News & Perspective

Editor's note: This is the fifth in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The series puts promising advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing large amounts of an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

(CIDRAP News) – More than 60 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the Republic of Congo since the beginning of this year, raising new concerns about the spread of the disease in humans.

(CIDRAP News) – A second-generation smallpox vaccine made by the British biotechnology company Acambis plc and stockpiled by the US government as protection against bioterrorist attacks has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

– TORONTO (CIDRAP News) – Ten years after H5N1 avian influenza first began to raise fears of a potential pandemic, the world has a stronger set of tools to contain that virus and similar threats, but also a fresh awareness of humanity's vulnerability to fast-spreading diseases, experts said yesterday at an international conference on flu.

(CIDRAP News) – US officials have announced the award of a $500 million contract to Bavarian Nordic A/S, a Danish firm, for 20 million doses of a smallpox vaccine that's expected to be safe for people with weakened immune systems.

(CIDRAP News) – In a rare action, federal health authorities have ordered an Atlanta man who has extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) into isolation and are looking for people who recently flew with him so they can be tested for the disease.