That's the cheery front page story in my
Washington Post this morning.
If and when Avian Flu mutates into a disease easily transmitted between humans, it's going to be a lot harder to control.
The problem is China's effort to protect its poultry.
China's use of the drug amantadine, which violated international livestock guidelines, was widespread years before China acknowledged any infection of its poultry, according to pharmaceutical company executives and veterinarians.
As with SARS a few years ago, China has done its best to avoid acknowledging that they have an Avian Flu problem.
But researchers in Hong Kong have reported that the H5N1 flu virus has been circulating in mainland China for at least eight years and that Chinese farms suffered major outbreaks in 1997, 2001 and 2003. Scientists have traced the virus that has devastated farms across Southeast Asia in the last two years to a strain isolated from a goose in China's Guangdong province in 1996.
The end result is that the international health community has lost another powerful weapon to control a flu pandemic.
