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This is the first case of a flock of German farm poultry contracting bird flu, the wire service reports, although several cases of the virus were found in wild birds in Germany this year. Health officials remain alert to the possibility that the avian flu virus could mutate and cause it to be transmitted from human to human. Although the World Health Organization puts the number of human deaths from avian flu at 190, none of them is ascribed to contagion between humans, the AP reports.

Stock Investing Course (AXcess News) Washington - The World Health Organization (WHO) has put Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG on alert since the discovery of the largest human-transmitted spread of the bird flu virus in a village in North Sumatra.

Normally the avian bird flu viruses do not affect humans but since 1997 (when the first case of avian bird flu among humans appeared in Hong Kong), this kind of flu has infected and killed several humans in the South East Asian countries. While WHO does not recommend avoiding travels to these countries, it does advice staying away from live animal markets and poultry farms. This is because the droppings of infected birds generally carry large quantities of the virus.

Stock Market Game The WHO has for the first time asked the maker of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu to ready the global stockpile after human-to-human transmission was suspected in a family cluster in Indonesia.

That cluster of deaths caused fears that the virus was mutating into a form that could be easily transmitted from human to human. However, experts later concluded that was not the case. In this latest outbreak, seven people from the village in the Karo district in Northern Sumatra province have been hospitalized with suspected bird flu, BBC News reported. Officials are waiting for test results to confirm that it is bird flu.

Stock Investing Game The Indonesian Health Ministry on Monday notified the WHO office in Jakarta of the possible human-to-human bird flu virus. The news led to the global health organization putting the drug maker on alert.

So far, bird flu has infected 231 people around the world, and killed 134. Human casualties remain largely confined to Asia and to people who have had close and prolonged contact with infected birds, such as poultry farm workers. Worries about bird flu have also led to the destruction of tens of millions of poultry, mostly in Asian nations, as officials struggle to contain the virus. ---- North Carolina Beaches Issue Jellyfish Alert

Journal Prime Rate Street Wall Six of the seven family members who caught bird flu have died, the most recent on Monday. An eighth family member who died was buried before tests could be done, but she was considered to be among those infected with bird flu.

Avian bird flu on the other hand is a form of flu that was originally believed to infect birds only, but turned up among humans in Hong Kong in 1997. Avian bird flu can affect humans, but only when they come in close contact with live infected birds and manage to inhale the virus. fever, malaise, sore throats and coughs.

Stock Market News The deaths in the family cluster were the largest ever reported. The WHO has stressed the virus has not mutated into a version easily passed between people or shown any sign of spreading outside the family - all blood relatives who had very close contact with each other.

Stock Investing Basics Tests for the H5N1 virus in birds in the village of Kubu Sembelang have all come back negative, baffling experts. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected poultry. But there is evidence of isolated cases of limited transmission between people in very close contact with each other.

Stock Investing Software Scientists are unsure how this has occurred, but they have theorized that the virus may pass from one person to another through droplets sneezed or coughed by humans into the air or food, onto surfaces or in some combination.

Stock Market Trading It has been suggested that some people may have a genetic susceptibility to the disease. In all four family clusters recorded so far, only direct blood relatives - not spouses - have caught bird flu.

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