According to epidemiologist and professional of the infectious and non-infectious epidemics department of the State Hygiene and Anti-epidemic section of the Ministry of Health Liana Torosyan, the Ministry of Health continuously receives information from the Ministry of Health of Iran about this event and there have not been any official data. “We have already asked the Foreign Relations department of the Ministry of Health to contact Iran and find out correct information regarding the bird flu”.
Although there is no certain information regarding the dead birds found in the Arax river, L. Torosyan neither denied nor certified that. According to the epidemiologist’s sources, there have been no incidents of the bird flu in Iran yet. Let’s recall, that according to statistics provided by the International Health Organization, bird flu epidemics have been recorded in the countries located near Southern Asia starting from December 2003. There have been cases reported by the people of Thailand and Vietnam. Until today, there have been more than 120 cases of the bird flu and sixty of them have died. During this year in June, there were also cases of the bird flu in Russia and fortunately, it didn’t spread too much. A couple of days ago, we found out that the bird flu virus has been found in Turkey too and many turkeys have died from the illness. International bird flu studies continue, however, no serious methods of fighting against it have been found. “A person usually gets infected with the virus by having intimate contact with the bird that carries the disease,” says L. Torosyan. In response to the question about whether or not the carrier of the bird flu can spread the virus to someone else, L. Torosyan said: “There are studies being done in regard to that, but it is probable that if the bird flu spreads into the human organism and connects to the ordinary flu, then there may be mutations in the body. This means that the flu may spread from one person to the other.” There have not been any cases like that yet. What can the people living in Armenia do to avoid contracting this disease? In order to receive an answer to this question, L. Torosyan suggested on asking the Ministry of Agriculture and added: “We are coming up with a project where we will go further in detail about what we are going to do, however, the project is not completed. There are certain drugs which are being tested for effectiveness.” Epidemiologist L. Torosyan added that specialists of the International Health Organization are trying to come up with needles for fighting against the disease. Let’s not forget that the family of birds, including chickens and turkeys can contract the bird flu. We found out that pigs can contract the disease too.