Yesterday I sent off an email to an expert of worldwide repute who works at the local university (Prof. Bragg). I will interview him on what he sees as the dangers and threats we're likely to face with H5N1.
The night before I left Korea I watched a documentary on H5N1, and in it they noted that the disease has already become transmissable between people and animals in Vietnam.
Now you know.
New bird flu cases reported across Asia
Indonesia says a 20-year-old woman has died of bird flu and several other countries have also reported more suspected cases in people.
Adding to the sense of alarm, researchers in Vietnam say the H5N1 avian flu virus has mutated allowing it to replicate more easily inside humans and other mammals.
Taiwan says it has detected another bird flu strain that can infect people.
Avian influenza is known to have infected 125 people in Asia, killing 64 and is endemic in most poultry flocks in the region.
There are at least a dozen other suspected cases as governments in Asia struggle to control outbreaks in poultry to prevent more people from catching the virus, which experts fear could trigger a pandemic.
Vietnam and China say they have more suspicious cases in people, while Thailand says a toddler infected with bird flu is recovering.
In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, a Health Ministry official says tests confirm the woman died from H5N1 and that tests are being conducted on samples from a 13-year-old girl.
Both died over the weekend in the Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Jakarta's hospital for treating bird flu patients.
Initial tests on the girl were negative.
Final test results for the woman and a 16-year-old girl who died last week have to be confirmed by a laboratory in Hong Kong.
The laboratory, affiliated with the World Health Organisation (WHO), has confirmed five people have died of bird flu in Indonesia.
But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono puts the toll higher, telling a news conference that seven of the 11 people who have contracted avian influenza in Indonesia have died.
Mutations
Scientists at the Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute in Vietnam, who have been studying the genetic make up of H5N1 samples taken from people and poultry, say it has undergone several mutations.
"There has been a mutation allowing the virus to (replicate) effectively in mammal tissue and become highly virulent," the institute said on its website.
State media reports bird flu might have infected two more people in Vietnam, where 42 people have died from the virus since the latest outbreak in Asia began in late 2003.
State newspapers report a student is being tested in hospital after eating chicken eggs, while a 78-year-old woman died from pneumonia in central Quang Binh province on Friday.
China is probing a possible human case of bird flu in north-eastern Liaoning province.
Roy Wadia, the WHO's China spokesman, says more than 10 million birds have been culled in Liaoning, where a female poultry worker has bird flu-like symptoms.
The WHO is also sending a team this week to the southern province of Hunan to investigate three pneumonia cases.
One of the cases, a 12-year-old girl, has died.
Drug concerns
China has not confirmed any cases of humans contracting bird flu.
But scientists fear the H5N1 virus will mutate into a form that passes easily among people. If it does so, millions could die.
The disease has so far killed half the people it has infected and governments are stockpiling anti-viral drugs that are believed to limit the effects of H5N1 if taken early enough.
By far the most sought-after is Tamiflu made by Swiss company Roche.
But Japanese subsidiary Chugai Pharmaceutical says that two teenaged boys exhibited abnormal behaviour that led to their deaths after taking the drug.
Shinichi Watanabe, deputy director of the Health Ministry's safety division, says the ministry had ordered Chugai in May last year to include in the literature accompanying the drug a list of psychological and neurological disorders that could arise as side effects.
- Reuters
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