All News

(CIDRAP News) – Academic researchers will join with a drug manufacturer in the United Kingdom to screen hundreds of thousands of compounds in a hunt for a treatment for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), British officials announced recently.

Editor's note: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CIDRAP News on May 4 that the total number of laboratories that received test kits containing H2N2 virus samples from Meridian Bioscience Inc. was 4,614, rather than more than 6,000, as stated in this story.

(CIDRAP News) – Thirty-eight new cases of Marburg hemorrhagic fever have been reported in the northern Angola province of Uige in the past few days, despite hopes that the outbreak was being contained.

(CIDRAP News) – Only a few new cases of Marburg hemorrhagic fever have been reported in Angola in the past week, but recent lapses in hospital infection control have raised a risk of prolonging the epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – In a recent study, some laboratory and public health workers who received smallpox shots reported several side effects that have not shown up in other studies, including joint and abdominal pain, backache, and breathing difficulty.

April 28, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Just in time for mosquito season, federal health officials today heralded the addition of new defensive weapons against West Nile Virus (WNV): two non-DEET mosquito repellents.

(CIDRAP News) – Despite some improvements since 2002, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) enforcement of rules to keep bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from spreading through cattle feed still has serious gaps, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported recently.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers have developed an antibody that can cure mice of West Nile virus (WNV) infection, a disease for which no specific treatment now exists, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The recent outbreak of H7 avian influenza in North Korea has been contained, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

The outbreak at three farms near Pyongyang, the capital, was first reported in March. It involves a different strain from the H5N1 virus that has affected nine other Asian countries and killed more than 50 people in the past 16 months.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) voiced confidence today that Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Angola can be arrested but added that health agencies are prepared to keep fighting the disease for months if necessary.

April 22, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – A 20-year-old woman who died Tuesday in a Vietnamese hospital has been confirmed as Cambodia's fourth victim of H5N1 avian influenza, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today.

Chal Bo Pha had suffered high fever and heavy coughing for a week before leaving her home in Kampot Province to go to a hospital across the border in Tien Giang, Vietnam, AFP reported. She died there within hours.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials have warned consumers to make sure they fully cook frozen meat and poultry products, in the wake of several Salmonella infections linked to frozen chicken entrees sold in Minnesota and Michigan.

Four cases of salmonellosis have been linked with frozen, prebrowned stuffed chicken entrees in Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) reported in a news release yesterday.

(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.

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.

Rev

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 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.