Lahariya Chandrakant, Sharma A K, Pradhan S K
Department of Community Medicine, Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi 110 001, India.
Indian Pediatr. 2006 Apr;43(4):317-25.
Avian flu is affecting the poultry animals world over since first outbreak in 1997 in Hong Kong and has resulted in 92 human deaths and culling of more than 150 million poultry animals in Asia and Europe. The loss to the economy has also been enormous. 13 new countries, including India, reported occurrence of the disease in poultry animals in February 2006 only, to the World Health Organisation. This rapid rate of spread of virus along with notoriety of the virus for frequent genetic re-assortment, which might enable H5N1 to infect human beings, threatens of possible influenza pandemic since the last pandemic in 1968. The human influenza caused by this subtype of the virus (H5N1) has high case fatality of 54% and majority of affected humans are between the age of 5 to 23 years. Lack of effective vaccine, poor knowledge about treatment, and with scarcity of public health measures in developing countries are major causes of concern. The real threat of impending pandemic can be avoided only if we act immediately on the basis of currently available source of information and apply scientific knowledge rationally for containment and prevention of bird flu and treat human cases promptly.
自1997年在香港首次爆发以来，禽流感一直在影响着全球的家禽。它已导致92人死亡，并在亚洲和欧洲扑杀了超过1.5亿只家禽。经济损失也极为巨大。仅在2006年2月，包括印度在内的13个新国家向世界卫生组织报告了家禽中出现这种疾病的情况。病毒这种快速的传播速度，以及该病毒频繁进行基因重配的特性（这可能使H5N1能够感染人类），自1968年上一次大流行以来，就威胁着可能出现流感大流行。由这种病毒亚型（H5N1）引起的人类流感病死率高达54%，且大多数受感染的人类年龄在5至23岁之间。缺乏有效的疫苗、对治疗的了解不足，以及发展中国家公共卫生措施匮乏，都是令人担忧的主要原因。只有我们立即根据当前可用的信息来源采取行动，并合理运用科学知识来控制和预防禽流感，并及时治疗人类病例，才能避免即将到来的大流行的真正威胁。
