2008 Woodie Awards
Health expert warns of bird flu
Rose Bittner
Issue date: 1/17/06 Section: News
|
Garrett, an expert on global health and emerging and re-emerging diseases, spoke to a packed room Thursday night in Pierson Auditorium.
Garrett is not just another speaker. She has been awarded the Peabody, the Polk (twice) and the Pulitzer prizes for her work. She also offers firsthand accounts for many of the outbreaks of which she speaks.
Garrett visited China during the SARS outbreak and what frightened her most was how the public responded in panic. Garrett gives China a lot of credit for containing the outbreak.
"Infectious disease hospitals were put on lockdown for six weeks. No one was allowed to leave," remembers Garrett. "They had to act like every person was infected. All highways had roadblocks and everyone had their temperature taken. If you had a fever, you were thrown in the hospital.
"Only communist China could take away civil liberties and get away with it," Garrett added.
According to Garrett, the avian influenza virus that first emerged in the southern part of China in 1997 presents special reason for concern. This virus has mutated quickly within migratory birds.
"Breeding birds pass their harmless strains to each other and the virus mutates," explained Garrett. Genetic shuffle and reorganization allowed for the Z+ super virulent form of the avian influenza virus to emerge in January 2003.
This virus is atypical of what we have come to expect from influenza. It is similar to the 1918 influenza pandemic in several ways.
"What killed people during the outbreak in 1918 was not a weak immune system," said Garrett. "An over-response from their own immune system known at ARDS killed them. They drowned in their own fluid."
Also, those who died were not very young or very old as most would expect. Most of the deceased were under 35.
In June 2005, there was a confirmed asymptomatic case of bird flu in Indonesia and one confirmed patient-to-nurse transmission in Vietnam.
As of yet this type of influenza does not have the capacity to rapidly jump from human to human.
