Bird flu, or avian flu, is an infectious type of influenza that spreads among birds. In rare cases, it can affect humans.
How bird flu spreads to humans Bird flu is spread by close contact with an infected bird (dead or alive).
This includes:
touching infected birds touching droppings or bedding killing or preparing infected poultry for cooking Markets where live birds are sold can also be a source of bird flu. Avoid visiting these markets if you're travelling to countries that have had an outbreak of bird flu. You can check health advice for the country you're visiting on the TravelHealthPro website.
You can't catch bird flu through eating fully cooked poultry or eggs, even in areas with an outbreak of bird flu. Tere are lots of different strains of bird flu virus. Most of them don't infect humans. But there are 4 strains that have caused concern in recent years:
H5N1 (since 1997) H7N9 (since 2013) H5N6 (since 2014) H5N8 (since 2016) Although H5N1, H7N9 and H5N6 don't infect people easily and aren't usually spread from human to human, several people have been infected around the world, leading to a number of deaths.
In February 2021 H5N8 was found to have infected a small number of people for the first time, in Russia.
For more information about avian flu and what you can do, visit
http://web.archive.org/web/20080222082216/http://www.aphis.usda.gov:80/vs/birdbiosecurity/hpai.html
