We all know about Bird Flu and can find a number of statistics about the deadly virus on the World Health Organization webpages. In this three part series we'll discover - what is a pandemic and what is likely to cause one today; what we can do to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities; how we can be a good Samaritan during a pandemic or other emergency.

Pandemic Influenza: What It Is A pandemic is distinguished by its scope. It becomes a worldwide epidemic, or pandemic, when a disease spreads rapidly though many countries and regions of the world and affects a large percentage of the population where it spreads. The viruses that cause flu are constantly changing. A pandemic starts when a new strain of flu virus emerges that is different from common strains of flu. Since people have no immunity to the new virus, it can spread quickly and infect hundreds of thousands of people. Pandemic flu strains often develop when an animal or bird virus mixes with a human virus to form a new virus. Pre-requisites for the start of a pandemic are a novel virus strain with no immunity which replicates in humans causing serious disease then efficiently transmits from person-to-person. Avian Influenza can affect all species of birds but typically wild birds are not sick when infected. It can cause severe illness in domestic poultry, including flu like symptoms. Up to the end of 2003 Avian Influenza was considered a rare disease in poultry since between 1959 and 2003 there were only 24 primary outbreaks reported world-wide. Since 2003 to September 2007 5144 poultry farms in 41 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa have been affected

Why we should be concerned. H5N1 Avian Influenza is endemic in Southeast Asian birds. H5N1 Avian Influenza has now spread beyond Southeast Asia. It has: expanded host rang (pigs, cats, humans), increased opportunity and likelihood of reassortment and/or adaptive mutation, evidence of antigenic drift, there is little pre-existing natural immunity to H5N1 in human population, and past pandemic experiences.

A flu pandemic will be more serious than the seasonal flu. Not as many people get sick from seasonal flu because people have developed some immunity to the virus and because so many protect themselves by getting flu shots. However, a pandemic would be caused by a new type of flu virus. People would have no immunity to it and no vaccine would exist to prevent it. It would take an estimated six

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