Bird Flu Pandemic : How Close Did We Come?

Another story covering the US research that claims human to human transmission of the bird flu virus did occur in Indonesia in 2006, when eight members of the same family caught the virus, killing seven.

From ABC News Australia :

It is the nightmare possibility that health authorities have been fearing ever since the disease first appeared.

It happened in Indonesia last year and reveals the world only narrowly avoided a global bird flu pandemic.

Researchers from the University of Washington have studied the case of a woman on the Indonesian island of Sumatra who caught the H5N1 bird flu virus from poultry in May last year.

Professor Ira Longini, who led the research, says they have confirmed that not only did she pass the virus on to her 10-year-old nephew, it was then transmitted to other relatives.

Seven of eight family members who caught the disease were soon dead.

"This proves there is person-to-person transmission in this case, in that setting, in Indonesia, northern Sumatra," he said.

Professor Longini says this shows there is a serious threat of a bird flu pandemic.

"It could happen and will happen eventually, and this simply confirms this particular H5N1 virus is capable of person-to-person transmission," he said.

"The other thing it says is that we need to be very vigilant to find these clusters, to assess whether there's transmission and to stop transmission as quickly as we can each time they arise.

"We're going to see strains of influenza that are capable of causing pandemics arising, probably avian strains, and that will happen for sure, there's no doubt about it."

Professor Longini says in this case, a pandemic may have been averted because of the quick action of health authorities or, statistically at least, it could have been luck.

He said because the sample group was so small, it was impossible to say how fast the disease could have spread in the workplace or the street.

But he says that in the home, it was a fast mover.

"It had about a one-third chance of transmitting from person to person due to close contact in that household setting," he said.

Other scientists say the research confirms their suspicions about the disease.

Dr Alan Hampson is a member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Pandemic Taskforce and an adviser to the Australian Government on influenza.

"This study has looked at the dynamics of the spread of the virus in the family environment in Sumatra and has come down with the conclusion that it clearly does show person-to-person transmission," he said.

"We had already believed that that was probably the case and we haven't had confirmation through analysis of the viruses.

"The information relating to those viruses is information that's held in Indonesia, so we haven't seen that, but what we do believe, from people who have seen the information, is that that too indicated that it was person-to-person spread and that the virus was changing as it spread from one person to another, as we would expect it to do."

Dr Hampson says the Sumatra case could have become a pandemic.

"If it had gone further, we do know that the virus is very good at adapting, so while on the one hand it may have to go through a number of steps, if its passage is from one person to another, then that chance is there," he said