14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, France began vaccinating thousands of ducks and geese against bird flu. The officials started the process in Landes, situated in the southwest of the country, an area with a high risk of infection from migratory birds.
Meanwhile, Niger became the second West African country to become infected with the virus, after its neighboring country, Nigeria, has already reported the presence of the H5N1 virus. Bosnia also confirmed the virus in two wild swans, so far 19 new countries being infected in the past month.
The outbreak originated from South-East Asia, in 2003. By 2006, 93 people died of avian flu in Asia and the Middle East. Almost all of them contracted the disease from birds, but scientists believe that there have been some cases of human to human transmission.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that some cases of human to human infections exist, but at the present moment, the virus cannot be transmitted efficiently between humans. No one knows for certain where and if this might happen; another chance is that the virus can mutate into a less dangerous one.
A human pandemic could be devastating, considering that these countries have malnutrition, poverty and poor health systems. Three serious pandemics invaded the globe in the last century: the flu from 1918, when 20 to 100 million people died, then the one from 1957, when 2 million people were killed, and the most recent in 1968, due to which 1 million lost their lives.
Bird flu is already a serious threat for people around Africa and Asia, 200 million birds having died or having been destroyed in more than 30 countries. So far, cases of human death because of bird flu were reported in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Iraq.