Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in Hong Kong today said they have detected an H5 avian influenza outbreak at a poultry farm in Yuen Long, marking the country's first farm-based outbreak since 2003.

York Chow, Hong Kong's secretary for food and health, said in a press release today that the H5 avian flu virus struck 60 chickens, which died yesterday. He did not say if the virus at the farm was the highly pathogenic H5N1 subtype.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today said that Indonesia's health ministry has notified it of two new human H5N1 avian influenza cases, a 9-year-old girl who has recovered and a 2-year-old girl who died.

The announcements come as health officials from Indonesia and other nations are meeting in Geneva this week to work on an agreement for sharing H5N1 virus samples.

(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) – 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) – 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) – 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.

(CIDRAP News) – A 15-year-old Indonesian girl from central Java recently died from an H5N1 avian influenza infection, according to news reports that cited a local health official and a physician who treated the girl.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States will contribute another $44.4 million to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO's) campaign to prevent and control avian influenza, the FAO announced today.