First Cats, Now Rats

It seems that rats are the animals that we should watch out for...

First we heard that the dreaded bird flu virus could be transmuted into humans through pigs, then it was cats and now it seems that rats are the animals that we should watch out for. According to reports coming in from Japan, scientists over there felt that the likely culprits for bringing in the bird flu virus into a farm were not wild bird but rats.

They arrived at this conclusion after seeing that the animals that got infected had had no exposure to birds on the outside of their enclosures and the only possible animals that could have been in contact with them were rats. If the rats are responsible for the carrying of the virus then this is a very worrying development as they are far more difficult to control and cull than farmed poultry.

The scientists in Japan noted that the birds that died in some of the farms were right inside the specially protected chicken coops meaning that they could not have been infected from an outside bird. Japan is taking the threat of the bird flu virus very seriously and has a special task force to deal with it that was set up with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries. In Japan over 70,000 birds have been culled in various parts of the country as the government tries to contain and quarantine the fast spreading flu.

So far only one person has ever got bird flu in Japan and he survived after taking the Tamiflu drug. Tamiflu that is made by the Swiss drug company Roche is promoted by the World Health Organisation as the most effective drug to beat a human infection of the H5N1 birdflu. It is by no means an absolute cure for the virus as some people who have taken the Tamiflu did not survive but it can greatly increase your chances of living especially if you take it early on.