Avian (Bird) flu - Overview

Growing international exchange, travel, and economic migration require a consistent, prompt, effective and international viral disease prevention policy.

Elevated human body temperature, or fever, is a convincing and reliable indicator of most human viral infections. Since the outbreak of SARS, public health authorities around the world have been looking for a fast, easy, contactless and reliable method to detect elevated human body temperature differences.

Thermography is such a method. It has become vital to control body temperature of risk groups such as travellers and proven itself as a monitoring tool that has substantially contributed to reduce the spreading of SARS virus in many countries and regions.

But viral contagious diseases unfortunately do not end with SARS. While the latter has taken lives of some 10% of the infected people, the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, in its current early stage in Asia and Europe, has a death rate of over 50%. So far, the spread of H5N1 virus from person to person has been very rare and has not continued beyond one person. Nonetheless, because all influenza viruses have the ability to change, scientists are concerned that

H5N1 virus one day could be able to infect humans and spread easily from one person to another.

Infrared thermography helps to detect and contain the spreading of bird flu and other viral diseases.

Infrared thermography is an effective tool to detect elevated body temperatures.
An infrared camera is a very effective tool to detect people infected with a viral disease at a very early stage. It produces thermal images or heat pictures which allow to display even the smallest temperature differences.

Human body temperature is a complex phenomenon. Humans are homeothermic, they radiate heat, which must be lost to the environment. The interface between that heat production and the environment is the skin. This dynamic organ is constantly adjusting the optimum balance between the physiologic demands of the body and external environmental conditions.

Infrared thermography provides a visual map of skin temperatures in real time. In addition, infrared cameras are very sensitive devices. Westminster Thermal IR cameras can measure temperature differences as small as 0.08 ºC.

The symptoms of most infectious diseases are similar - malaise, sore throat, cough and, of course, fever. Consequently, it is extremely easy to detect whether a person carries the risk of having an infectious disease or not. All that needs to be done is make an infrared image of the subject and measure if his/her body temperature exceeds a certain value.