Canada reports first bird flu case

Canadian health officials confirmed Wednesday that
a resident from Alberta has died from H5N1 avian
flu, the first case of the virus in North America.
Canada’s Health Minister, Rona Ambrose, said the
infected individual had recently traveled to Beijing.
The Canadian case also is the first case of H5N1
infection ever imported by a traveler into a country
where the virus is not present in poultry. No such
H5N1 viruses have been detected in people or in
animals in the United States.

Ambrose stressed that Canadians should not be
worried about contracting the virus.
“As Canada’s Health Minister I want to reassure the
public this is an isolated case,” Ambrose said. “The
risk of H5N1 to Canadians is very low. There is no
evidence of sustained human-to-human
transmission. It is also important for Canadians to
know that this case is not part of the seasonal flu
which circulates in Canada every year.”
According to the World Health Organization, most
avian flu viruses do not cause disease in humans.
However, some like H5N1 are zoonotic, which
means they can infect humans and cause disease,
even death. The H5N1 virus has been primarily
found in poultry in parts of Asia and northeastern
Africa, where some people have contracted the
virus and died.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, most of the 648 human cases of H5N1
infections that have been detected since 2003 have
occurred in people with direct or close contact with
poultry.
The CDC considers that the health risk to people in
the Americas posed by the detection of this one
case is very low. The U.S. agency is not
recommending that the public take any special
actions regarding H5N1 virus in response to the
Canadian case.