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(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced a one-time allocation of $75 million in grants to help states, territories, and four metropolitan areas prepare for an influenza pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations recently established a small team in Geneva to help implement the Biological Weapons Convention, the first international institution created for that purpose.

(CIDRAP News) – Further investigation has strengthened the evidence of a link between recently recalled dog food products and human Salmonella infections, US health officials reported yesterday.

Sixty-six people in 18 states have been infected with the same strain of Salmonella Schwarzengrund, and reports of new cases are continuing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella Schwarzengrund, a relatively rare serotype that has been reported in 64 recent human illness cases, was found recently in two samples of dog food made by a Tennessee company, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

(CIDRAP News) – The full results of a trial of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK's) H5N1 influenza vaccine were released recently, showing that the vaccine in combination with an adjuvant produced an acceptable immune response at a low dose and may provide cross-protection against nonmatching H5N1 strains.

(CIDRAP News) – German agriculture officials confirmed an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza at a poultry farm in Bavaria Aug 25, as officials in Vietnam reported fresh outbreaks at farms in three more provinces.

(CIDRAP News) – Norovirus outbreaks in the United States appear to have increased sharply since the beginning of last year, probably fueled by two new strains of the gastrointestinal pathogen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States who met at a security summit in Montebello, Quebec, on Aug 21 unveiled a North American pandemic influenza plan designed to share expertise, coordinate public health messages, and overcome anticipated obstacles at national borders.

(CIDRAP News) – An international research team working in Gabon has for the first time isolated Marburg virus genetic material and antibodies from a bat species, an animal that experts suspect may play a role in transmitting the virus to humans.

(CIDRAP News) – A 28-year-old woman on the Indonesian resort island of Bali died yesterday of H5N1 avian influenza, marking the second fatal case there this month, according to Indonesian health officials.

Also today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that it has received from Indonesia a sample from the woman who had the first reported H5N1 infection on Bali, a 29-year-old who died of the disease on Aug 12.

(CIDRAP News) – Government officials in Pakistan today announced a recent outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza at a poultry farm in the country's northwest, as Indonesia worked to stamp out the disease on farms on Sulawesi and Italian officials reported low-pathogenic avian flu outbreaks.

(CIDRAP News) – The hunt for the vector responsible for spreading Marburg hemorrhagic fever took global health experts wearing protective gear to the mine entrances in a remote Ugandan forest last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 3 days ago cancelled its plan to close seven of its field laboratories, media outlets reported.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesian officials said today they have sent a sample from a recent victim of H5N1 influenza to the World Health Organization (WHO), apparently ending the country's prolonged withholding of H5N1 samples.

(CIDRAP News) – The count of West Nile virus (WNV) cases in the United States so far this year remains ahead of last year's pace, but fewer severe cases have been reported, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – As British veterinary officials continued to investigate outbreaks of food-and-mouth disease (FMD) at two farms this week, worries about possible outbreaks at two other sites in England were dispelled.

Animal handlers at a farm in Kent and a zoo in Surrey reported suspicious lesions in animals, but test results were negative, and the government eased restrictions on livestock movements in those areas.

(CIDRAP News) – Three years ago President Bush directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to consolidate biosurveillance data to improve the nation's ability to detect bioterrorism and other infectious disease threats, but federal auditors warned this week that leadership problems have seriously hampered the program.

(CIDRAP News) – For the second time in 4 days, Indonesia's health ministry today announced a fatal human case of H5N1 avian influenza, this one in a 17-year-old girl from a town just west of Jakarta who died Aug 14.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in a statement confirming the case, reported the girl got sick on Aug 9, was hospitalized Aug 13, and died a day later. She was from Tangerang, 12 miles west of Jakarta, in Banten province.

(CIDRAP News) – The British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) recently announced another major order of prepandemic H5N1 influenza vaccine from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with plans to launch a North American clinical trial of the vaccine.

Editor's note: This story was revised Aug 16 to include a clarification from the World Health Organization about the identity of the index case-patient.

(CIDRAP News) – Only one additional case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever has been confirmed in Uganda since a single case and some suspected cases were reported there on Aug 3, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.