Canadian health officials have confirmed that an Alberta resident has died from the H5N1 avian flu. According to the Canadian Health Minister the infected person had recently traveled to Beijing. This is the first case of the virus in North America and the first instance of the infection being brought by a traveler into a country where the virus is not present in that country’s poultry. According to the World Health Organization the H5N1 strain of the avian flu us zoonotic, meaning it can infect humans, however there is no evidence of sustained human to human transmission. The H5N1 virus is primarily found in poultry in parts of Asia and northeastern Africa, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the 648 human cases of H5N1 since 2003 the majority of them occurred in people with direct contact with poultry.
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