# 819
Actually, a fairly safe prediction, given the track record to date. No matter. After last week's announcement by the OIE that bird flu may be nearing the `end of a cycle', it's a good reminder that we aren't out of the woods yet.
This from Novosti, the Russian News Agency.
Human cases of bird flu likely in SE Asia, Egypt in 2007 - WHO
28/ 05/ 2007
NOVOSIBIRSK, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - New human outbreaks of the deadly bird flu virus are highly probable in Southeast Asia and Egypt in 2007, an infectious diseases specialist with the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday in Novosibirsk, Siberia.
The H5N1 virus has already become endemic in Southeast Asia, affecting primarily domestic flocks, Caroline Brown told a press conference at the second international seminar for infectious diseases services in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and consequently human infections will continue rising there.
She said the virus has also become entrenched in countries closer to Europe, such as Egypt, where small private farms have mainly been hit, adding that as a result new human infections are in effect inescapable.
However, Brown said the situation in Europe was more stable and predictable, and that any potential outbreak will likely be episodic and not part of a regional epidemic, in which case European veterinary services will be able to control any localized appearance of the disease.
With the recently confirmed H5N1 death of a five-year-old Indonesian girl, the human death toll out of 307 cases around the world has risen to 186, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The second hardest-hit country after Indonesia is Vietnam, where 94 human bird flu cases have been registered and the death toll hit 42. Vietnam suffered damage worth $200 million, as over 40 million domestic birds, or some 15% of the total, died of the virus or were culled.
