Tunisia: Does H5N1 represent a new global threat after the coronavirus?

Does the H5N1 avian flu virus pose a new threat to the world after the recent coronavirus pandemic? Everything suggests, in fact, that this highly pathogenic virus which is transmitted mainly between animal species could present a risk to human health since a severe case of avian flu was diagnosed in an American sixty-year-old in the state. from Louisiana.

The severe respiratory infection caused by the H5N1 virus from which the old man suffered required his immediate hospitalization. The alert is high in this state in the southern United States where there are fears that an epidemic could break out on a larger scale, following the observation of a large number of animals which have been infected by this virus.

The fear in Uncle Sam’s country is all the greater, moreover, as more than sixty people have been contaminated, across the country, by the avian flu virus since April. last, according to the press release from the American Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.

Furthermore, more than 300 million birds worldwide have been decimated by the virus over the past three years, according to the World Organization for Animal Health. But the most worrying thing today is the fact that, like other viruses, H5N1 risks crossing borders and causing not only episodes of animal epizootics, but also a new pandemic. human.

If scientists fear, in fact, today, that the circulation of this animal virus will lead to a mutation which facilitates not only the contamination from animals to humans, but in particular that between humans, for the moment, the The WHO wants to be reassuring, considering that the risk of transmission to humans on a large scale is “low” and that the implementation of measures such as the use of protective equipment by people in close contact with animals would reduce the risk to human health large scale.

In Tunisia, a national prevention system was set up in 2006 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries in order to prevent the spread of “bird plague” among farm livestock. It includes, as explained in the practical manual published by the Tunisian Scientific Society of Veterinary Medicine with the collaboration of the General Directorate of Veterinary Services, the procedures to follow which provide, among other things, for the taking of samples from migratory birds and monitoring and control of suspect farms. Should this national system be reactivated again? We are entitled to ask ourselves the question.