Exposure to bird flu through animal markets

n animal markets, wild mammals, birds, and reptiles are in transit daily. In these markets they are in contact with people and with dozens of other species before they are shipped to other markets, sold locally, or even freed and sent back into the wild as part of religious customs.

Pramuka Market in East Jakarta is likely one of the world's largest animal markets (unfortunately endangered animals are traded here as well) followed by Jakarta's Jatinegara, Barito and Surabaya's Bratang and Semarang's Karimata bird markets.

Hunters, middle men, and consumers all experience some type of contact as each animal is traded. Other wildlife in the trade is temporarily exposed, and domestic animals and wild scavengers in villages and market areas consume the remnants and wastes from the traded wildlife.

The free ranging chickens in Indonesia can be easily exposed to the virus in this way, and spread it even further. This trade, coupled with rapid modern transportation and the fact that markets serve as network hubs rather than as product endpoints, dramatically increases the movement and potential cross-species transmission of infectious agents like avian influenza.

Besides the obvious economic threat to the poultry industry, a possible pandemic is a great threat to public health. The moment the avian virus mutates into a new strain which is transmissible from human to human, a pandemic is likely to occur. Pandemics are different from seasonal outbreaks or "epidemics" of influenza.

Seasonal outbreaks are caused by subtypes of influenza viruses that are already in existence among people, whereas pandemic outbreaks are caused by new subtypes or by subtypes that have never circulated among people or that have not circulated among people for a long time. The worst known pandemic of influenza (the "Spanish flu") occurred in 1918-1919, killing approximately 40 million people around the world.