PARIS: The first human death from bird flu in the United States has intensified calls for the government to ramp up efforts to stave off the threat of another pandemic — particularly ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Health experts around the world have for months been urging US authorities to increase surveillance and share more information about its bird flu outbreak after the virus started spreading among dairy cows for the first time.

On Monday, Louisiana health authorities reported that a patient aged over 60 was the country’s first person to die from bird flu.

The patient, who contracted avian influenza after being exposed to infected birds, had underlying medical conditions, US health authorities said.

The World Health Organisation has maintained that bird flu’s risk to the general population is low, and there is no evidence that it has been transmitted between people. However health experts have been sounding the alarm about the potential pandemic threat of bird flu, particularly as it has shown signs of mutating in mammals into a form that could spread more easily among humans.

The avian influenza variant H5N1 was first detected in 1996, but a record global outbreak since 2020 has resulted in hundreds of millions of poultry birds being culled — and killed an unknown but massive number of wild birds.

In March, the virus started transmitting between dairy cows in the United States.

Since the start of last year, 66 bird flu cases have been recorded in humans in the United States.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2025