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(CIDRAP News) – Researchers in Canada who found hepatitis in ferrets after injecting the animals with an experimental vaccine for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) are urging caution as other investigators develop and test SARS vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza is expected to cost Asia $130 billion by 2005, according to Hur Young-joo of the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, as reported in the Dec 2 online edition of The Korea Times.

(CIDRAP News) – Most firms that produce ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products have taken specific steps to prevent Listeria contamination since new federal safety rules took effect last year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – In announcing his resignation today after 4 years as US Health and Human services (HHS) secretary, Tommy G. Thompson cited pandemic influenza and food biosecurity as two of his biggest worries.

Thompson, who presided over massive increases in federal spending for public health preparedness and biodefense research, said in response to a question, "There are two things that really worry me yet. The big one is pandemic flu."

(CIDRAP News) – As public health ministers and officials from 13 Asian countries conferred in Bangkok last week on how to prevent the spread of H5N1 avian influenza, experts offered troubling predictions.

(CIDRAP News) – Four people in Florida and New Jersey who might have been injected with the anti-wrinkle medication Botox are seriously ill with possible botulism, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's (WHO's) top official in the western Pacific said yesterday that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases may return this winter but probably not in large numbers.

"I don't think a large outbreak is likely," Dr. Shigeru Omi, director of the WHO's Western Pacific Regional Office, said in a speech in Hong Kong. Omi was quoted in a WHO news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Irradiating fresh cilantro and sprouts can reduce levels of potentially dangerous microbes without affecting flavor or other sensory attributes, according to two studies published recently in the Journal of Food Protection.

(CIDRAP News) – By recreating a key surface protein from the 1918 pandemic flu virus and testing its effects in mice, researchers have shown that the protein might have been an important reason for the virus's extraordinary ability to kill.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ended 6 days of suspense for the beef industry by announcing late yesterday that a cow suspected of having bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) didn't have the disease after all.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found serious problems at the Chiron Corp. flu vaccine plant in England in 2003 but failed to follow up in time to prevent the loss of half of the US vaccine supply with the plant's shutdown by British regulators last month, a Democratic congressman charged last week.

(CIDRAP News) – The Sri Racha Tiger Zoo in Thailand reopened Nov 18, one day after Thai authorities reported a final tally of 102 tigers lost in the zoo's outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Before the current influenza vaccine shortage arose, Colorado was vaccinating people in mass clinics. After the shortage hit, the preventive medicine chief for the state's Kaiser Permanente clinics found himself driving around with leftover vaccine in his car, calling for information on which hospitals needed the doses.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced this week it is launching a campaign to map the genetic blueprint of thousands of human and avian influenza viruses in an effort to better understand how flu viruses evolve, spread, and cause disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said today it is running confirmatory tests on a possible new case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Kris Ehresmann, RN, MPH, clearly recalls when she learned the United States had just lost nearly half of its flu vaccine.

At 9:50 a.m. on Oct 5, Ehresmann knew that her job as manager of the immunization, tuberculosis, and international health section for the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) had instantly become much harder. That moment marked the beginning of a series of difficult decisions under fast-changing circumstances.

(CIDRAP News) – Clinical trials of a vaccine designed to keep the H5N1 avian influenza virus from sparking a human flu pandemic will begin early in 2005, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The nature of the widespread avian influenza outbreaks in Asia points to the threat of a human flu pandemic that could rival the disastrous pandemic of 1918-1920, infectious disease expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, warned in a public forum in Minneapolis last week.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's top influenza expert warned at the end of a 2-day international meeting today that governments need to fund the development of vaccines to combat a feared flu pandemic that could kill millions of people, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – Massachusetts residents in at least three communities are hoping to obtain flu shots through the luck of the draw as local health departments seek the fairest way to distribute limited vaccine supplies among those who need them the most.