News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The city of Edmonton, Alta., recently announced that it was stockpiling an herbal supplement in the hope of boosting the immunity of police, firefighters, and other essential workers during an influenza pandemic.

By buying a ginseng product from CV Technologies, Inc., a company based in Edmonton, the city has become the first in North America to add an herbal supplement to its pandemic stockpile, according to media reports.

(CIDRAP News) – In a major effort to track influenza viruses in nature and learn more about how they interact with the human body, the federal government this week announced a $23-million-a-year program to fund research centers at six institutions around the country.

(CIDRAP News) – Orlando, FL – Julie Gerberding, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), today challenged health and business leaders to stay focused on the "marathon" of preparing for an influenza pandemic.

Gerberding, speaking at a conference on business preparedness, said it's not possible to maintain high public interest in the pandemic threat indefinitely, but leaders must keep preparing anyway.

(CIDRAP News) – Inadequate worker-safety protocols probably contributed to the severity of the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in Ontario, a provincial commission said in a report unveiled this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The global death toll from H5N1 avian influenza grew by two today when the World Health Organization (WHO) added a Chinese case dating back to 2003 and the Indonesian case reported yesterday involving a 16-year-old boy. Meanwhile, reports today say another H5N1 death has occurred in Indonesia, this one in a teen girl.

(CIDRAP News) – Three international health agencies announced yesterday the launch of a joint early warning system to allow a quicker response to animal diseases that can spread to humans (zoonoses).

(CIDRAP News) – The Chinese Ministry of Health is conducting its own investigation into the report of a man who died of H5N1 avian influenza in late 2003, according to a report today by Agence France-Presse (AFP). The case was first described by eight Chinese researchers in the Jun 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

(CIDRAP News) – A 24-year-old Beijing man died of H5N1 avian influenza in November 2003, nearly two years before China reported any human H5N1 cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Chinese scientists writing in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

The letter has renewed speculation about how many H5N1 cases might have been missed or not reported in China, especially before late 2005, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – Putting an additional stressor, such as a flu pandemic, on an infrastructure that is already stressed and running at a stretched capacity merits great concern, said experts convening yesterday at a national summit on business planning for pandemic influenza in Minneapolis.

(CIDRAP News) – Speakers at a national conference in Minneapolis today sought to impress business leaders with the potentially disastrous effects of an influenza pandemic without scaring them into thinking that preparing for one is futile.