At present bird flu is killing over 50 percent of all humans who get it...

A new research project covering the effects of the bird flu drug Tamiflu that was published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy makes clear that the medicine that is made by the drug giant Roche in Switzerland is effective in beating the effects of the two different strains of the H5N1 bird flu influenza virus. The research also noted that it is extremely effective if the Tamiflu is given to patients within the first 24 hours of being exposed to the virus and is likely to prevent death from the disease.

The lead author of the study Dr. Elena Govorkova, which was conducted at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, said that the results of this research reconfirmed the fact that oseltamivir (Tamiflu) can stop you from dying from the bird flu and also said that there had been no emergence of Tamiflu-resistant variants of the virus when the drug had been administered at correct levels.

The research was done using ferrets that suffer from the H5N1 infections in a very similar way to humans and thus the infection with different types of the H5N1 virus in these animals can be extremely useful for bird flu researchers. At present the bird flu virus is killing over 50 percent of all humans who get it.  Official statistics recorded by World Health Organisation (WHO) show that 282 people have got the bird flu virus and 169 people have died from it.

The big worry for the world at large is that this bird flu virus could change from a virus which is extremely difficult for humans to contract into a virus which is as simple to contract as the common cold. If this was the case and over 50 percent of people who got a common cold died from it the effects would be catastrophic and millions of people would die.