Infectious Disease
Bird Flu Today Public Awareness Campaign
 Introduction
It was 1918, World War I was coming to an end. American soldiers in Europe were looking forward to coming home . [1] However, not all was well on the home front.. On March 11, 1918 the Fort Riley Army Hospital in Kansas was inundated with patients complaining of headaches, sore throats, and fevers. [2] Still contained to the Army hospital, the influenza epidemic had doctors on their feet for days on end. Doctors treated soldiers for their symptoms, and some of those soldiers were were shipped to Europe to help bring the war to a close. However, something strange began to occur. The sick soldiers going abroad carried with them invisible invaders that had already mutatedand were untreatable by available medicines. Doctors had no idea what was causing the outbreak and continued to treat the soldiers for their symptoms. As soldiers returned home later that summer, they brought back a virus that had evolved into an extremely lethal disease that was eventually called Spanish Influenza. This strain of flu was so powerful that people who fell ill in the morning were often dead by nightfall. By October of 1918, 195,000 Americans had died from this global pandemic. It was not until 1933 that scientists finally discovered that a mutated influenza virus was causing the outbreak.
Today, the source of this 1918 influenza pandemic is still being debated. Much of the evidence points to an avian (bird) flu that mutated into a form transmittable between humans. Recently, news reports about new strains of impending bird flu have raised concern among scientists and the public about the potential of a flu epidemic even worse than that of 1918. The virulent avian H5N1 strand of this virus has proven deadly in certain parts of the world…for birds. And humans have contracted the virus, also. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded a total of 161 human deaths from avian influenza as of January 15, 2007. [3] These deaths have been mostly concentrated in Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa. To date, the virus can only be transferred between migratory birds and, in rare cases, from birds to humans. [4] It has not been found to be easily transmittable between humans. The fear, however, is that H5N1 could develop that ability before a vaccine is available to protect humans from contracting this potentially deadly disease. In 2005, the federal government issued The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, which focuses American efforts on “(1) stopping, slowing or otherwise limiting the spread of a pandemic to the United States; (2) limiting the domestic spread of a pandemic, and mitigating disease, suffering and death; and (3) sustaining infrastructure and mitigating impact to the economy and the functioning of society.” [6] Since 2005, the government has been implementing this action plan by meeting certain yearly benchmarks.
With the potential threat of another deadly influenza pandemic looming and a limited federal budget, the government’s plan has attracted supporters and critics alike. What do you think? Is the impending threat of bird flu a cause for alarm?
References
[1] http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/index.html
[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/index.html
[3] http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/
[4] http://www.pandemicflu.gov/
[5] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051101-1.html
[6] http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/federal/index.html
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