WHO chart of bird flu deaths

Here's a good wrapup from the World Health
Organization (WHO) has the numbers of
cases of bird flu in people and the deaths,
by country and year.

WHO bird flu chart

It's interesting to speculate about why
there's such a range of percentages of
deaths. Every case in Cambodia and Iraq
has died.

It's possible because these are the very
poorest of these countries (although none
of them are wealthy, some are much better
off than others, and so are their
healthcare systems).

It's also possible that some cases -- and
this could apply to all countries -- just
have not been discovered.

Possibly some people are down as having died
of malaria or dengue when testing would show
bird flu.

The good news is that possibly some people
have caught it and recovered -- more than we
know about.

There's fluctuation in the lethality rate.
All 3 2003 cases in Vietnam died, but
possibly that's because in 2003 Vietnam was
far less prepared to treat bird flu cases
than they are now.

It's also possible that these numbers are just
not high enough to be statistically meaningful.