Attributes favourable to the emergence of flu strains with pandemic potential: large rural population, underdeveloped sanitation systems, and especially large swine and domestic fowl populations.
SHOOT: Sounds like South Africa.
All the major pandemics over the last century have combined genetic material from viruses found in pigs, birds and humans, with swine often being the final "mixing vessel" before the strains mutated into a form easily spread among people.
What scientists most fear is a new strain combining the potential to spread of A(H1N1) and the virulence of H5N1
PARIS (AFP) — Britain is most at risk to the spread of an influenza pandemic, closely followed by The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and South Korea, according to a ranking of 213 countries released Friday.
Russia, Canada, Israel, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are also classified as being at "extreme risk" of a flu virus spreading within their borders due to some mix of dense populations, busy airports, and high levels of tourism and urbanisation.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Thursday that the A(H1N1) swine flu that has swept across 74 countries since April -- infecting tens of thousands and claiming 145 lives -- had become a pandemic, the first in four decades.
In a separate "capacity" index, all but seven of the 40 nations least able to contain a pandemic are on the African continent.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment