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So Many Questions, So Little Time
| Content Provider | CiteSeerX |
|---|---|
| Author | Donis, Ruben O. Cox, Nancy J. |
| Abstract | Fifteen years have elapsed since the first human infections with H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus were detected in Hong Kong SAR, China [1, 2]. Many of these human in-fections were fatal and represented the first documented outbreak of severe disease due to HPAI viruses. The hall-mark of these H5N1 viruses is their hemagglutinin genes inherited from A/goose/Guangdong/1996, a virus first detected during an outbreak in domestic geese in China. Who could have predict-ed the current H5N1 situation in 1997? As of August 2012, H5N1 viruses of this lineage have caused 607 reported human cases (358 fatal), the culling of 400 million birds, and have become en-trenched in poultry populations on 2 continents [3, 4]. Early expectations were that this virus would be eliminated quickly and become extinct after local bird populations were decimated by the outbreak or culled, thus recapitulating the experience with dozens of HPAI out-breaks in poultry in many countries during the past century. Rather than be-coming extinct, these H5N1 viruses spread to 60 countries on 3 continents by 2006 [3]. The alarm caused by the far-ranging geographic expansion of H5N1 galvanized governments to invest resources in avian disease control. Despite many effective local and region-al infection control programs in recent years, H5N1 is considered to be endemic in poultry in many countries, including |
| File Format | |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
