Bird flu 'still a major threat'

The BBC website, on 30th June 2008, had an article about the possible bird flu pandemic. It says,

The world is still at risk from a new pandemic strain of flu according to leading scientists.

The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has been out of the headlines for some time but experts say it still poses a potential threat.

In January that year there had been the first human deaths in Turkey and the threat to Western Europe seemed palpable.

The level of media interest in bird flu has subsided - but has the threat disappeared? Not really.

The threat may be theoretical at present - but all of the infectious disease experts I have spoken to over recent years agree that it is not a matter of if but of when the next flu pandemic will occur.

Nick White, a leading expert on infectious disease and professor of tropical medicine at Mahidol University in Bangkok and Oxford University then goes on to say.

"We did not overreact to the threat from bird flu and we should still be worried,

"It is fortunate that nothing has happened so far but a flu pandemic could be cataclysmic for the human race.

"If it became as infectious as Spanish flu in 1918-9 it could kill hundreds of millions of people."

At the moment you are more likely to die from lightning than blue flu, unless you’re a bird of course.