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(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday published its first epidemiologic analysis of all laboratory-confirmed cases of H5N1 avian influenza reported to the agency between Dec 1, 2003, and Apr 30, 2006.

Though the quality, reliability, and format of the surveillance data varied by country, the WHO notes in its report that the conclusions are still useful for tracking disease patterns and planning future studies.

(CIDRAP News) – The First International Conference on Avian Influenza in Humans held in Paris this week brought reports on a possible new treatment for avian flu symptoms, the potential global economic impact of a pandemic, and plans for a task force to coordinate Europe's response to the disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health authorities are warning that people should be careful with pet treats in the wake of a series of human Salmonella infections linked with treats made from raw salmon and beef.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials have made it official that toddlers aged 2 through 4 years should be immunized against influenza each year, adding millions of people to the groups included in flu vaccination recommendations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published its annual flu prevention and control recommendations online yesterday as a lengthy early-release article in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

(CIDRAP News) – Current estimates of how many people could die of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD) may be too low, because the disorder may have a prolonged incubation time in some people, according to a study of a related disease published in the Jun 24 issue of The Lancet.

(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) – An influenza pandemic would reduce the gross domestic products of the world's major economies by amounts ranging from 9% in China to 3% in Canada, according to a recent report by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).

(CIDRAP News) – Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials broke ground yesterday for the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.

Construction of the NBACC is slated for completion in 2008, DHS officials said in a news release. The facility's estimated cost is $128 million, according to an April 2005 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada announced yesterday it will ban cattle parts that could spread bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from all animal feeds, pet foods, and fertilizers, making Canada's restrictions tighter than those in the United States.

(CIDRAP News) – The medical aid group Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) appealed for help last week in the fight to control the outbreak of pneumonic plague in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

(CIDRAP News) – A panel of military physician experts found that a combination of smallpox and injectable influenza vaccines might have caused the death of a 26-year-old Army soldier, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced last week.

The soldier, Pfc. Christopher "Justin" Abston, died suddenly in his barracks room, 16 days after he received the vaccines on Nov 18, 2005, at Fort Bragg, N.C, DoD said in a Jun 22 news release.

June 23, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – Avian flu vaccination programs in poultry that are widely but imperfectly instituted, like those in China and Indonesia, may impede detection of human cases, according to a report from the European Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control in Stockholm.

(CIDRAP News) – The recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases in Indonesia marks the first time laboratory tests confirmed human-to-human transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization has concluded that Indonesia's recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases probably involved person-to-person transmission, including one three-person chain, according to the Associated Press (AP).

(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) – Japan has conditionally agreed to resume importing US beef, long banned from the country because of concern about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Under an agreement completed today, Japan will send inspectors to the United States this weekend to check beef processing plants and, if they find no problems, will then allow shipments to resume, according to an Agence-France Presse (AFP) report published today.

(CIDRAP News) – Further tests have revealed no sign of H5N1 or any other avian influenza virus in samples from a Prince Edward Island poultry flock where an H5 virus was detected last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced late yesterday.

Samples from the flock tested negative at Canada's avian flu reference laboratory in Winnipeg, Man. "All birds tested negative on serological and virological tests," the CFIA said.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not have adequate measures in place to test for and monitor avian influenza in commercial poultry, an audit by the department's inspector general said yesterday, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced plans today to buy 20,000 treatment courses of an experimental anthrax antitoxin from Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGS) for $165 million.

Full payment for the product, called ABthrax, is contingent on its licensing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada's latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, probably resulted from contaminated feed, which might have linked the case with the nation's previous one, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).