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(CIDRAP News) – The death toll in Angola's outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever has climbed to 244 of 266 people infected, but Angolan officials say the epidemic has been confined to the province where it began, according to news reports today.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Defense (DoD) has announced plans to collaborate with the defense departments of Canada and the United Kingdom to develop a vaccine for plague, which would fill an empty slot in the nation's current vaccine arsenal.

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April 20, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Samples of a potentially lethal influenza virus that were inadvertently mailed to laboratories around the world have all been found, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

A sample of the influenza A(H2N2) virus that had been missing in Beirut was found at the airport, the Associated Press (AP) quoted WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng as saying today. "That will be destroyed soon," she said.

April 20, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Vietnam will get rid of small live-poultry markets, cull ducks, and convert to factory-style farming in 15 cities and provinces to beat back the H5N1 avian influenza virus, under plans announced yesterday.

April 19, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Healthcare workers battling the worst outbreak of the lethal Marburg virus are facing cultural barriers that have hampered prevention efforts in Uige Province in northern Angola.

April 19, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – What began as a routine attempt to measure laboratories' testing proficiency has become a mission to track missing shipments of potentially lethal influenza viruses in Mexico, South Korea, and Lebanon.

(CIDRAP News) – Giving people an anthrax shot and antibiotic treatment in the wake of an attack is probably the most cost-effective response to the threat of an anthrax assault on an American city, according to a new study.

(CIDRAP News) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says federal agencies may not be able to reliably rule out the presence of anthrax contamination in a building because their sampling and detection methods have not been adequately tested.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government yesterday announced reductions in the rates of several common foodborne bacterial infections in 2004, especially the potentially life-threatening Escherichia coli O157:H7.

(CIDRAP News) – The Ebola virus has yielded an important behavioral clue that could lead to a treatment for the incurable infection that kills 50% to 90% of its victims, researchers have announced.

(CIDRAP News) – As the death toll in Angola's Marburg hemorrhagic fever epidemic reached 215, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today that Angolans are refusing to report suspected cases and allow patients to be treated in isolation.

April 14, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Despite 4 months of investigation, the source of bacteria that caused tularemia in three laboratory workers at Boston University remains a mystery, the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) has reported.

(CIDRAP News) –Vietnamese officials today announced that three more human cases of H5N1 influenza have occurred since April 2 and said the virus appears to be changing into a less virulent, faster-spreading form.

(CIDRAP News) – The company that sent samples of the influenza virus that caused the 1957 flu pandemic to thousands of laboratories knew the identity of the virus but apparently assumed it wasn't hazardous because of its current safety classification, officials said today.

April 13, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Tests on poultry in Vietnam's Mekong Delta region show the H5N1 avian influenza virus is remarkably widespread, a finding that may bolster experts calling for a shift from culling to vaccinating birds.

(CIDRAP News) – The revelation that samples of the influenza virus that caused the flu pandemic of 1957-58 were inadvertently sent to thousands of laboratories has raised fears of a new pandemic and triggered an urgent effort to destroy the samples.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization has published a new pandemic influenza preparedness plan that puts increased emphasis on the possibility of delaying a flu pandemic to buy time for improving the world's defenses against it.

April 12, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Although an 8-year-old Cambodian girl's death was caused by the H5N1 virus, it's not clear how she developed avian flu.

She had been in contact with infected chickens in February, "but the exposure period is too long," said Megge Miller, a World Health Organization (WHO) official in Cambodia, in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) story. The girl became sick on Mar 29 and died on Apr 7, news reports said.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza claimed its third Cambodian victim when an 8-year-old girl died in a Phnom Penh hospital Apr 7, news services reported yesterday.

The girl was from Kampot, the same province as Cambodia's first two victims of H5N1 avian flu, said Ly Sovann, head of the Cambodian health minstry's infectious disease department, as quoted in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.