, if the strain was the H5N1 virus, which was found
in several countries in Asia.
An outbreak of easily spread bird flu among humans could be disastrous, said
Li Baojian, a professor at Zhongshan University who is involved in SARS medicine
research.
"For human health and life it poses a big threat, and this threat affects
global economic development, political stability. It is very acute and very
frightening," he told Reuters.
Experts have said southern China is the perfect breeding ground for new
diseases, and a likely starting point for a long overdue flu pandemic because of
the warm weather and the proximity in which animals and humans live.
The last major flu pandemic was in the late 1960s when some 4 million people
died. Despite warnings, there were no major outbreaks of SARS last winter and Li
said experts were still investigating why.
The initial outbreak was contained with quarantine and isolation. One theory
is that that stopped the disease in its tracks, Li said.
Another is that the coronavirus that causes SARS mutated and may be carried
by some people and animals without producing symptoms, he said. There have been
cases of healthy people carrying the SARS antibodies.
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