Monday, May 7, 2012

Helping to Prevent a Catastrophic H5N1 Flu Pandemic


(World Health Organization HQ, Geneva) – H5N1 influenza is what keeps people here up at night. The flu strain is deadly to humans on an order of magnitude greater than any other flu virus in history, including the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. It kills approximately 60% of the people it infects. Just to put that figure in perspective: seasonal flu kills about 0.1% of the people it infects; Spanish Flu killed about 2.5% of people infected.
“Outbreak of influenza is the most worrisome thing,” says Dr Keiji Fukuda the Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment at the World Health Organization. “H5n1 is almost a unique virus. Very few viruses are capable of killing like that.”..

http://www.undispatch.com/how-the-world-health-organization-is-helping-to-prevent-a-catastrophic-h5n1-flu-pandemic

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