News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The global H5N1 avian influenza situation in birds improved in the first half of this year, but an H5N1 strain not previously seen in Africa recently cropped up in Nigeria, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

(CIDRAP News) – Government officials in Pakistan today announced a recent outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza at a poultry farm in the country's northwest, as Indonesia worked to stamp out the disease on farms on Sulawesi and Italian officials reported low-pathogenic avian flu outbreaks.

(CIDRAP News) – Agriculture officials in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia have confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in birds, a first for each country.

The outbreak in Bangladesh struck chickens at a state-run poultry farm in Savar, near the capital, Dhaka, the Associated Press (AP) reported today. Government sources said farm workers had recently culled all 30,000 chickens at the farm after many of them died mysteriously, the AP said.

April 4, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – The H5N1 virus has sneaked across another border, making Burkina Faso the fifth African nation to lose poultry to the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – Afghanistan and Myanmar have joined the company of countries hit by H5N1 avian influenza with the confirmation today of the virus in chickens in both countries, according to news service reports.

(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) – More birds have died or been sacrificed in the current avian influenza outbreaks in Asia than in the five largest previous outbreaks of avian flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported yesterday.