CDC calls avian flu world's biggest health threat

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Avian flu poses the single biggest health threat to the world and officials might not have all the tools they need to fight it, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.

Dr. Julie Gerberding said the expected mutation of a flu virus that has swept through chickens and other poultry in Asia has the potential to become as deadly and infectious as viruses that killed millions of people during three influenza pandemics of the 20th century.

"This is a very ominous situation for the globe," Dr. Gerberding told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, calling it the "most important threat that we are facing right now."

"I think we can all recognize a similar pattern probably occurred prior to 1918," she said, referring to the 1918 pandemic of influenza, which also passed from birds to people and killed between 20 million and 40 million people globally.

The genes of the avian flu change rapidly, she said, and researchers think it is likely that the virus will evolve into a pathogen deadly for humans.

In Asia, several deaths have been reported among people who caught the flu from chickens or ducks. The mortality rate is high " about 72 percent of identified patients, Dr. Gerberding said. There also have been documented cases of this strain of flu being transferred from person to person, but the outbreak was not sustained.

Dr. Gerberding said influenza was far more infectious than severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which swept out of China in 2003, killing 800 people and causing global concern before it was stopped.

Health specialists also have pointed out that influenza kills much faster than diseases such as AIDS, taking tens of millions of lives in the space of weeks or months.

"We are expecting more human cases over the next few weeks because this is high season for avian influenza in that part of the world," Dr. Gerberding said. Although cases of human-to-human transmission have been rare, "our assessment is that this is a very high threat."