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(CIDRAP News) A 26-year-old Vietnamese nurse who helped care for a younger man with H5N1 avian influenza has contracted the illness, but it is unclear whether he acquired it from the patient or from poultry, according to news reports from Vietnam today.
(CIDRAP News) Vietnam, the country at the center of this year's avian influenza activity, may have two problems with its data on human cases: transparency in reporting and accuracy in testing.
(CIDRAP News) A federal judge in Montana this week delayed a plan to reopen the US border to Canadian cattle for the first time since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in Canada.
(CIDRAP News) A World Health Organization (WHO) team on a medical mission to contain a plague outbreak in the Congo has found more suspected cases, but the scope of the outbreak remains smaller than initially feared.
(CIDRAP News) – British regulators have cleared Chiron Corp. to resume making influenza vaccine at its plant in Liverpool, England, which should improve the chances of an adequate vaccine supply in the United States next winter.
(CIDRAP News) More than 12,000 chickens and quail have died in the past 2 months in an outbreak of avian influenza on the Indonesian island of Java, according to an Associated Press (AP) report published today.
The viruses involved are H5N1 and H7N1, said an Indonesian official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. Avian flu killed about 1.6 million chickens in the same region in West Java province last year, the official said.
(CIDRAP News) Influenza activity in the United States has been increasing since late December and may not have peaked for the season yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
(CIDRAP News) An outbreak of pneumonic plague in a lawless part of the Congo appears to be smaller and more geographically limited than was originally feared, according to recent reports.
(CIDRAP News) – The percentage of tested ground beef samples that federal meat inspectors found to be contaminated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 declined in 2004 for the fourth year in a row.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that 0.17% (14 of 8,010) ground beef samples tested in 2004 contained the potentially deadly pathogen. That compared with 0.30% in 2003, 0.78% in 2004, 0.84% in 2001, and 0.86% in 2000.
(CIDRAP News) An additional human case of H5N1 avian influenza has come to light in Vietnam even as reports indicate fewer outbreaks are occurring among poultry.
(CIDRAP News) Three more cases of H5N1 avian influenza in Vietnam, one of them fatal, were confirmed over the weekend and today, sparking concern over a more widespread outbreak, according to numerous news service reports.
(CIDRAP News) An analysis of 24 studies yielded no clear evidence that influenza vaccines prevent flu in children younger than 2 years old, though they work reasonably well in older children, according to a new report in The Lancet.
(CIDRAP News) The fight against avian flu is becoming more urgent and the price tag is climbing, experts said in the wake of the second international conference on the H5N1 flu.
(CIDRAP News) An intravenous form of vaccinia immune globulin (VIG), used to treat serious reactions to smallpox vaccine, has gained approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time.
(CIDRAP News) Knowledge of the local epidemiology of tularemia can help healthcare providers identify the disease and recommend locally appropriate prevention and control steps, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
(CIDRAP News) Warnings that H5N1 avian influenza could touch off a human flu pandemic rose in intensity as a major conference on the problem opened today in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, according to news services.
"We at WHO [the World Health Organization] believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director, was quoted as saying.
(CIDRAP News) The idea that vaccinating schoolchildren is the best way to prevent influenza throughout the US population received a boost last week with the publication of a commentary and a Texas study in separate journals.
(CIDRAP News) The nation's top disease-control official proclaimed in a speech in Washington, DC, today that avian influenza is the single biggest threat the world faces right now, according to wire service reports.
(CIDRAP News) – An unusual outbreak of pneumonic plague that has killed at least 61 people and potentially sickened hundreds of others is the focus of a World Health Organization (WHO) mission in a war-torn area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
(CIDRAP News) – A World Health Organization (WHO) official confirmed today that the agency is working on a report suggesting that governments consider stockpiling H5N1 avian influenza vaccines, but he stressed that such a stockpile "would not solve the problem" if a flu pandemic emerges.
