Materia Medica Malaysiana

Bird Flu twice as deadly

Now this is scary.
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HANOI (Reuters) - Up to 70 percent of people who have contracted bird flu in the latest Asian outbreak have died from the virus, making it twice as deadly as the last outbreak in 1997, a Hong Kong doctor said Sunday.

Eighteen people have died so far -- 13 in Vietnam and five in Thailand -- and the virus has been reported in 11 countries.

China confirmed the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu had been detected in a further six provinces Sunday, while Japan banned chicken imports from the United States after a milder strain of bird flu was discovered in Delaware.

"The data suggests it (mortality rate) is in the range of 60 to 70 percent, so we are quite shocked by this," David Hui, a specialist in respiratory medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Reuters Television. "Last time (in 1997), the mortality rate was 30 percent."

Hui said there was little evidence that the virus was being spread by anything other than contact with sick poultry, but it was unclear why the H5N1 strain was this time more lethal or why only two countries had reported human deaths.

"This is a puzzle...we are trying to find out: Is the virus changing in structure? Is it becoming more virulent? Is the clinical spectrum different from 1997?" he said.

Hui is one of four experts from Hong Kong who arrived in Vietnam Sunday to join World Health Organization (WHO) efforts to contain the bird flu outbreak.

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Let's hope this outbreak never reaches Malaysia