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(CIDRAP News) – The British magazine Nature trained a floodlight on the threat of an influenza pandemic today with a collection of 10 articles that explore the danger and possible remedies and demand a more serious global response.

"The level of current efforts is not commensurate with the threat we face," the editors write. "The time for diplomacy and denial is over. It is time for advocacy and action."

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking a federal appeals court's permission to revive its mandatory anthrax vaccination program, which was stopped by a lower court's ruling in October 2004.

(CIDRAP News) – Some 519 birds of at least five migratory species have died in the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in China's Qinghai province, according to data the Chinese government provided the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

(CIDRAP News) – Member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday approved the first major revision of the WHO's rules to prevent the international spread of diseases in decades.

(CIDRAP News) – As Vietnam reported another fatal human case of avian influenza today, Chinese authorities began mobilizing for a massive poultry vaccination campaign following news that a wild goose die-off was due to the H5N1 virus.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced that $1.33 billion will be available in this year's round of funding to states to improve preparedness for terrorism and other public health emergencies.

(CIDRAP News) – The death toll in Angola's epidemic of Marburg hemorrhagic fever has climbed to 311 out of 337 cases, but all recent cases have been confined to the province where the epidemic began, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.

The last WHO report on the situation, on May 11, had listed 316 cases with 276 deaths. A Reuters report on May 16 had cited 336 cases with 292 deaths.

(CIDRAP News) – The world has an unprecedented warning that pandemic influenza may be imminent, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report that urges swift action to prevent global illness and death.

A WHO report, "Strengthening pandemic influenza preparedness and response," is slated for discussion tomorrow at the organization's annual World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has significantly increased its tally of H5N1 avian influenza cases on the basis of information from Vietnam, bringing the total to 97 cases, including 53 deaths. The agency previously listed 89 cases with 52 deaths.

(CIDRAP News) – Ebola virus has been found in a sample from one of the nine people who have died in a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The H5N1 avian influenza virus is evolving and poses "a continuing and potentially growing pandemic threat," say experts who were convened recently by the World Health Organization (WHO) to study the pathogen.

(CIDRAP News) – Another man has contracted H5N1 avian influenza in northern Vietnam, only 4 days after the previous case dashed hopes of a respite from the outbreak.

A 58-year-old man from Thanh Hoa was hospitalized at the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi on May 13, Reuters news service said today. Subsequent tests have confirmed he has the H5N1 virus.

(CIDRAP News) – Nine people have died in the Republic of Congo from a hemorrhagic disease that authorities are describing as "Ebola-like," and at least another 52 people who had contact with the victims are being monitored, according to news reports today.

(CIDRAP News) – Initial testing has shown that a man in northern Vietnam has H5N1 avian influenza, marking the first human case in more than 3 weeks, according to news reports today.

Initial tests were positive for Cao The Hai, 55, from Vinh Phuc province, according to Dr. Nguyen Thi Tuong Van of the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi. The news was reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP) today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today denied a widely publicized report that countries dealing with H5N1 avian influenza have been refusing to share clinical samples from human patients, making it difficult for the WHO to monitor changes in the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – Sixteen people have fallen sick and one is hospitalized with Escherichia coli O157:H7, most of them after drinking milk shakes at a popular drive-in restaurant in Calgary, Alta.

(CIDRAP News) – State health departments have improved their terrorism preparedness capabilities since 2001, but some of the improvement might have come at the expense of other public health programs, says a report released today.

(CIDRAP News) – The Pacific Northwest could have a higher risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) than the rest of the country because of past cattle imports from western Canada, where all four BSE cases in North America originated, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported recently.

(CIDRAP News) – An initial human trial of a West Nile virus (WNV) vaccine has yielded promising results, officials said today.

In the double-blind, randomized trial, all but one of the people who received the vaccine developed antibodies to it, according to an Associated Press (AP) report quoting Dr. Thomas Monath, chief scientist at Acambis, the company that created the vaccine.

(CIDRAP News) – Angola has had 2 days in the past week with no new cases of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, suggesting that the country is getting closer to controlling the epidemic, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported today.

Angolan Health Minister Sebastiao Veloso put the Marburg death toll at 284, the report said. That compares with 280 deaths out of a total of 313 cases reported by AFP a week ago. Today's story didn't list the case total.