Archive for the ‘News and Updates’ Category
The main cases of those who have gotten this terrible bird flu are cases in which the people themselves were in contact with birds. Bird flu doe snot seem to be spreading from person to person at all so far so there is not as yet a huge demand for the bird flu vaccine. Especially not in most countries, Asia however could benefit largely from the use of an effective bird flu vaccine since this is where most people are catching bird flu.
The reason that scientist and the governments are so interested in developing a good and useful bird flu vaccine is because humans will not be able to stand up against the bird flu long when and if it starts being transferred from person to person. This is when we are going to really need the bird flu vaccine and that is why this vaccine is being worked on so much by the best minds in science.
The scare brought about by the new and rising threat from the new and improved H1N1 Swine Flu Virus has scientists clamoring for an immediate cure with the H5N1 still fresh on their minds. The H1N1 strain is still part of the flu family but with a very dangerous twist, it is a combination of the H1N1(swine), H5N1(Avian) and the Human Flu virus that like the other strains is transmittable and can be transmitted from species to species. From animal species it jumps easily to humans and that cross-species jumping trait is a very dangerous combination. Read the rest of this entry »
Sixty-eight thousand birds were recently culled in a Suffolk farm in England. This is part of the UK’s Department of Environment, Food, and Agriculture’s control measures on the most recent bird flu case in the area.
Among the culled birds were 56,000 ducks, 9,000 turkeys and 3,000 geese.
Earlier, DEFRA has culled 28,600 birds in the same area. But new information about other farms being exposed to the bird flu virus led to the latest culling. DEFRA confirmed that the farm involved is owned by the same company which operates Redgrave Park Farm, where the virus was first detected in early November.
Farmers and poultry keepers are enjoined to be vigilant in observing safety measures, and to immediately report any signs of bird flu.
From BBC News
Image Source
Creating a good bird flu vaccine is proving to be a lot harder than researchers thought it was going to be due to how much this bird flu changes. It is always changing and developing in more ways and this makes it hard to make one bird flu vaccine that will work all of the time. The scientist working on the bird flu vaccine are monitoring the bird flu very well to watch for any significant changes that will affect the usability of the bird flu vaccine. All of the data that they collect can be used to make the bird flu vaccine more and more effective.
The bird flu vaccine is a completely different vaccine than the standard flu shot. This bird flu vaccine will only protect against the bird flu and not any other strains of flu. There is not even a real bird flu vaccine available that we the public are able to get yet. It will be some time before we can get a bird flu vaccine.
The only known bird flu vaccine is still in the experimental stages and they do not even know yet how effective it will be, it may not work at all. We hear about the bird flu every day and about how many people it is going to kill throughout the world but to keep things in perspective it is important that you realize that very few people have actually caught the bird flu and even fewer have actually died from it and this is all without the help of a bird flu vaccine.