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(CIDRAP News) A panel of military physician experts found that a combination of smallpox and injectable influenza vaccines might have caused the death of a 26-year-old Army soldier, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced last week.
The soldier, Pfc. Christopher "Justin" Abston, died suddenly in his barracks room, 16 days after he received the vaccines on Nov 18, 2005, at Fort Bragg, N.C, DoD said in a Jun 22 news release.
(CIDRAP News) The medical aid group Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) appealed for help last week in the fight to control the outbreak of pneumonic plague in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
June 23, 2006 (CIDRAP News) Avian flu vaccination programs in poultry that are widely but imperfectly instituted, like those in China and Indonesia, may impede detection of human cases, according to a report from the European Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control in Stockholm.
(CIDRAP News) The recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases in Indonesia marks the first time laboratory tests confirmed human-to-human transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today.
(CIDRAP News) A 24-year-old Beijing man died of H5N1 avian influenza in November 2003, nearly two years before China reported any human H5N1 cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Chinese scientists writing in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The letter has renewed speculation about how many H5N1 cases might have been missed or not reported in China, especially before late 2005, according to news services.
(CIDRAP News) The World Health Organization has concluded that Indonesia's recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases probably involved person-to-person transmission, including one three-person chain, according to the Associated Press (AP).
(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) Further tests have revealed no sign of H5N1 or any other avian influenza virus in samples from a Prince Edward Island poultry flock where an H5 virus was detected last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced late yesterday.
Samples from the flock tested negative at Canada's avian flu reference laboratory in Winnipeg, Man. "All birds tested negative on serological and virological tests," the CFIA said.
(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) 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 ) 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) 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) 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) 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) 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.
