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Jan 12, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – The federal government today announced the release of $100 million appropriated by Congress recently to help states prepare for a potential influenza pandemic.

The money is the first installment of $350 million included in the $3.8 billion emergency appropriation for pandemic preparedness that Congress passed in late December, said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt.

(CIDRAP News) – An H5N1 avian influenza virus recovered from a Turkish patient has a mutation that may enable the virus to spread more easily from birds to humans, though the finding's significance for human health is not yet clear, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – A World Health Organization (WHO) official says two Turkish brothers who have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza were not sick, potentially offering scientists a rare opportunity to learn more about how the virus affects humans, according to news reports.

(CIDRAP News) – A survey conducted in Vietnam in 2004 suggests that human cases of avian influenza may be much more common but less severe than indicated by the numbers of confirmed cases, although the findings are not backed by laboratory testing.

Jan 10, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – Tests in Turkey have confirmed another human case of avian flu, bringing the country's reported total to 15, while Chinese authorities reported China's eighth case, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Turkey has supplanted Southeast Asia as the hotbed of avian flu news over the past few days, with 14 human cases, three of them fatal, confirmed as of today by the Ministry of Health there and cases in birds reported in 10 of the country's 81 provinces.

(CIDRAP News) – Pandemic planning strategies have been brought to a personal level with the release yesterday of a guide from the federal government outlining actions that individuals and families can take to protect themselves.

(CIDRAP News) – The sister of a Turkish teenage boy who died of avian influenza Jan 1 has succumbed to the same disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today.

Turkish officials reported the two cases yesterday, marking the first human cases of avian flu outside East Asia.

Jan 6, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – 2005 is likely to go down as the year when avian influenza, powered by a steady rise in human cases and the spread of poultry outbreaks all the way to Eastern Europe, emerged as a high-profile global health issue.

When 2005 dawned, only 45 human cases of H5N1 avian flu, including 32 deaths, had been counted by the World Health Organization (WHO). All of those were in Vietnam and Thailand.

(CIDRAP News) – Turkey today confirmed two human cases of avian influenza, contradicting earlier statements and marking the disease's first attack on people outside East Asia, according to news reports this afternoon.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza has been ruled out in a 14-year-old Turkish boy who died over the weekend and in three siblings who were hospitalized with him, according to news services.

Tests on the four children were negative for avian flu, according to Turkish health officials quoted in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A new facility built in England to produce MedImmune's intranasal flu vaccine, FluMist, has gained the US Food and Drug Administration's approval, the company announced last week.

The facility in Liverpool will increase the company's production capacity to about 90 million bulk doses per season, MedImmune said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – New outbreaks of avian influenza in birds were reported this week in Romania and Turkey, but wild birds that died mysteriously in Malawi in southern Africa were found to be free of flu viruses.

Tests in Britain detected H5N1 viruses in seven samples sent from four areas in southeastern Romania, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday. The story did not specify what kinds of birds were involved.

(CIDRAP News) – Last month, officials in Italy and Canada aroused concern by announcing they had found an H5N1 influenza virus in wild birds. Neither country had previously been troubled by any reports of the virulent H5N1 virus that has been plaguing poultry and occasionally sickening and killing humans in Asia.

But in both cases, health officials said the virus was not dangerous and was unrelated to the H5N1 virus in Asia.

(CIDRAP News) – China has recorded its seventh human case of H5N1 avian influenza, involving a 41-year-old factory worker who died Dec 21, according to the Chinese news service Xinhua.

The victim was a woman surnamed Zhou who lived in Sanming City in the eastern province of Fujian, Xinhua reported today. She became ill with fever and pneumonia on Dec 6 and was hospitalized 2 days later.

(CIDRAP News) – Before adjourning last week, the US Senate passed and sent to President Bush a bill providing $3.8 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness and a controversial liability shield for those who produce and administer drugs and vaccines used in a declared public health emergency.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its blessing last week to the use of the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) to prevent influenza in children between the ages of 1 and 12.

The FDA had previously approved oseltamivir for treating (but not preventing) flu in that age-group and for both treating and preventing flu in adolescents and adults. Many countries are stockpiling the drug to prepare for a possible flu pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – A World Health Organization (WHO) official recently urged China to share more information on avian influenza outbreaks in poultry and to change farming practices to help prevent the disease.

In addition, China said it has developed a new antiviral drug for flu patients and a new avian flu vaccine for poultry, both of which are said to be better than existing products.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's human death toll from H5N1 avian influenza rose to 11 today with the report that tests have confirmed that a man and a boy who died last week had the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – A new report says oseltamivir-resistant forms of H5N1 avian influenza virus were found in two Vietnamese girls who died of the infection, raising doubts about the antiviral drug that many countries are counting on to help protect them from a potential flu pandemic.