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(CIDRAP News) – A second round of H5N1 avian influenza tests came back negative today on four Bangladeshi men who initially tested positive after helping cull chickens in Kuwait, while tests confirmed the infection in a 15-year-old Indonesian girl, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia announced another fatal case of H5N1 avian influenza today, as initial tests indicated H5N1 infections in four Bangladeshi poultry cullers hospitalized in Kuwait.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada recently released a report on the investigation of its ninth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, the first case of 2007.

(CIDRAP News) – In a major effort to track influenza viruses in nature and learn more about how they interact with the human body, the federal government this week announced a $23-million-a-year program to fund research centers at six institutions around the country.

(CIDRAP News) – Social control measures such as closing schools and banning public gatherings played a significant role in slowing the advance of the 1918 influenza pandemic in a number of US cities, but their success depended on how soon the measures were deployed and how slowly they were lifted, two teams of researchers reported yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's national avian influenza commission has recommended that the health ministry conduct an autopsy on each person who dies of H5N1 avian flu to learn more about how the disease affects the body, the Jakarta Post reported today.

(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 news–bad 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.

(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) – 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.

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 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.

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) – 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) - 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 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) – 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) – 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.

(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.