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(CIDRAP News) – The current influenza season is showing signs of becoming a tough one, with flu activity now widespread in 44 states and many of the circulating viruses differing from those in the vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today reported evidence of a less-than-satisfactory match between all three components of this season's influenza vaccine and the flu strains currently making people sick.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in Vietnam reported today that the H5N1 virus has struck two men in two of the country's northern provinces, killing a 40-year-old and sickening a 27-year-old, according to media reports.

(CIDRAP News) – The Sunshine Project, a nonprofit group that has monitored biological weapons developments and helped expose safety breaches at several US biodefense research facilities, announced on Feb 1 that it had ceased operations.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture is proposing a big increase in spending to protect the US food and agriculture system from terrorist threats and other disasters in fiscal year 2009, while seeking somewhat less money for avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Agriculture officials in Laos have reported an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in poultry in a northwestern province, the country's first outbreak in about a year.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today reported that a 15-year-old girl from Indonesia is hospitalized in critical condition with an H5N1 avian influenza infection, a week after her mother's H5N1 illness was announced.

The girl, who is from West Jakarta, got sick on Feb 2 and was hospitalized 6 days later, according to a statement from the WHO. She is listed as Indonesia's 127th case-patient.

Editor's Note: CIDRAP's Public Health Practices online database showcases peer-reviewed practices, including useful tools to help others with their planning. This article is one of a biweekly series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made notable progress on plans to detect and contain H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in birds, but some management missteps at the agency could hamper its response capability, according to a recent audit by the department's inspector general.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today that most circulating influenza B viruses tested so far this season don't match this year's vaccine, signaling that two of the three vaccine components are off-target.

Editor's note: This story was revised Feb 11 to include some additional information provided by the Department of Defense.

(CIDRAP News) – After vaccinating more than a million personnel with the old-fashioned type of smallpox vaccine grown on the skin of calves, the US military is about to switch to a second-generation vaccine that's grown in laboratory cell cultures.

(CIDRAP News) – European health officials today reported signs of an increasing rate of resistance to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in Europe's predominant subtype of influenza virus, but they cautioned that the rate seen in isolates tested so far may not reflect the real situation.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently signaled that a Canadian company is in a good position to secure the conditional license it needs to market an Escherichia coli O157:H7 vaccine for cattle that could reduce contamination levels in food.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it is preparing to begin publishing the names of poultry and meat plants that have trouble controlling Salmonella, as the agency extends a set of policy changes designed to reduce the prevalence of the pathogen in meat.

(CIDRAP News) – As seasonal influenza makes its annual march across the country, surveillance data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that 23% of the viruses that have been identified belong to a strain that is not included in this season's vaccine.

(CIDRAP News) – Livestock officials in Bangladesh said H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks have now struck poultry in 35 of the country's 64 districts, as officials in India issued a statewide poultry ban in West Bengal, where outbreaks have recently flared in more than half of the districts.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed that a 29-year-old Indonesian woman recently died of H5N1 avian influenza and that another Indonesian, a 38-year-old woman, is hospitalized with the disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The Bush administration today unveiled a $3.1 trillion budget for the 2009 fiscal year that cuts a number of public health initiatives but includes an increase for the Food and Drug Adminstration's (FDA's) food safety efforts.

(CIDRAP News) – Two more patients in Indonesia have died of H5N1 avian influenza this week, raising the country's death toll from the virus to 102 out of 124 cases.

The patients, whose illnesses were reported previously, were a 31-year-old woman from East Jakarta, who died yesterday, and a 32-year-old man from Tangerang, who died Jan 29, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

(CIDRAP News) – European officials yesterday reported more evidence that one of the three types of seasonal influenza viruses is showing resistance to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and said this represents the first clear sign that the resistant variant can spread.