News & Perspective

Maryn McKennaContributing Writer

(CIDRAP News) – This in-depth article investigates the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Its seven parts put advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

(CIDRAP News) – Europe braced for further spread of the H5N1 avian influenza virus today in the wake of reports that the virus was suspected in the deaths of two wild ducks on Sweden's Baltic coast and a domestic cat in Germany.

The cat was discovered last weekend on Ruegen, the island off Germany's north coast where H5N1 was first discovered on German soil, according to a Reuters report.

(CIDRAP News) – The US government has awarded Chiron Corp. a $62.5 million contract to make a vaccine for H5N1 avian influenza as part of efforts to prepare for a possible human flu pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Clinical trials of a vaccine designed to keep the H5N1 avian influenza virus from sparking a human flu pandemic will begin early in 2005, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said this week.