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A top U.N. health official has been named to organize a campaign aimed at
preventing a worldwide avian flu pandemic in humans. The official has repeated a
warning from scientists that the flu virus could mutate and spread across the
globe.
Dr. David Nabarro of the World Health Organization (WHO) says bird flu could
spread to humans at any time, killing anywhere from five million to 150 million
people.
Dr. Nabarro is one of WHO's top public health experts. He was named
Wednesday to lead a global effort to head off an outbreak of the virus, which
has killed more than 60 people in four Asian nations in the past two years.
Until now, most of the victims have been people in close contact with
infected birds. But Dr. Nabarro says there is a high probability that the virus
will mutate and quickly spread through human-to-human contact.
"We expect the next influenza pandemic to come at any time now, and it's
likely to be caused by a mutant of the virus that's currently causing bird flu
in Asia, the short form is H5N1, which has already resulted in millions of
poultry deaths and billions of dollars of economic loss," he said.
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