What Is Bird Flu?

Bird flu  is also known as Avian influenza. It is lethal to poultry and is quite fatal in humans. Bird flu spreads between domesticated and wild birds. It has also been passed from birds to humans who are in close contact with poultry or other birds.

There is not a clear evidence that the bird flu can be transmitted/spread from human to another human. However this might happenin such cases, when a person becomes ill after caring for a family member that is sick.

Scientists are concerned that the bird flu virus may combine with a human flu virus and mutate, which may make transmission between humans possible.

This has killed more than lots and lots of people in Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Eygpt, China, and Iraq since 2003.

Apparently, there are no news/reports or evidences of the current bird flu strain in our country, Australia, either in birds or people. Although previously, there have been five  bird flu outbreaks in Australia, and surprisingly they are all eradicated. The last outbreak was in 1997 in Tamworth in New South Wales.

Where Does It Originally Come From?
It emerged in southern China in 1996/7 and caused a large outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997 that killed six people.

Although bird flu kills more than half the people it infects, the number of fatalities is still low because there are not many people who had bird flu. According to the World Health Organization, only hundreds people have died of bird flu since 2003.