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Some pandemic influenza preparedness planners start out with an advantage. Their company culture supports disaster preparedness and senior executives have educated themselves on the threat—or the CEO "has a certain degree of paranoia" as Boyd George, CEO of the Hickory, NC–based grocery supplier Alex Lee, puts it. He had read a book about the 1918 influenza pandemic that alarmed him.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed the first fatal case of H5N1 avian influenza in Laos, involving a 15-year-old girl, while Chinese officials have denied new research claims that several strains of the virus originated in Guangdong province.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials recently proposed a timetable to begin implementing a new meat and poultry inspection system designed to reduce foodborne illnesses by focusing more attention on high-risk facilities and those with poor safety records.

(CIDRAP News) – Some professors at the University of Iowa think that a kind of betting system may help predict the timing and extent of the next influenza pandemic, and a large health foundation is betting they are right.

(CIDRAP News) – A new analysis of research into the 1918 influenza pandemic, undertaken to determine whether historical accounts can illuminate planning for possible future pandemics, reveals a surprising number of enduring mysteries.

Editor's note: This story was revised Mar 7 to clarify information about global influenza vaccine production capacity.

(CIDRAP News) – Following 25 cases of norovirus infection in people who ate raw oysters from San Antonio Bay in Texas, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against eating raw oysters taken from the bay after Feb 1.

The patients ate raw oysters at a Maryland event the weekend of Feb 9 to 11, the FDA said in a Mar 2 news release. Patients tested by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene were found to have the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – A 42-year-old woman from Laos' Vientiane province who died yesterday probably had H5N1 avian influenza, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials. Confirmation of the case would mark the country's first human death from the disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials are using an analysis of an Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak that involved 18 cases in December 2005 to remind people of the dangers of drinking unpasteurized milk.

(CIDRAP News) – Investigators have found Salmonella enterica in samples collected at a Sylvester, Ga., ConAgra plant that made the Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter linked to an illness outbreak involving 370 people in 42 states, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – A special committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) is studying questions about the role of equipment such as masks, gowns, and gloves in protecting healthcare workers during an influenza pandemic and is expected to release a report in September.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed two cases of H5N1 avian influenza, one in Egypt and one in China, while stating that a disagreement with Indonesia about sharing H5N1 virus samples has not yet been fully resolved.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent study has raised expectations that simple surgical masks might offer a reasonably good substitute for N-95 respirators for healthcare workers seeking protection from airborne viruses, but others say the study is seriously flawed.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday confirmed Laos' first human case of H5N1 avian influenza, involving a 15-year-old girl from Vientiane, and Egypt and China also have reported new cases.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of people sickened in a nationwide Salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter grew by 41, to a total of 370 in 42 states, since the last update a week ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel today recommended that the agency approve the nation's first H5N1 influenza vaccine, despite new evidence that the vaccine is less protective than reported in a clinical trial last year.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in Kuwait have reported finding H5N1 avian influenza in backyard and captive birds at several locations in the past two days, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The nation's largest public health group, the American Public Health Association (APHA), yesterday released recommendations aimed at strengthening existing federal strategies for pandemic preparedness and encouraging local officials and businesses to play key roles.

(CIDRAP News) – Tests have confirmed a link between Salmonella-contaminated peanut butter and an outbreak involving 329 illness cases in 41 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced yesterday.

"Product testing has confirmed the outbreak strain of Salmonella [enterica serotype] Tennessee in opened jars of peanut butter, obtained from ill persons," the CDC said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Afghanistan confirmed yesterday that poultry deaths at two farms in the eastern part of the country were caused by highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza.