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(CIDRAP News) – Animal health officials in South Korea yesterday said an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak was confirmed at a fourth farm, amid reports of several more suspected outbreaks, a day after Russia's agriculture ministry said the virus had struck birds in the far eastern part of the country.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a 2-day meeting this week to gather feedback on its next proposed steps to reverse the recent increase in recalls and illnesses related to Escherichia coli O157:H7 in ground beef.

(CIDRAP News) – Egypt's health ministry announced today that a 30-year-old woman has died of an H5N1 avian influenza infection, the country's second fatality from the disease in less than a week.

(CIDRAP News) – Samples taken from the Alamosa, Colo., water system before it was treated for Salmonella contamination also showed that the water was tainted with two parasites, Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

(CIDRAP News) – The rates of the most common foodborne illnesses in the United States have remained about the same since 2004, pointing to a need for increased efforts to ensure food safety, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Healthcare institutions still face significant hurdles in getting their staff members vaccinated against seasonal influenza, and fear of flu infection and caring for sick family will keep many staff home during an influenza pandemic, according to research released this week,

(CIDRAP News) – A 52-year-old Chinese man probably caught H5N1 avian influenza from his dying son while caring for him in a hospital last December, but others who had close contact with both patients were not infected, Chinese researchers reported this week in The Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – Iomai Corp., a biotechnology company that specializes in needle-free vaccines, announced today that it will receive a grant from the US Department of Defense (DoD) to fund preclinical development of a patch-based anthrax vaccine.

The 1-year grant to Iomai, based in Gaithersburg, Md., will be in the form of a $943,856 cost reimbursement from the US Army Medical Research and Material Command, according to a press release from Iomai.

(CIDRAP News) – Veterinary officials in India recently confirmed that the H5N1 avian influenza virus has struck poultry in a second state, Tripura, as animal health authorities in South Korea announced a new outbreak at a duck farm near where the virus was confirmed a few days ago after a year's hiatus.

(CIDRAP News) – The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted today that climate change will increase disease outbreaks by a variety of mechanisms and threaten human health in other ways.

(CIDRAP News) – A 19-year-old Egyptian man died of H5N1 avian influenza Apr 5, raising the country's H5N1 toll to 48 cases with 21 deaths, according to news services.

The man was from the Nile Delta province of Beheira and had been exposed to infected poultry at home, said reports by Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Bloomberg News.

(CIDRAP News) – Agriculture officials in South Korea today confirmed that large numbers of chicken deaths at a commercial farm in the southwestern part of the country were caused by H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – The influenza epidemic in the United States continued its late-season decline last week, with only seven states still reporting widespread flu activity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Brazil's health ministry said this week that it has asked the military to help combat mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, as the number of sick patients with the disease grew to at least 55,000 so far this year.

Though dengue fever is common in Brazil, officials have said this year's outbreak is the worst in recent memory, averaging 1.4 new cases per minute, according to a report today from CNN.

(CIDRAP News) – China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) yesterday approved the country's first prepandemic H5N1 influenza vaccine, an inactivated whole-virus product made by Sinovac, a Beijing-based biotechnology company.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed two more cases of H5N1 avian influenza from a family cluster that surfaced in Pakistan last fall, supporting the previous finding that the virus probably spread among four brothers but went no further.

(CIDRAP News) – State shares of federal spending to combat public health problems ranging from bioterrorism to obesity vary widely, with midwestern states generally getting the slimmest slices, the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – As expected, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week began publishing the names of broiler chicken plants that have had trouble with Salmonella, listing 21 facilities where more than 10% of samples were found contaminated in recent tests.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced it is seeking public and stakeholder comments on the food safety plan that it proposed in November to address concerns about foodborne illness and problems with imported products.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's health ministry today announced fatal H5N1 avian influenza infections in two young people, aged 11 and 15, and said a 22-month-old girl is hospitalized with an H5N1 infection.

If the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms the three cases, its human H5N1 count for Indonesia will reach 132 cases with 107 deaths.