Bird flu battle far from over
January 25th, 2007
The elimination of the bird flu virus in poultry could be years away, a high ranking official of the World Health Organization said on Monday. The Director General of the WHO, Margaret Chan said that the virulence of the virus from the past three years has been impressive and that as long as the virus will continue to spread among birds, the threat of a worldwide epidemic among humans is still viable. The WHO has long given warnings that this virus, which first appeared in 1997 in Hong Kong, could be the source of a global pandemic, if it transforms into one which could be easily transmitted among humans. So far, basically all human cases have been due to close contact with diseased birds.