News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – In announcing his resignation today after 4 years as US Health and Human services (HHS) secretary, Tommy G. Thompson cited pandemic influenza and food biosecurity as two of his biggest worries.

Thompson, who presided over massive increases in federal spending for public health preparedness and biodefense research, said in response to a question, "There are two things that really worry me yet. The big one is pandemic flu."

(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) – By recreating a key surface protein from the 1918 pandemic flu virus and testing its effects in mice, researchers have shown that the protein might have been an important reason for the virus's extraordinary ability to kill.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced this week it is launching a campaign to map the genetic blueprint of thousands of human and avian influenza viruses in an effort to better understand how flu viruses evolve, spread, and cause disease.

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – The nature of the widespread avian influenza outbreaks in Asia points to the threat of a human flu pandemic that could rival the disastrous pandemic of 1918-1920, infectious disease expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, warned in a public forum in Minneapolis last week.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's top influenza expert warned at the end of a 2-day international meeting today that governments need to fund the development of vaccines to combat a feared flu pandemic that could kill millions of people, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia gives the world its first opportunity to prepare a vaccine in advance for a potential pandemic strain of flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today as it convened a meeting of vaccine companies and health officials to consider the challenge.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has called a Nov 11 "summit" meeting of health officials and vaccine companies to discuss how to confront what is seen as the growing risk that avian influenza will trigger a human flu pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Influenza viruses in 18% of a group of Japanese children who were treated with oseltamivir (Tamiflu) developed resistance to the antiviral drug, which is viewed as one of the key defenses against pandemic influenza, according to a new report in The Lancet.