News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Concluding a major conference on avian and pandemic influenza today, health officials reported a new level of international agreement on the need to confront the threat and released a list of key steps to do that.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza and the threat of a flu pandemic were in the spotlight in Washington, DC, today as officials from 80 nations met to discuss the situation and President Bush was to meet with manufacturers of flu vaccines and drugs.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Senate voted yesterday to provide $4 billion for antiviral drugs and other measures to prepare for a feared influenza pandemic, but whether the measure would clear Congress was uncertain.

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations today signaled a new level of concern about avian influenza and the risk of a flu pandemic by naming a special coordinator of all UN responses to the situation.

Dr. David Nabarro, a British public health expert with the World Health Organization (WHO), was named to the new job of "UN system coordinator for avian and human influenza."

(CIDRAP News) – US officials this week promoted international efforts to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, announcing an international flu surveillance partnership and promising aid to Vietnam for avian and human flu surveillance.

(CIDRAP News) – International health agencies said yesterday that their plan to battle avian influenza will focus on educating small-scale farmers, segregating animal species on backyard farms, and vaccinating poultry.

(CIDRAP News) – International health agencies are questioning China about a report that the country has used a human antiviral drug in poultry for years, thereby causing the H5N1 influenza virus to become resistant to the drug.

(CIDRAP News) – Warnings that H5N1 avian influenza could touch off a human flu pandemic rose in intensity as a major conference on the problem opened today in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, according to news services.

"We at WHO [the World Health Organization] believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director, was quoted as saying.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) is preparing to recommend that governments consider stockpiling vaccines against the H5N1 avian influenza virus now, rather than waiting until a human flu pandemic emerges, according to a story published online today by New Scientist magazine.