By  Seamus McGraw   

March 13, 2006

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(Crime Library) — There is little doubt, experts say, that sometime in the very near future, maybe on some quiet pond in rural America, or in a still pool on some remote river, a wild duck, a goose perhaps, or some other migrating wild fowl will glide down from above, bringing with it a potentially lethal disease.

Wild Birds

Already, in France, and in Poland, in Albania and across the Middle East and Africa, wild birds infected with a form of the H5N1 Avian flu have been found, and strains of the virus have infected poultry flocks in Asia and most recently in Nigeria, one of Africa's poorest nations, a country already ravaged by crippling poverty and the HIV/AIDS virus. While the virus so far has mutated slowly, in the first two months of this year alone, avian flu has already infected at least 30 people worldwide, killing 20 of them. Since 2003, the disease has claimed almost 100 lives and authorities from the World Health Organization — and from the US government — have warned that at any moment, the virus is likely to change again, triggering a global pandemic that could kill tens of millions across the globe.

Just this week, David Nabarro, a physician charged by the United Nations with monitoring the spread of the disease warned that a virulent version of the contagion could reach America's shores in a matter of weeks. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Nabarro said that wild birds carrying the virus would be likely to reach Alaska this spring, and that within six months, infected birds would likely be found throughout the lower 48 states. Underscoring his dire warning, Nabarro then added that a human pandemic "Could break out any time."

Dr. David Nabarro

To be sure, that threat is already looming. From Indonesia to Western Europe, across Asia, including the secretive nation of China and into the ill-prepared and poverty stricken nations of Africa, poultry — domestic chickens, ducks, geese and other fowl — are being quarantined and slaughtered by the thousands, and while few believe that testing for the deadly virus has been comprehensive, there is mounting evidence the various forms of the virus are becoming increasingly virulent, and that more and more often, the virus is being transmitted from birds to mammals. While health officials insist that most of the human cases have occurred among people who live and work close to infected poultry and that the disease is not yet easily transmittable from human to human, increasingly, the disease has been found in other domestic animals and other mammals.

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