There is no discussion around the office coffee machine or at the counters of the bistros and even the aisles of markets, without touching on the medical topic of the moment: a certain H5N1 virus also known as Avian Flu or Chicken Flu.
Interviews with numerous specialists, all sorts of emergency measures, statements from many elected officials and top officials, the media are making it a regular front-page news (Nice Première is no exception) and the chicken disease, just like its vaccine, are the actors of a new food psychosis that has – until today – only killed about a hundred people worldwide.
But what is avian flu?
Avian flu is an infection by an influenza virus that includes several types (or kinds) including influenza virus A. Avian influenza viruses can exceptionally be transmitted to humans. This transmission occurs mainly during frequent and intense contacts with respiratory secretions and excretions of infected animals.
From a certain level of virulence, these strains cause a disease called avian influenza, one of the most pathogenic is that caused by the H5N1 virus, which can infect other animal species such as pigs or other mammals. We speak of an avian flu epizootic when the disease suddenly affects a large number of animals at once in a given region.
Humans can also be contaminated under conditions of extreme proximity with sick animals, which has been observed in Asia. However, the H5N1 virus is not transmissible from human to human. A human pandemic would only occur if the virus mutated to become contagious to the human species.
Should we remain sensible?
Admittedly, the disease is worrying, prompts questions, and sometimes concerns many people who could easily confuse the flood of information surrounding this mysterious flu that would not only affect poultry.
Indeed, Professor Jean-Philippe Derenne, head of the pulmonology and intensive care unit at the Parisian hospital of La Salpêtrière, has recently reminded that cats can also be contaminated by the avian flu virus.
Many countries announce each day the “infection” affecting their territory through birds, most often migratory ones, which would have died because of the H5N1 which is transmissible to humans only in very rare exceptions while on the single Island of Réunion 52 people have died because of the chikungunya epidemic.
And you, what do you think about avian flu?
