# 2965
With the recent spate of human cases in China and Egypt, and unsubstantiated reports coming out of Indonesia, the media once again is taking notice of the Avian Influenza threat.
Mark Colvin Presents is a popular radio show heard on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) network.
Yesterday journalist David Mark interviewed Anne Kelso, Director of the WHO collaborating centre for Influenza in Melbourne, and Dr Alan Hampson- Chair of the Australian Influenza Specialist Group – on the Mark Colvin show.
We have both the written transcript, and the audio available on the Internet.
A hat tip to KobieT on Twitter for alerting me to this story.
Transcript
This is a transcript from PM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio.
You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.
New bird flu case a reminder pandemic still a threat
PM - Thursday, 2 April , 2009 18:38:00
Reporter: David Mark
MARK COLVIN: A two-year-old Egyptian boy has caught the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus. He's the tenth person to contract the disease in Egypt this year.
Researchers have described the spate of new outbreaks in Egypt and in China as worrying. The number of cases appeared to have peaked three years ago but these outbreaks seem to buck that trend.
David Mark reports.
DAVID MARK: Egypt is the new ground zero for bird flu. The two-year-old boy is the sixth Egyptian to get the disease in the past month.
Professor Anne Kelso is the director of the WHO collaborating centre for Influenza in Melbourne.
ANNE KELSO: The WHO is reporting cases and deaths at the moment in China, Egypt and Vietnam. I think particularly worrying are the number of cases in China, which are scattered throughout different provinces.
DAVID MARK: The avian influenza of H5N1 virus first jumped from birds to humans in 2003. The number of cases grew steadily. In 2006 115 people in nine countries caught the disease; 79 of them died. Bird flu was a big story.
(Montage of archival stories)
