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Bird Flu: A Historical Perspective by Niall Cinneide

Recent outbreaks have put avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu disease, at the center stage of the global health community. From relative anonymity, the disease acquired notoriety for itself when it claimed more than fifty human lives. The deaths from bird flu disease are relatively small when compared to the number of deaths from other diseases. However, the possibility of a global pandemic is serious enough that deaths caused by bird flu warrant a closer examination and alarm.


Another pandemic waiting to happen

Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the world is ripe for another influenza pandemic. An influenza pandemic occurs roughly every 30-40 years. The last influenza pandemic, which originated in Hong Kong in 1969, claimed 34,000 lives in the United States and even more in the Asian region. Although the viral subtype of the disease is still in circulation, the human body has already developed antibodies for it.

Historical precedence is not enough of a basis towards setting off global alarm bells. However, the patterns seen in the outbreaks point to the possibility of another influenza pandemic. There are an increasing number of cases wherein humans have been infected with the bird flu virus and the death toll from the disease is now more than 50.

One of the first signs of an impending pandemic is the crossing over of the disease from birds to humans. WHO is closely keeping its eye on the occurrence of a first case of human to human transmission of the bird flu virus. The human to human transmission of the disease will pose greater risks of infection to humans, which would effectively signal the start of a pandemic. To date, there are no recorded cases of bird flu being transmitted from an infected human to another.

To date, all human cases of bird flu were contracted by victims after having direct contact with infected animals and their secretions. However, the global health community is very much concerned because the bird flu virus mutates easily and is constantly evolving, and the first human to human transmission of the virus may just be around the corner.


Three global influenza pandemics: a brief history

Three major influenza pandemics have occurred: in 1918, 1957 and 1968. The first pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, had the highest mortality among the three pandemics. In less than a year, 20 to 40 million people died from the Spanish Flu, with over 50,000 lives claimed in the United States alone. Simultaneous outbreaks of the Spanish Flu were first detected in Europe and some parts of the United States. The infection spread to more areas through ships that traveled between the United States and Europe. Asia and Africa were eventually affected. The first wave of the pandemic was highly contagious although it was not deadly. The second wave, however, was deadly and occurred shortly in France, Sierra Leona and United States. It registered a ten-fold increase in mortality.

In 1957, a second pandemic occurred. Called the Asian Flu because it was first detected in Hong Kong and Singapore, it was much milder than the Spanish Flu, claiming between one and four million lives. When the second pandemic hit, the people were more prepared and knew what to expect. This was due largely to the world’s experience with the first pandemic. The Asian Flu virus was soon isolated in Japanese and Singaporean laboratories. The findings helped the World Health Organization alert the world about the onset of a pandemic and vaccines were immediately produced and distributed.

The most recent influenza pandemic happened in 1968 and lasted for a year. Dubbed as the Hong Kong Flu, it was first detected in China and later spread to Hong Kong where it escalated at an alarming rate. Like the Asian Flu, the Hong Kong Flu claimed between one and four million lives. It reached Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, particularly California.

Niall Cinneide publishes a news site, with reports and articles, about bird flu at http://www.bird-flu-alert.info This article may be reprinted in full so long as the resource box and the live links are included intact. All rights reserved. Copyright Bird-Flu-Alert.info

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Three Ways Of Getting Listed In Google by Akash Kumar

Google may or may not be the biggest search engine of all the search engines but for most web sites, Google refers more traffic than any other search engine. So it's imperative that your site is indexed in Google.

With having a reach to more than 100 million searches performed daily it makes sense that why people give more importance to Google than to any other search engine while trying to rank high in them.

But for ranking high your website must be listed under a particular search engine. Here in this article I will tell you how you can get listed in Google by following any of the three simple steps.

1. Submit your website directly to Google

This is the most common and the simplest way of getting your site listed in Google what you have to do is just tell Google that your site exists and Google will find you. Just go to http://www.google.com/addurl.html and submit your website to Google however this submission can't guarantee you inclusion.

It is also believed by many of the experts that Google gives more importance to a site that Google finds on its own. Well this may be or may not be true.

2. Get Listed in The Major Directories

Google is one of the major search engines and it keeps crawling the major directories frequently so if you get your site listed in one of the major directories like: Yahoo, Dmoz or Looksmart then it will automatically find you following the link from the directories.

3. Get lots of high quality incoming links

This is the best way to get listed in Google or in any other search engine. The strategy is simple and straight just get lots of high quality incoming to your site and get listed in Google much quicker. This is the most easiest way of getting links to your site.

The major advantage of this is that you can list all of your pages in very small amount time if your inner linking structure is correct. I personally emphasize on this because I don't have enough time to submit my hundreds of pages to each search engine while knowing that submitting only a single page per site per day is under the search engine's guidelines and exceeding this amount can be seen as spam.

Conclusion

If you want to get listed in Google or in any other search engine more quickly then ever then the best thing you can do is just get lots of high quality links to your website and just watch how your whole site gets listed in Google at a pace that you never expected.

Akash Kumar is a professional SEO consultant and the CEO of Vista Divine Inc. - The Search Engine Optimization Company a search engine optimization firm in India providing high quality seo services worldwide. Also providing free search engine optimization tips and tutorials to beginners.

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