During summer migration, millions of birds travel from Russia and other parts of Asia across the Bering Strait to Alaska, sometimes bringing viruses, including Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, with them.
Dr. Lisa Kercher, a virologist and influenza researcher from St. Jude Children’s Hospital, visited Nome last month to collect data and connect with locals to gain a better understanding of the disease and its impacts to subsistence hunters.
“The first thing I have to do is explain why a children’s hospital studies bird flu,” she said.
Kercher is Director of Laboratory Operations at St. Jude’s Webby Lab, specializing in influenza research. But if you’ve ever seen one of their commercials, influenza might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about St. Jude’s work.
The hospital, she explained, focuses more broadly on “catastrophic diseases”, including respiratory illnesses such as influenza.
“One of the investigators that came to St. Jude very early on was the one that figured out that influenza, the reservoir for it, is in wild waterfowl,” she said. “That’s how St. Jude got into bird flu research.”
Kercher said St. Jude has expanded its research to communities that don’t have established surveillance programs for the virus to fill what she calls “research gaps”.
“A place like this is so important geographically to see the birds coming from Russia that are carrying Asian strains,” she explained. “Just monitoring that in real time would be such a leap forward to filling a gap in research that it would really move the needle on how we understand how the disease works.”
Kercher said as bird flu continues to spread, hunters in Nome may hold the key to understanding the disease and its global impacts.
Listen to the full story to learn more about St. Jude’s research in Western Alaska.
