Flu Pandemics

A pandemic, or global epidemic, is usually referred to an outbreak of an infectious disease that affects people over an extensive geographical area. Flu pandemics emerge unpredictably in every generation and the last three striking pandemics occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1968 causing widespread death. Pandemic flu or bird flu pandemic usually start when one of the many influenza strains that constantly circulate in wild and domestic birds evolves into a form that infects human as well. That virus then adapts further or exchanges genes with a flu strain native to humans to produce a novel germ that is highly contagious among people and spread very fast.

Some flu pandemics are mild by nature and some are fierce. If the virus replicates much faster than the immune system learns to defend against it, it will cause severe and sometimes fatal illness, resulting in a pestilence that could easily claim more lives in a single year than AIDS has in last two decades. Epidemiologists have warned that the next flu pandemic could sicken one in every three people on the planet, hospitalize many of those and kill tens to hundreds of millions. The disease would spare no nation, race or income group. There would be no certain way to avoid infection.

Nobody can predict which influenza strain will cause a pandemic or when the next one will break out. They can warn only that another is bound to come and that the conditions now seem ripe, with a fierce strain of avian flu killing people in Asia and infecting birds in a rapid westward lunge toward Europe. That strain, influenza A (H5N1) does not yet pass from one person to another. But the virus is evolving, and some of the affected avian species have now begun their winter migrations so it's very important to create awareness about flu for preventing the occurrence of any future epidemic.

Flu pandemic can be prevented upto a certain extent by usage of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, Relenza, Amantadine and Rimantadine.