Avian flu : preparing for the pandemic

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Summary

The world stands on the edge of a flu pandemic, according to the world's leading experts. The results, they predict, will be catastrophic. Millions of deaths, economies and civil society in chaos, ...

The world stands on the edge of a flu pandemic, according to the world's leading experts. The results, they predict, will be catastrophic. Millions of deaths, economies and civil society in chaos, political life undermined or destroyed. A doomsday scenario! Such outbreaks happen two or three times every hundred years. We are due one now – and the avian flu strain H5N1 is the most likely candidate for a future pandemic. The last catastrophic flu pandemic was in 1918, just after the Great War. No-one really knows, but it's estimated it killed between 50 to 100 million people – more than twice as many as than died in the war itself. H1N1, the strain responsible for this worst epidemic in recorded history. Almost ninety years later, H5N1 – an avian flu strain – could do exactly the same thing. The challenge now is to develop a vaccine before the pandemic arrives.

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