What is avian flu and how does it spread?
The particular strain of avian influenza that has everyone so concerned is called H5N1. This strain of influenza was first detected in 1959 among domestic chickens in Scotland. For reasons that may never be known, the virus broke out in 1996 at a goose farm in China’s southeastern Guangdong province. The virus reappeared in Asia in mid-2003 and has since been detected in farmed poultry or wild birds in about 50 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). About 200 human cases – half of them fatal – have been reported in nine countries: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam (which has had about 90). Scientists have little idea precisely how the virus mutated from its naturally occurring, generally non-fatal form found in wild migratory birds, to an almost always fatal virus that has killed or led to the preemptive destruction of more than 200 million farm-raised chickens, geese, duck
