The first case of transmission of the avian influenza virus from person to person was registered
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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British scientists have informed the world of the first known case of transmission of the avian influenza virus not from animal to human, but from person to person. In the popular scientific journal of Great Britain, an article appeared that in China a thirty-two-year-old woman contracted avian influenza while communicating with a sick father.
At the moment, doctors have found that the elderly Chinese was the carrier of a known strain of bird flu (H7N9), but until now no cases of human-to-human infection of the virus have been observed. For several decades, doctors have documented about three hundred cases of human infection after direct contact with animals, most of them deadly.
Avian influenza, also called classic bird plague, is an acute infectious disease that affects both the digestive and respiratory system. Medicine knows a large number of strains (varieties) of avian flu, many of which are dangerous for any living organism.
For the first time, avian influenza was described as far back as the late nineteenth century, when a well-known Italian veterinarian informed the medical press about a new disease that struck a large number of poultry in the vicinity of Turin (northwest of Italy). The first infection of the human body was recorded in China (Hong Kong) at the end of the twentieth century, at a time when an epidemic of avian influenza was seen throughout China. Physicians have established that the disease can be transmitted from bird to person, plus, the pandemics of avian influenza that arose due to mutations of various viruses, almost did not lend themselves to treatment, since the person had no immunity to new viruses for him. Data from the World Health Organization show that of 360 cases of human infection of avian influenza, 275 have become fatal.
This year, the British press reported the first case of human-to-human infection with avian influenza. Chinese doctors recorded the fact of infection of an adult woman from a sick father who visited the bird market a week before hospitalization. The woman took care of her father and after a few days also went to the hospital. The disease developed rapidly and doctors could not save both residents of China: a few days later, a woman and her father died in the intensive care unit of internal organs dysfunction. Analyzes confirmed the fact that the woman was infected from the sick father, and not from other sources of influenza. On the other hand, none of the other people who had been in contact with the patients for two weeks were not infected.
At the moment, the researchers call this case "a possible case of transmission of the avian influenza virus from person to person." All the facts indicate that the person has actually been infected, but since such cases were not previously recorded, doctors can not claim that the infection actually occurred under certain conditions.
British scientists believe that the case registered in China should encourage doctors to more closely study the strains of avian influenza and its possible impact on the human body.