Chicken resistant to Avian Flu will emerge: WHO expert

Genetic engineering in the near future will create avian flu resistant chicken, noted virologist Dr Robert G Webster, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert on influenza, said here today.
Dr Webster was delivering a public lecture at Government Medical College here on 'The Influenza Virus Enigma', hosted by Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in connection with the Foundation Day of the Department of Biotechnology, Governmnent of India.
Though infected by certain types of deadly flu virus, duck look perfectly healthy, but chicken die when these viruses pass on to them, said the virologist, a Professor at Division of Virology, Department of Infectious Diseases, St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis (USA), a press release said.

"Ducks are resistant to the virus due to a gene called RIG-1. If scientists succeed in transferring this gene to the chicken, they will also become immune to the disease".
Intensive efforts are on to achieve this, but still the possibility of human infection will remain. Viruses in birds will live for many years but when they move to hosts, there will be deadly reaction, he pointed out.
If the previous threats to the Indian population were from HINI virus, in the coming days, two other strains, H5N1 and H7N9, are going to be lethal. In China and the US, 60 per cent of humans infected with these viruses died.

"Now H5N1 has moved to Bangladesh from China and the viruses could easily land in India soon," he said.