# 5795
With many newspaper headlines screaming the words `Mutant Bird Flu’ in their headlines these past 24 hours, not everyone is happy with the wording of the FAO’s recent announcement.
Australia’s new CMO (Chief Medical Officer) Professor Chris Baggoley, who took office this week, has called the warning `overstated’.
To read his comments, and concerns, you can visit Radio Australia’s article called:
Australian medical chief talks down Asian bird flu fears
While the media has, a bit predictably, latched onto the more sensationalized human implications of this mutation, the primary threat at this time is to poultry.
So far, the H5N1 virus remains poorly adapted to human physiology.
The FAO announcement (see FAO Warns On Bird Flu) simply stated that this new strain “is spreading in Asia and beyond, with unpredictable risks to human health.”
While perhaps not the most reassuring statement in the world, it happens to be true.
To be clear, we’ve no indications that this new strain of H5N1 is any more likely to be transmitted to, or among, humans than the earlier strains. And human infections from the bird flu virus, thus far, have been mercifully few in number.
No one knows if the H5N1 virus will ever develop the ability to transmit efficiently among humans.
And there are other influenza viruses out there with perhaps even a greater chance of sparking the next pandemic.
While one can argue that the threat of a bird flu pandemic remains remote, the FAO has a responsibility to alert us whenever they have knowledge of an emerging zoonotic health concern.
One can only imagine the howls of protest should H5N1 suddenly emerge as an imminent threat and the appropriate agencies had failed to warn us.
Given the circumstances, simply stating the truth . . . that this new strain poses `unpredictable risks to human health’, hardly seems alarmist.
