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Governments should invest in vaccines for all strains of influenza virus that exist in the animal kingdom as an insurance policy in case of an outbreak in humans, the incoming chief scientist at the World Health Organization said on Monday (Feb. 20). Countries ranging from the United States and Britain to France and Japan have suffered record losses of poultry in outbreaks of avian flu in the past year. The recent spread to mammals of H5N1 - commonly known as bird flu - needed to be monitored, but the risk to humans remained low, the WHO said earlier this month. Incoming WHO chief scientist Jeremy Farrar said he would like to see the pharmaceutical industry at least conduct some clinical trials for all influenza strains such that the world would not have to start from scratch to initiate global manufacturing should the need arise. "My concern that we're in slow motion watching something which may never happen," he added in a media briefing. "But if it were to happen, would we look back on what we're doing at the moment and say, why didn't we do more?"

The flu is an acute infectious disease of viral etiology. Flu symptoms are fever, cough, headache and muscle aches. It spreads easily from person to person, it circulates around the world and can affect everyone - from the youngest to the elderly and cause epidemics and pandemics. Disease known since ancient times. There is evidence that humanity has experienced so far over 30 flu pandemics, and only in the last century, there were three. The most serious of these, so called. "Spanish flu", founded in 1918, has led to the deaths of 20-50 million people. The flu virus belongs to the family Orthomyxoviridae, that there is only one race - Influenzavirus, including viruses causing disease in humans, mammals and birds. Some flu strains are species specific (infect only certain species, or only the people), but there are strains of flu that can spread from animal species to humans. Famous 3 types of flu virus - type A, type B and C. Influenza type C viruses, although similar in morphology differs from the other two types of the antigen and other basic properties. Influenza C occurs sporadically and causes respiratory disease with a slight leakage. Viruses that cause seasonal epidemics are of type A and type B. The most volatile are type A flu virus