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(CIDRAP News) Officials in West Virginia yesterday planned to cull about 25,000 turkeys at a farm after routine tests indicated that some were probably exposed to a low-pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza virus, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced yesterday.
(CIDRAP News) Three more Egyptian children have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza, raising Egypt's H5N1 case count to 32, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.
One of the patients is a 4-year-old boy from Qena governorate, about 416 miles south of Cairo, whose 6-year-old sister was diagnosed with the disease on Mar 28, a WHO report said. He became ill Mar 26 and was hospitalized 3 days later.
(CIDRAP New) The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave a good newsbad news assessment of the global avian flu situation today, after a weekend that brought word of more outbreaks on farms in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
The FAO said the disease has infected fewer birds so far this year than it had by this time last year, but warned that Egypt, Indonesia, and Nigeria have not yet been able to control it.
March 30, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Genetic elements that confer multidrug resistance (MDR) in both plague and foodborne bacteria have a common origin and may represent a significant public health threat, according to a study published Mar 20 in the journal PLoS One (Public Library of Science One).
(CIDRAP News) A doctor who treated an Indonesian boy who died of suspected H5N1 avian influenza is now being treated for suspicious symptoms himself, according to media reports today.
The doctor had treated a 15-year-old boy who died on Mar 25 at a hospital in Bandung. Reuters reported. Indonesian officials said 3 days ago that initial tests indicated the boy had the H5N1 virus.
You may be tempted to minimize the importance of food-sector pandemic planning because it's not your business. Nothing could be further from the truth.
(CIDRAP News) - Indonesia today reported two new suspected human cases of H5N1 avian influenza, both fatal, as the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed a case in China that was reported yesterday.
Indonesian officials said initial tests indicated H5N1 infection in a 14-year-old boy who died in West Sumatra province on Mar 24 and a 28-year-old woman from central Jakarta who died yesterday, according to Xinhua, China's state news agency.
(CIDRAP Source Weekly Briefing) A severe influenza pandemic could cost the United States $683 billion and plunge the American economy into the second-deepest recession since World War II, a nonprofit health advocacy group warned on Mar 22.
(CIDRAP News) A network of clinical researchers stretching from Southeast Asia to the United States is about to begin testing whether doubling the standard dosage of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) will help patients overcome either the often-deadly H5N1 avian influenza or severe seasonal flu.
(CIDRAP News) Concerns about possibly contagious airline passengers prompted two recent interventions by Continental Airlines flight crews, one involving a tour group returning from China and the other a high school student with a cough.
(CIDRAP News) China announced today that a 16-year-old boy died of H5N1 avian influenza, and yesterday Egypt reported that a 46-year-old woman had tested positive for the disease, according to news services.
(CIDRAP News) – Hong Kong officials concluded that a baby girl who was recently infected with H9N2 avian influenza—a strain believed to have pandemic potential—probably contracted it from birds, according to recent reports.
(CIDRAP News) - Indonesia's health minister today announced her country would immediately resume sharing its H5N1 avian influenza virus samples with the World Health Organization (WHO), apparently ending a months-old impasse, say reports from Jakarta.
(CIDRAP News) Egypt reported two more human cases of H5N1 avian influenza today, pushing the country's total to 29, while Indonesia reported three suspected cases, two of them fatal, according to news services.
Editor's note: Because of a technical problem, this story was not published until Mar 27.
(CIDRAP News) A diagnosis of H5N1 avian influenza in a 3-year-old Egyptian girl yesterday marked Egypt's 27th case overall and the ninth this year, according to news services.
(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) opened a meeting with Asian health officials in Jakarta today to hear their concerns about access to H5N1 influenza vaccines and discuss solutions that might allow researchers to regain unrestricted access to H5N1 samples.
(CIDRAP News) Agriculture officials in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia have confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in birds, a first for each country.
The outbreak in Bangladesh struck chickens at a state-run poultry farm in Savar, near the capital, Dhaka, the Associated Press (AP) reported today. Government sources said farm workers had recently culled all 30,000 chickens at the farm after many of them died mysteriously, the AP said.
(CIDRAP News) Indications today are that Thailand will continue to share H5N1 avian influenza viruses with the World Health Organization (WHO), contrary to a news report yesterday.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Thailand would restrict access to its H5N1 viruses, and CIDRAP News passed along that report. But a senior Thai health official said Thailand had no plans to withhold samples, according to a Reuters report published yesterday.
(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and California officials released a final report today on last fall's nationwide Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to fresh spinach, tracing the pathogen to a specific farm and identifying a handful of possible contamination sources.
The outbreak, which occurred in early fall, sickened 205 people and caused three deaths.
(CIDRAP News) An influenza pandemic as severe as the great flu of 1918 could cost the United States $683 billion and plunge the American economy into the second-deepest recession since World War II, a nonprofit health advocacy group warned today.
