News & Perspective

Jan 6, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – 2005 is likely to go down as the year when avian influenza, powered by a steady rise in human cases and the spread of poultry outbreaks all the way to Eastern Europe, emerged as a high-profile global health issue.

When 2005 dawned, only 45 human cases of H5N1 avian flu, including 32 deaths, had been counted by the World Health Organization (WHO). All of those were in Vietnam and Thailand.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza has been ruled out in a 14-year-old Turkish boy who died over the weekend and in three siblings who were hospitalized with him, according to news services.

Tests on the four children were negative for avian flu, according to Turkish health officials quoted in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Laboratory tests in Indonesia indicated that an 8-year-old boy who died Dec 15 had avian influenza, making him potentially the country's 11th victim of the disease, Indonesian officials reported yesterday.

The local test results were awaiting confirmation by a World Health Organization (WHO) reference lab in Hong Kong, Hariadi Wibisono of the Indonesian health ministry told Bloomberg News.

(CIDRAP News) – Preliminary tests indicate H5N1 avian influenza caused the death of a 35-year-old Indonesian man in Jakarta on Nov 19, according to a government official quoted today in the Jakarta Post.

However, Indonesia is awaiting confirmation from a World Health Organization (WHO) reference laboratory of what would be the country's eighth fatality from avian flu. WHO has already confirmed 11 cases, seven of them fatal, in Indonesia.

(CIDRAP News) – A new suspected case of H5N1 avian influenza was reported in Indonesia today, while still another poultry outbreak was reported in China, its ninth in the past month.

In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the avian flu case reported in an 18-month-old boy in Thailand last week, while Thai officials said the boy's grandmother has tested negative for the virus.