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Why are we so concerned about H5N1 avian flu virus?

08/Sep/2006: For almost four years now, this has been the hot topic around the world – H5N1 strain. What does this term signify – well it is a type of ‘Avian Flu Virus’ (commonly known as the bird flu virus) that has been spreading fast among the birds around the world.

The H5N1 flu virus is steadily spreading throughout the world from its origin of outbreak in South East Asia at this beginning of this millennium to this day, using migratory birds as its carrier. Now the virus has reached far west in Europe and in America and has started infecting the wild and the domestic bird population of those areas.

Currently only the avian population remains the main host for the virus. H5N1 is one of the many strains of avian flu virus that has evolved in nature and it is considered to be the most dangerous strain than other common strains like H7N1 or H4N1, as it can spread more rapidly among its hosts.

Why is the world so concerned about a possible H5N1 bird flu pandemic?

Before going in to the details on why the world is so concerned about the pandemic, let us see what a pandemic flu means – it refers to the flu that causes a global outbreak, of serious illness that spreads easily from person to person. Currently there is no pandemic flu occurrence recorded in the world, but the H5N1 strain continues to establish itself as an epidemic around the world.

Now coming back to why we are so concerned about a possible outbreak, we should travel behind in time to realize what the previous bird flu pandemics has done to the human race. No disease has devastated the human race like the pandemic flu and even the bubonic plague gets dwarfed in proportion when compared to human flu pandemics. Let’s see a few details from history on the outbreak of the deadly pandemic flu and its effect on the human societies.

Year 1968 - A flu pandemic caused by the H3N2 influenza virus kills 700,000 people. Both H2N2, which caused the 1957 pandemic, and H3N2 are likely to have arisen after an exchange of genes between avian and human flu viruses.

Year 1918 – 1919 – The Spanish Flu caused by H1N1 virus strain became the first outbreak in recent history to be well documented. It killed over 40 million people across Asia, Africa, Europe and America. Troop movement during World War – I helped in spreading this strain. Till date this pandemic is considered to be a worst one in the human history.

Pandemic Flu has been reported in 15th, 16th & 18th centuries A.D but is not well documented and hence cannot be elaborated on the toll they took on humans and their effect on the human civilization.

If H5N1 is to develop as a ‘Pandemic’ it would have a catastrophic effect, as the human population has grown four times since the 1920’s and are more concentrated in certain regions providing a great opportunity for the virus to spread easily and to take a much higher toll. Due to prolonged domestication, today’s men and women have lost their natural ability to resist diseases and have become more susceptible to them.

Hence the casualty figures could be much higher if a pandemic flu strikes, however developments in the field of medicine could negate this effect.

All the above clearly indicates that a new ‘Pandemic Flu’ can decimate an entire civilization. It can ruin economies and the cost of rebuilding the societies battered by a pandemic flu can run in to unimaginable figures. The lives lost could range between 50 million to 150 million but this figure can increase if the strain develops resistance to ‘Tami flu’, the only weapon in our hand to fight an out break, if it does occur.

Luckily for us H5N1 is still not a pandemic and lacks the ability to transmit from humans to humans. However, continued infections on humans can make this virus to mutate and develop the ability to jump from humans to humans, spelling death knell for millions.

Kesavan Siva

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