How worried should we be about avian flu?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Avian flu has devastated poultry farms and wild bird populations around the world and now it's spread to mammals such as mink and seals. Cases in humans have been rare but worryingly fatal in more than half of the recorded incidences. How worried should we be about the risk of a new global pandemic?
Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room are:
Wendy Barclay, Head of the Department of Infectious Disease and Chair in Influenza Virology at Imperial College London Dr Wendy Puryear, Molecular virologist, Tufts University Prof Ian Brown, Head of Virology at the Animal and Plant Health Agency Marion Koopmans, Head of the Department of Virology at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam
Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Cecilia Armstrong and Ben Carter Production Coordinators: Siobhan Reed and Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Rod Farquhar Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm David O'Ronovich, welcome to the briefing room, the audio mind space where you, me and top experts come together and inside 28 minutes wrangle a big issue. |
| 0:16.7 | Today, avian flu has decimated poultry farms and wild bird populations, and now it's spread |
| 0:23.3 | to mammals such as mink and seals. |
| 0:26.5 | A humans next? |
| 0:36.4 | There's an international epidemic of avian flu, which doesn't sound too worrying if you're not a poultry farmer or a twitcher. |
| 0:44.3 | But what happens in birds doesn't always stay in birds. There are cases now in mammals such as otters, foxes and mink. |
| 0:53.3 | And yesterday the director of the World Health |
| 0:55.8 | Organisation warned that while risk to humans is low, we cannot assume that will remain the case. |
| 1:03.0 | So what is avian flu? How does it transmit? And what are the dangers of a new global challenge |
| 1:09.6 | to public health? |
| 1:13.9 | Step into the briefing room, and together we'll find out. |
| 1:19.1 | Let's start with the essentials. |
| 1:23.9 | Joining me in the briefing room is Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair in Virology at Imperial College London. |
| 1:26.8 | Wendy Barclay, Building Block question, what is bird flu? |
| 1:31.2 | Well, bird flu is a disease that birds get, and it's caused by an influenza virus. |
| 1:38.1 | Really a very similar virus to the viruses that cause flu in people. |
| 1:43.7 | In fact, all human influenza viruses were once viruses in birds |
| 1:49.5 | and at some point they crossed over from birds into humans. |
| 1:54.2 | Why is it that all flu viruses tend to start in birds? |
| 1:58.1 | Well, viruses are what we call obligate intracellular parasites. |
| 2:03.0 | Okay, so what that means is that they are completely inert outside of a body. |
... |
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