More Bird Flu Blues

Just when you thought it was safe to eat poultry, bird flu strikes again.  This time, the H5N1 virus struck a 19-year-old woman in Beijing who had purchased and gutted nine ducks from a Hebei/st1 :state> market.  /span>

One of these ducks was probably infected, since no one else who had significant contact with her had any sign of the illness.  Though the case has been reported to the World Health Organization, it's still unclear whether there was other infected poultry./span>

Since 2003, bird flu has killed 249 people in twelve countries, though there haven't been any reported fatalities since last February.  Nearly 400 more have been infected, including one 5-year-old boy in Vietnam/st1 :country-region> this year./span>

Though this number pales in comparison to that of people killed in various other epidemics or natural disasters, some experts fear that the virus could somehow mutate, causing additional harm to humans.  At this point, birds have been the primary victims of H5N1, which didn't receive the "bird flu" nickname by coincidence./span>

Another bird flu outbreak that just hit West Bengal, India, but no humans have been injured.  By contrast, hundreds of thousands of birds have been culled in order to contain this outbreak of the virus, joining the millions of other poultry that have met an untimely end./span>

It's unlikely that these incidents will create the same sense of panic as the initial bird flu outbreaks in 2003 or SARs in 2002.  Nonetheless, it's helpful to know that authorities are doing what they can to keep this disease from spreading.