Reuters news agency is reporting: Eight suspected human bird flu cases in Pakistan are likely a combination of infections from poultry and limited “person to person transmission” due to close contact, a top World Health Organisation expert said on Tuesday. Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of WHO’s global influenza program, said while unconfirmed, any human to human spread seemed similar to previous outbreaks in Asia, affecting close family members caring for sick loved ones. “Right now it doesn’t look like pure human to human transmission. It looks like the veterinarian, who was the index case, and a number of other suspect cases had poultry exposure,” Fukuda said. “It is definitely possible that we have a mixed scenario where we have poultry to human infection and possible human to human transmission within a family, which is not yet verified.” By Gene Koprowski, Editor-in-Chief