Avian influenza — known informally as avian flu or bird flu — refers to “influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.” Most human contractions of the avian flu are a result of either handling dead infected birds or from contact with infected fluids.
The International donor community today pledged $475 million to fight bird flu after a senior United Nations official warned them that the virus, with its possible mutation into a deadly human pandemic, remains a potent threat around the world.
The global battle against bird flu needs $750 million extra a year to stem its spread and prepare for any pandemic it spawns, the United Nations said.
Prompt, uniformly distributed payments to farmers whose birds are killed because of avian flu are needed to help battle the disease, and it would encourage early reports of the disease, according to the report by the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Bird flu or influenza virus can live for years in frozen lakes, and might be picked up and carried by birds to reinfect animals and peoples, researchers revealed.
A second chicken farm in South Korea has been found to contain the highly-pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1. The outbreak occurred at a farm close to where a case was confirmed at the weekend.
As much as $1.3 billion more is needed to fight bird flu, with more than $500 million of that going to Africa, World Bank and U.N. experts said.
South Korea slaughtered hundreds of dogs and pigs in efforts to stem the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
BioCryst’s Peramivir is a new flu drug that can kill deadly strains of bird flu, and this antiviral drug is promising to transform global preparations for an influenza pandemic.
North Korea is stepping up measures to prevent bird flu, its official media said today. North Korea will take all precautions to prevent the spread of an outbreak of the highly virulent H5N1 strain in South Korea.
South Korean quarantine officials are scrambling to control an outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu in one of the Korea?s biggest poultry producing areas, cordoning off infected farms and slaughtering thousands of birds, and disinfecting the area.