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(CIDRAP News) – European researchers have reported what they call the first evidence that low-pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses—not just highly pathogenic (HPAI) strains like H5N1—can infect humans.

(CIDRAP News) – A 37-year-old Indonesian woman has died of suspected avian influenza, becoming potentially the country's fourth human victim of the H5N1 virus, according to news services.

The woman was admitted to a Jakarta hospital Sep 6 and died there Sep 10, according to Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari, as reported yesterday by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) this week stepped up its warnings about the risk of an influenza pandemic, while Thailand reported four new outbreaks of avian flu on poultry farms.

(CIDRAP News) – The nation's system for stopping dangerous microbes at its ports of entry needs to be strengthened through increased leadership and planning and improved communications, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has concluded.

(CIDRAP News) – Meat companies are again free to use most of the small intestine of cattle to make sausage casings, following a change in a federal rule intended to protect people from exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Tests have shown that floodwaters in hurricane-struck New Orleans are heavily contaminated with sewage and contain dangerous levels of lead as well, federal officials said today.

"The water is full of sewage," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at a Washington news teleconference.

(CIDRAP News) – Japanese authorities have culled 500,000 birds and plan to cull about 1 million more to stop an outbreak of H5N2 avian influenza, a milder form than the deadly H5N1, which has infected a number of backyard poultry flocks in Thailand recently.

(CIDRAP News) – Amid the devastation left by hurricane Katrina on the US Gulf Coast, fears of infectious disease outbreaks have added to the distress. Some of those concerns are solidly grounded, while others are less so, disease experts say.

(CIDRAP News) – A 58-year-old Vietnamese has died of a probable case of avian influenza, the first such fatality in a month, news services reported today.

The victim, a Hanoi resident who was not named, died Aug 24 and tested positive for an H5 virus, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report quoting Nguyen Tran Hien, director of an epidemiology institute in Hanoi.

(CIDRAP News) – Because of continuing uncertainty about the supply of influenza vaccine this winter, federal health officials said today that inactivated flu vaccine should be reserved for high-risk groups until late October.

"Beginning October 24, all persons will be eligible for vaccination," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

(CIDRAP News) – Prospects for an adequate supply of seasonal influenza vaccine this year brightened today with federal approval of a new flu vaccine and a report of progress in fixing problems at Chiron's flu vaccine plant in England.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government ended its investigation of the nation's second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) without finding any more cases or learning exactly how the cow was infected, officials announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Mongolian officials said tests have detected an H5N1 avian influenza virus in several wild birds, confirming earlier indications that the virus had reached the central Asian country.

(CIDRAP News) – Scientists in Texas report they have found a way to detect abnormal prion protein in blood, an achievement that could lead to the first practical blood test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and similar diseases in living animals.

(CIDRAP News) - Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Angola has afflicted 374 people and killed 329 of them, an increase of six cases and six deaths since late July, the World Health Organization (WHO) said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – Reports today said three rare palm civets that recently died in captivity in Vietnam were infected with an H5N1 avian influenza virus, adding another species to the list of those susceptible to the pathogen.

(CIDRAP News) – European veterinary experts who met in Brussels today concluded there is little immediate risk that wild birds will spread avian influenza from Russia into Europe.

(CIDRAP News) – The British biotechnology firm Acambis recently announced its launching of a quest for the Holy Grail of influenza prevention: a vaccine that would protect people from the virus for many years and perhaps even stave off future pandemic strains.

(CIDRAP News) – The Swiss drug company Roche has pledged to give the World Health Organization (WHO) enough doses of the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) to treat 3 million people, in the hope that it could help to stave off or delay an influenza pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Wildlife researchers and Mongolian officials have reported increasing evidence that H5N1 avian influenza has infected wild birds in Mongolia, though findings are not yet conclusive.