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(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not have adequate measures in place to test for and monitor avian influenza in commercial poultry, an audit by the department's inspector general said yesterday, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – Japan has conditionally agreed to resume importing US beef, long banned from the country because of concern about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Under an agreement completed today, Japan will send inspectors to the United States this weekend to check beef processing plants and, if they find no problems, will then allow shipments to resume, according to an Agence-France Presse (AFP) report published today.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada's latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, probably resulted from contaminated feed, which might have linked the case with the nation's previous one, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

(CIDRAP News) – A 13-year-old boy from south Jakarta who died Jun 14 represented Indonesia's 51st avian influenza case and was the 39th Indonesian to succumb, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) statement today.

His death leaves Indonesia only three fatalities behind Vietnam, which has reported the most H5N1 deaths in the world but hasn't had a human case since late last year, according to WHO information.

(CIDRAP News) – The US emergency medical care system is woefully inadequate and unprepared for a pandemic, bioterrorist attack, natural disaster, or other national crisis, three recent reports from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conclude.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced plans today to buy 20,000 treatment courses of an experimental anthrax antitoxin from Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGS) for $165 million.

Full payment for the product, called ABthrax, is contingent on its licensing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News ) – An H5 avian influenza virus was found in a dead gosling in a backyard flock in eastern Canada late last week, but authorities said today there is "no evidence" that the virus is the deadly H5N1 strain.

Meanwhile, Hungary was culling poultry following the recent confirmation of the country's first H5N1 outbreak in domestic birds, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

(CIDRAP News) – When avian flu struck a poultry flock in Denmark last month, the owners waited 2 weeks to notify authorities, thereby increasing the risk of human infection, according to a report in the Jun 15 Eurosurveillance Weekly.

(CIDRAP News) – An emergency appropriations bill that cleared Congress yesterday provides another $2.3 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness, including $250 million for state and local efforts.

With this measure, Congress has now provided $6.1 billion of the $7.1 billion President Bush requested for pandemic preparations last November. Congress approved a $3.8 billion package in late December.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed today that a 31-year-old man in China's Guangdong province has avian influenza. And Indonesia's Health Ministry, citing local tests, said today that a 14-year-old boy from Jakarta died of the disease, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the 2005-06 influenza season was milder than the previous several seasons and had an unusually late peak.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today reported Indonesia's 50th human case of H5N1 avian influenza, while Chinese authorities said further tests have confirmed a case reported yesterday in a man from Guangdong province.

(CIDRAP News) – Scientists in Hong Kong have reported new experimental evidence that avian influenza infections in human cells are more likely to trigger a destructive immune-system overreaction, or "cytokine storm," than human flu viruses are.

(CIDRAP News) – A 31-year-old Chinese man from Guangdong province near Hong Kong has tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza, according to a Xinhua news report today.

(CIDRAP News) – One hundred people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of suspected pneumonic plague, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

Nineteen of the deaths occurred in Ituri district in the northeastern Oriental province, a plague hotbed, according to the WHO.

Editor's note: A correction was made in this story on Jul 11 (2006) to eliminate errors concerning the numbers of hantavirus cases in Arizona and New Mexico since 1993.

(CIDRAP News) – Nine human cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in five states were reported from January through March of 2006, which could signal an above-average risk of the disease this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – An avian influenza vaccine made through reverse genetics produced an immune response not only to the target H5N1 virus strain but to two other H5N1 strains in a study in ferrets, according to a report published by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

June 12, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – More people in Britain may be at risk for contracting variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (vCJD) than previously thought, according to a study published in the May 20 issue of the British Medical Journal.

(CIDRAP News) – Australian officials who coordinated an exercise Jun 7 and 8 on pandemic influenza response among Asia-Pacific nations called the drill a success, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) story today.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials announced this week that about $1.22 billion will be made available to states and territories this year to prepare for bioterrorism and other public health emergencies, down from about $1.33 billion last year.