# 4747
Eurosurveillance, the European Journal of epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable diseases, takes a look back over the 6 1/2 year history of H5N1 since it reappeared in 2003.
My thanks to Ironorehopper on FluTrackers for posting the link to this,and several other Eurosurveillance articles this morning.
Eurosurveillance, Volume 15, Issue 29, 22 July 2010
Rapid communications
The influenza A(H5N1) epidemic at six and a half years: 500 notified human cases and more to come
A Tarantola, P Barboza, V Gauthier, S Ioos, N El Omeiri, M Gastellu-Etchegorry, for the Epidemic Intelligence team at InVS
Since November 2003, the epidemic intelligence team at the French Institut de Veille Sanitaire has been gathering data on influenza A(H5N1) circulation in poultry and on human cases worldwide. As Indonesia notifies the world’s 500th case to the World Health Organization, we discuss the epidemiological situation and trends of A(H5N1) influenza. Although the overall number of cases reported worldwide has decreased, influenza A(H5N1) continues to circulate intensely in some countries and more cases are to be expected, especially in Egypt and Indonesia.
There is a lot to read here, but I’ll excerpt the closing passage (slightly reformatted for readability). You will want to follow the link to read the whole thing.
Many clustered events have occurred, some of which are highly likely to have involved human-to-human transmission. To date, this has remained limited with no sustained community transmission.
Available data, especially those gathered following clustered events, show that so far the virus shows no sign of 'humanisation', i.e. the ability to transmit easily from human to human.
The overall worldwide situation of influenza A(H5N1), however, has not markedly improved since 2003. This fact, and regular reintroduction of the virus by wild birds in countries where foci have been controlled (such as Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey or Vietnam) underscore the importance of maintaining adequate surveillance and response capacities for infections in both animals and humans.
