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(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the University of Minnesota warns that an influenza pandemic could disrupt the coal industry, thereby endangering the nation's significantly coal-dependent electric power system and everything that depends on it.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's health ministry has ruled out H5N1 avian influenza in a cluster of 17 suspected cases in South Sulawesi province, countering earlier reports of positive hospital and university tests, Reuters reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Earlier this year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadened its flu vaccine recommendation to include all school-age children, prompting some health officials to eye school-based immunization programs as an efficient way to improve vaccination rates in young people.

(CIDRAP News) – This past  summer's nationwide Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak exposed several gaps in the nation's food safety system, including poor organization and confusing risk communications, the Produce Safety Project (PSP), an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a report yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A Canadian study raises questions about the value of formal "fit testing" for the respirators worn by healthcare workers to protect them from airborne pathogens, suggesting that it does little good for workers who don't routinely wear the devices.

(CIDRAP News) – Bavarian Nordic, a Danish pharmaceutical company, announced recently that a smallpox vaccine that it is developing for people with weakened immune systems showed promising safety results in a phase 2 clinical trial involving volunteers with HIV infections.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari today denied reports that a 15-year-old girl who recently died had H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Officials in Thailand said today that H5N1 avian influenza struck poultry in Uthai Thani, the second province to report the virus in less than a week.

Sakchai Sriboonsue, director-general of the province's livestock department, said laboratory tests detected the H5N1 virus in chickens from a backyard farm after several of the birds died, according to a report today from the Associated Press. Uthai Thani is in northern Thailand.

(CIDRAP News) – Millions of people who use the Internet to look for information about influenza provide the fuel for a system launched by Google this week to estimate flu activity day by day in the United States.

(CIDRAP News) – Officials from several agencies recently converged on Miami's international airport to take part in a full-scale exercise of the federal government's risk-based strategy to slow the spread of a future pandemic influenza virus across US borders.

(CIDRAP News) – A 15-year-old Indonesian girl from central Java recently died from an H5N1 avian influenza infection, according to news reports that cited a local health official and a physician who treated the girl.

(CIDRAP News) – Clostridium difficile, rapidly gaining as a source of hospital-acquired infections, is sickening from 6 to 20 times more patients than previously thought, according to a survey released today by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

(CIDRAP News) – A vaccine designed to offer protection against many strains of influenza viruses appeared safe in low doses and triggered a satisfactory immune response in a phase 1 clinical trial, the vaccine's developer announced recently.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States will contribute another $44.4 million to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO's) campaign to prevent and control avian influenza, the FAO announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said recently it is making a few minor changes in its requirement for advance notice of imported food shipments, which is designed to give the agency time to decide which shipments need inspection for safety reasons.

(CIDRAP News) – The agriculture ministry in Thailand today confirmed an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in backyard birds in Sukhothai province, the country's first outbreak since January, according to news agencies.

(CIDRAP News) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has listed public health emergency preparedness and food safety as two of 13 "urgent issues" that will need attention from President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress next year.

(CIDRAP News) – An independent board that advises the US Department of Defense on science and technology issues issued a report on Election Day highlighting a range of priorities for the incoming Obama administration, including measures to prevent and respond to a bioterrorist attack.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella infections associated with dry pet food from a plant in Pennsylvania have continued to crop up in recent months, prompting closure of the plant and concern that contaminated products may still be in use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Media coverage of infectious diseases such as avian influenza can create the impression that the conditions are more of a threat than they really are, according to a recent study from Canada.