Bird flu hasn’t been in the news much recently, but that doesn’t mean that fears about it have gone away.

The most recent news is that it appears that there may be a case of human-to-human transmission, where the father of a man in China who died from bird flu has also contracted it. The man appears to have developed bird flu without any contact with infected birds.

This is a big deal; the big fear of bird flu hasn’t so much been the transmission of the flu from birds to humans as a mutation of the virus which could spread from human to human. While it’s not necessarily easy to contain infected birds, humans spreading the flu would dramatically multiply the potential for infection and spreading of the disease. Of course, most people have a lot more contact with other people than with poultry (one would hope).

This is not, however, the only suspected case of human-to-human transmission; there have been others, but none have been proven. And keep in mind that this case has not been proven, either. This is not the end of the world.

Via: BBC NEWS | Health | ‘Human-to-human’ bird flu fears
[tags]bird flu, avian flu, china, h5n1[/tags]

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