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(CIDRAP News) – Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed an $819 billion economic stimulus bill that included funding for pandemic influenza and bioterrorism countermeasures, and now the Senate will debate its version of the measure, which also includes spending on some of the same items.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today released its inspection findings on the Georgia peanut butter plant that has been linked to a nationwide Salmonella outbreak, saying the company shipped products that had initially tested positive for Salmonella and citing various other questionable practices.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in the Philippines recently announced that a worker who had contact with sick pigs tested positive for antibodies to the Ebola Reston virus, a pathogen that was discovered about a month ago for the first time in pigs.

Eric Tayag, head of the National Epidemiology Centre, said the case represent the first known pig-to-human Ebola Reston virus transmission, according to a Jan 24 Associated Press (AP) report.

(CIDRAP News) – Richard E. Besser, MD, who formerly directed terrorism preparedness and emergency response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was named last week as the agency's acting director.

Besser replaces Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, who had led the agency since July 2002 and stepped down as President Barack Obama took office last week.

(CIDRAP News) – Health ministries in China and Egypt reported four new human H5N1 avian influenza cases over the past few days, including three from different parts of China, two of which were fatal.

Today's World Health Organization (WHO) confirmation of a case in a 2-year-old Egyptian girl pushed the global H5N1 case count to 400. If the WHO confirms all of the new cases and deaths, the total will rise to 403 cases, 254 of them fatal.

(CIDRAP News) – Canadian authorities have confirmed that an H5 avian influenza virus, probably low-pathogenic, has surfaced on a turkey farm in southern British Columbia.

Canadian news agencies said authorities were preparing to cull up to 60,000 turkeys on the farm near Abbotsford, southeast of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley.

(CIDRAP News) – Canadian officials are investigating the possibility of an avian influenza outbreak at a turkey farm in British Columbia (BC), a day after animal health officials in Bangladesh reported the H5N1 virus struck three more sites.

(CIDRAP News) – A physician's report of diarrhea cases in a nursing home, followed by the discovery of cases in several other institutions, provided the key that enabled Minnesota disease detectives to figure out before anyone else that peanut butter was the culprit in the current nationwide Salmonella outbreak.

(CIDRAP News) – Veterinary authorities in Egypt today reported H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in two governorates, as Chinese officials beefed up their avian flu reporting system and took other measures to limit human exposure to the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – China's recent spike in human H5N1 avian influenza cases appears to lack the hallmark of nearby poultry outbreaks, a development that some public health officials worry could signal asymptomatic infections in birds.

Veterinary experts, however, suggest the pattern could point to surveillance gaps or the consequences of routine vaccination.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia has confirmed two more fatalities from H5N1 avian influenza, a 29-year-old woman and a 5- or 6-year-old girl, both of whom lived near the country's capital, Jakarta, according to news reports.

(CIDRAP News) – More than 125 products, including a few pet foods, have been included in recalls prompted by the nationwide Salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, and the list continues to grow, US officials said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella found in an unopened container of peanut butter in Connecticut has been genetically matched to the nationwide disease outbreak, confirming that it stems from a Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) facility in Georgia, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced late yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – China's health ministry has announced that a 16-year-old boy who was recently listed in critical condition with an H5N1 avian influenza infection has died.

(CIDRAP News) – Animal health workers in Nepal are culling thousands of poultry in response to the country's first outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza, as officials in India said the virus spread to another Indian state, Sikkim in the northeastern part of the country.

(CIDRAP News) – The company implicated in the national Salmonella outbreak has recalled more of its peanut products, some distributed beyond US borders, as Kellogg Corp. announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found the pathogen in one package of its peanut butter sandwich crackers.

(CIDRAP News) – China's health ministry today reported three new human H5N1 avian influenza cases, one of them fatal and the other patients hospitalized in critical condition, according to a statement from the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the first case, a 27-year-old woman from Jinan City in Shandong province got sick on Jan 5, was hospitalized, and died on Jan 17, the WHO reported.

(CIDRAP News) – Amid growing evidence of Salmonella contamination at a peanut processing plant in Georgia, US health officials yesterday warned consumers to avoid eating any commercially made products containing peanut butter and any peanut butter served in institutions such as schools and nursing homes until investigators learn more about which products may be tainted. The warning does not include peanut butter sold in jars directly to consumers.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday released an assessment of progress states have made toward planning for an influenza pandemic. The report found that many scored well in areas such as protecting citizens and administering mass vaccinations, but showed major gaps in such areas as sustaining state operations, developing community mitigation plans, and maintaining key infrastructure.

(CIDRAP News) – Picking the influenza strains to put in the flu vaccine each year is always a gamble, given the unpredictable prevalence of different strains, but choosing the influenza B strain has become particularly vexing in recent years.