Human flu pandemic 'inevitable' in Britain: chief medical officer

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2005

LONDON (AFP) — The deadly avian influenza virus found in Turkey and Romania is bound to combine with a human variety at some point and cause a pandemic that would kill around 50,000 people in Britain, the country's chief medical officer said.

"The significance of it isn't that there will be a pandemic of bird flu itself, the significance of it is that at some point, and we go by the lessons of history, the bird flu virus will combine with a human flu virus and then it will become easily transmissible," Liam Donaldson said told BBC television on Sunday.

"Why is that inevitable? Well because it has happened before."

On Saturday the presence of the deadly H5N1 virus bird flu was confirmed in Romania, only two days after it was found in Turkey.

Donaldson...