News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The United States will contribute another $44.4 million to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO's) campaign to prevent and control avian influenza, the FAO announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza caused the deaths of two teenage girls, a 15-year-old in Egypt and a 13-year-old in Cambodia.

(CIDRAP News) – New human cases of H5N1 avian influenza were reported in Cambodia and Egypt today, while Indonesian officials, according to one news service, said they would not resume sharing H5N1 virus samples unless vaccine manufacturers promise to provide the country with free pandemic flu vaccines.

April 5, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – Avian flu has resurfaced in two countries, killing a 12-year-old boy in Cambodia and sickening a little girl in Egypt, according to news services.

The Cambodian boy died last night, said Michael O'Leary, World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Phnom Penh, who was quoted in a Reuters report today. The boy was from the southeastern province of Prey Veng, adjoining Vietnam.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia has confirmed a case of H5N1 avian influenza in a 1-year-old girl who died last week, and the illness is suspected in another Indonesian and in a teenager in Azerbaijan, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – As tests were pending to determine whether a 1-year-old child in Jakarta is Indonesia's 23rd fatality from avian influenza, other suspected human cases were under investigation today in Egypt and Iraq.

(CIDRAP News) – The H5N1 avian influenza virus has spread to Niger and Bosnia-Herzegovina, media outlets said today, and testing is under way on birds found dead in Switzerland, Pakistan, and Kenya.