home > by publication type > daily analysis > Bird Flu Season Again
Email
| Prepared by: | Carin Zissis |
|---|
Alarm is growing in Europe over the continued spread of bird flu. (AP/Matthias Rietschel)
In late January came another reminder of the sturdiness of avian flu. Britain was hit by its first major outbreak in domestic poultry when 2,600 turkeys died (Times of London) at a farm run by one the country’s biggest producers. Roughly 160,000 birds were gassed to contain the disease while authorities sought answers about the source. Although the spread of bird flu can often be traced to migrating wild waterfowl, the British outbreak is likely linked to a poultry plant in Hungary owned by the same company, according to the UK’s Department for Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs.
This flu season in the northern hemisphere, the disease also has appeared (NewScientist.com) in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, Egypt, China, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Avian flu continues its global spread at immense economic costs, with 200 million birds culled as a result of outbreaks since 2003, according to an August report (PDF) by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Joshua Kurlantzick, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warns that, “just because [U.S] news magazines have forgotten about avian flu, and the disease has not yet swept through America, does not mean it has gone away.”
So far the highly lethal bird flu, H5N1, is not easily transmittable from birds to humans. But Margaret Chan, the new director of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned in January, “As long as the virus continues to circulate in birds, the threat of a pandemic will persist.”
H5N1 continues to evolve, reported the New England Journal of Medicine in a November article showing a map of the disease’s spread and recommending “robust plans” for a pandemic. Laurie Garrett, CFR’s global health fellow, says in this podcast that the world may be in a better position to handle a bird flu pandemic than two years ago, but that we still do not have “a toolkit that can stop this virus from circulating.”
While bird flu claims more lives, the issue of intellectual property rights in relation to research could serve as an obstacle to discovering vaccines for emerging strains. In a controversial move, Indonesia stopped sharing bird flu samples isolated with the WHO in 2006 and signed an agreement (Reuters) with U.S. pharmaceutical company Baxter to develop an avian flu vaccine. A Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy report says “the episode highlights the fragile and increasingly contentious system” used by WHO to identify viruses.
Jakarta’s health ministry says the agreement with Baxter will ensure Indonesia has enough bird flu vaccines in the case of an epidemic while the WHO system allows industrialized nations to develop and stockpile vaccines for profit. Indonesia has suffered the world’s highest number of human deaths related to bird flu—63 of the global toll of 166. China, which recorded thirteen confirmed bird flu deaths in 2006, temporarily stopped sharing samples after Beijing claimed U.S. researchers who published a paper on avian flu had infringed (Standard) on intellectual property rights by failing to acknowledge their Chinese counterparts.
But even if a vaccine is developed the continued evolution and potential scale of pandemic bird flu would likely render it useless from stopping millions of deaths if the disease becomes easily transmissible from one human to another. Infectious disease expert Stephen S. Morse says, “Our capacity both nationally and globally is so small in terms of making enough vaccines fast enough.”
World Health Organization | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
To request permission to reprint or reuse CFR material, please fill out this permissions request form (PDF), referring to the instructions on page 1.
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
