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(CIDRAP News) – President Bush today announced Michael O. Leavitt as his choice for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), replacing Tommy Thompson, who resigned last week.

Leavitt, who served three terms as governor of Utah, has been administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since November 2003. His name now goes to the Senate for confirmation.

(CIDRAP News) – Southeast Asian nations are mounting a two-tiered attack on the avian influenza virus that has devastated poultry flocks and raised the specter of a potential human flu pandemic.

On the pandemic front, scientific advances and policy efforts are laying the groundwork for preparedness in Hong Kong and mainland China.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States is pledging 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine to a global stockpile managed by the World Health Organization (WHO), Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization weighed in yesterday on the debate about the potential magnitude of the next influenza pandemic by saying it's impossible to confidently predict how many lives a pandemic might claim.

(CIDRAP News) – Freelance vaccinations and offers of bootleg vaccine are two unusual side effects of the US influenza vaccine shortage.

(CIDRAP News) – If states have extra influenza vaccine left in the private sector after the demand from high-priority groups has been met, people in lower-priority groups should be allowed to get flu shots, federal health officials said yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Human testing of an experimental vaccine against the deadly toxin ricin will begin early next year at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government is buying 1.2 million doses of flu vaccine made in Germany to augment the strained US supply, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – Florida officials said today that botulism has been confirmed in three of four suspected cases linked with a Florida clinic that reportedly gave injections with anti-wrinkle preparations containing botulinum toxin, but whether the cases stemmed from such injections remained unknown.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers in Canada who found hepatitis in ferrets after injecting the animals with an experimental vaccine for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) are urging caution as other investigators develop and test SARS vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza is expected to cost Asia $130 billion by 2005, according to Hur Young-joo of the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, as reported in the Dec 2 online edition of The Korea Times.

(CIDRAP News) – Most firms that produce ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products have taken specific steps to prevent Listeria contamination since new federal safety rules took effect last year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – In announcing his resignation today after 4 years as US Health and Human services (HHS) secretary, Tommy G. Thompson cited pandemic influenza and food biosecurity as two of his biggest worries.

Thompson, who presided over massive increases in federal spending for public health preparedness and biodefense research, said in response to a question, "There are two things that really worry me yet. The big one is pandemic flu."

(CIDRAP News) – As public health ministers and officials from 13 Asian countries conferred in Bangkok last week on how to prevent the spread of H5N1 avian influenza, experts offered troubling predictions.

(CIDRAP News) – Four people in Florida and New Jersey who might have been injected with the anti-wrinkle medication Botox are seriously ill with possible botulism, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's (WHO's) top official in the western Pacific said yesterday that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases may return this winter but probably not in large numbers.

"I don't think a large outbreak is likely," Dr. Shigeru Omi, director of the WHO's Western Pacific Regional Office, said in a speech in Hong Kong. Omi was quoted in a WHO news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Irradiating fresh cilantro and sprouts can reduce levels of potentially dangerous microbes without affecting flavor or other sensory attributes, according to two studies published recently in the Journal of Food Protection.

(CIDRAP News) – By recreating a key surface protein from the 1918 pandemic flu virus and testing its effects in mice, researchers have shown that the protein might have been an important reason for the virus's extraordinary ability to kill.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ended 6 days of suspense for the beef industry by announcing late yesterday that a cow suspected of having bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) didn't have the disease after all.