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(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday released a draft of its national vaccine strategy, which, once finalized, will serve as the federal government's game plan for guiding its policy decisions on infectious disease vaccine.

The 85-page report, dated Nov 26, is intended to update the nation's vaccine plan, which was mandated by Congress and first released in 1994, according to the report.

(CIDRAP News) – Animal health officials in India yesterday reported that the H5N1 avian influenza virus has spread to poultry in new areas of Assam state, as medical officials in Vietnam acknowledged fresh outbreaks in two provinces.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday released a draft of its risk assessment for contracting highly pathogenic avian influenza from eating poultry products, shell eggs, and egg products, a tool that could be used to reduce human illness from the virus and help target messages to consumers.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers who surveyed thousands of Minnesota college students over four years found that those who got flu shots had a 30% lower rate of flu-like illness during flu seasons than those who skipped the shots, according to a report published this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a report yesterday detailing the first year of accomplishments in implementing its Food Protection Plan, a road map the agency presented in November 2007 in response to a spate of contamination incidents involving domestic and imported food.

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 series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.

(CIDRAP News) – Government officials in India recently confirmed an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in the northeastern state of Assam, according to a Nov 28 report from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

(CIDRAP News) – At last month's avian flu conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, participants endorsed a new strategy for fighting avian influenza and other infectious diseases, one that focuses on points where animal, human, and ecosystems meet, according to a recent statement by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

(CIDRAP News) – A widely publicized Salmonella outbreak that was linked to frozen pot pies last year involved 401 cases in 41 states and put more than 100 patients in hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in a final report on the episode.

(CIDRAP News) – Hospital workers who followed official infection control guidelines for pandemic influenza for 1 day used 10 times as many gloves as usual, generated three times as much clinical waste, and found that many tasks took longer than normal, according to a new report.

(CIDRAP) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in its latest update on the nation's seasonal influenza activity, reported on a person who was infected with a swine influenza virus following several exposures to pigs, including a sick one.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers from the United States and Uganda today released the first full scientific report on a new Ebola species that struck western Uganda late last year and was linked to 149 suspected cases and 37 deaths, at least 4 of them healthcare providers.

(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the University of Minnesota warns that an influenza pandemic could disrupt the coal industry, thereby endangering the nation's significantly coal-dependent electric power system and everything that depends on it.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's health ministry has ruled out H5N1 avian influenza in a cluster of 17 suspected cases in South Sulawesi province, countering earlier reports of positive hospital and university tests, Reuters reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Earlier this year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadened its flu vaccine recommendation to include all school-age children, prompting some health officials to eye school-based immunization programs as an efficient way to improve vaccination rates in young people.

(CIDRAP News) – This past  summer's nationwide Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak exposed several gaps in the nation's food safety system, including poor organization and confusing risk communications, the Produce Safety Project (PSP), an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a report yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A Canadian study raises questions about the value of formal "fit testing" for the respirators worn by healthcare workers to protect them from airborne pathogens, suggesting that it does little good for workers who don't routinely wear the devices.

(CIDRAP News) – Bavarian Nordic, a Danish pharmaceutical company, announced recently that a smallpox vaccine that it is developing for people with weakened immune systems showed promising safety results in a phase 2 clinical trial involving volunteers with HIV infections.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari today denied reports that a 15-year-old girl who recently died had H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Officials in Thailand said today that H5N1 avian influenza struck poultry in Uthai Thani, the second province to report the virus in less than a week.

Sakchai Sriboonsue, director-general of the province's livestock department, said laboratory tests detected the H5N1 virus in chickens from a backyard farm after several of the birds died, according to a report today from the Associated Press. Uthai Thani is in northern Thailand.