Developing a vaccine and how a pandemic could occur

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Bird flu ( or avian influenza) is a contagious disease of birds caused by the influenza virus.
It can cause a range of symptoms from mild illness and low mortality to a highly contagious disease with near 100% fatality rate.
The bird flu virus affected poultry and some people from Asia in 2006.

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An epidemic is the spread of a disease throughout a country or small are of land.
A pandemic is the next stage to this. The disease has to spread across a much larger area of land for it to be classed as a pandemic, for example a continent or sometimes the whole world.

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The outbreak of Bird flu started in a poultry farm in south Korea in December 2003. It has effected many birds throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and
Africa.
According to the world health organisation (WHO) there is evidence that the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has a unique capacity to jump the species barrier and cause high mortality in people.

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Bird flu infected people who were in close proximity or had close direct contact with infected birds.
The H5N1 strain of the flu never actually caused a pandemic and was in fact an epidemic. However the flu virus on a whole has caused a pandemic throughout its history. The only reason that bird flu is known to have been a pandemic is because the media hyped it up so much it caused the public to panic.

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Only 2 antiviral drugs have been effective on the H5N1 strain; tamiflu and Relenza.
However these drugs need to be started within the first 2 days of infection to be effective.
In 2006 a vaccine against bird flu was put under production in various countries but the drugs were not expected to be widely available until several months after the pandemic.

o There has not yet been a vaccine produced for bird flu but scientist are still working on one, just in case there is another outbreak. It is expected to be released in the next few years.