Avi Blizovsky
Bird flu can mutate and become a pandemic if AIDS patients become infected with it. Dr. Robert Webster, an expert on bird flu, says that AIDS patients whose immune systems are weak may pick up the deadly strain of bird flu, H5N1. This will allow this species to adapt to humans and thus become more dangerous. Dr. Webster spoke at a conference organized by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Currently, H5N1 cannot easily pass from person to person. So far, 125 people have been infected with this strain of influenza in southeast Ayia, most of them coming into direct contact with infected birds. The experts fear that the spread of the disease among birds in this area, where there is a great closeness between birds and humans, could make the virus more deadly.
According to Webster, of St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, the key will be when H5N1 reaches East Africa, where AIDS is common.
In a test he conducted on patients whose immune systems were suppressed due to anti-cancer treatments, it was shown that they are unable to completely eliminate flu viruses from their system, and may spread copies of the virus for weeks. "A similar thing may happen when AIDS patients become infected with the new strain."
The culture of the virus for a long period of time inside a person's body creates ideal conditions for the development of more infectious forms of the virus.
H5N1 has not yet reached East Africa, but this region is the destination of many birds migrating these days from the infected areas. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that the epidemic will arrive there soon. They believe that since the social and sanitary conditions are similar to those in Asia, as well as the level of agriculture and the way of agricultural work, they predict that the virus will strike as it did in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and China.
The virus expert
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