News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A 16-year-old girl in southern Vietnam is seriously ill with H5N1 avian influenza, according to reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and news services today.

(CIDRAP News) – Vietnam and Thailand have continued to battle avian influenza in recent weeks, with a total of 19 outbreaks reported in a dozen provinces, according to health officials of the two countries.

Vietnam has reported seven outbreaks in six provinces, while Thailand has reported 12 outbreaks in six provinces, according to information published by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

(CIDRAP News) – Tests have confirmed that a man who worked on a Japanese farm during an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza last February had Japan's first human case of avian flu, though he never became seriously ill, officials announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – Overcoming the threat of avian influenza is the single most pressing agricultural and public health issue facing Southeast Asia, Singapore's minister of state for national development, Cedric Foo, said yesterday in opening a regional meeting on the disease, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Southeast Asian nations are mounting a two-tiered attack on the avian influenza virus that has devastated poultry flocks and raised the specter of a potential human flu pandemic.

On the pandemic front, scientific advances and policy efforts are laying the groundwork for preparedness in Hong Kong and mainland China.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization weighed in yesterday on the debate about the potential magnitude of the next influenza pandemic by saying it's impossible to confidently predict how many lives a pandemic might claim.

(CIDRAP News) – As public health ministers and officials from 13 Asian countries conferred in Bangkok last week on how to prevent the spread of H5N1 avian influenza, experts offered troubling predictions.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's (WHO's) top official in the western Pacific said yesterday that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases may return this winter but probably not in large numbers.

"I don't think a large outbreak is likely," Dr. Shigeru Omi, director of the WHO's Western Pacific Regional Office, said in a speech in Hong Kong. Omi was quoted in a WHO news release.