Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently held a tabletop exercise to assess how it could best work with the news media—including blogs and other online-only information sources—to get status updates and vital health information to the American people during an influenza pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Veterinary officials in Turkey have confirmed an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in the western part of the country near the border with Greece, according to a report yesterday from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

(CIDRAP News) – An 11-year-old boy in northern Vietnam died recently of H5N1 avian influenza amid an ongoing spate of bird outbreaks in the country, according to news services and the World Health Organization (WHO).

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today warned that H5N1 avian influenza levels in Indonesia's poultry are so high that conditions may be ripe for the type of viral mutation that could spark an influenza pandemic.

– ATLANTA (CIDRAP News) – More than 10 years after the first appearance of avian influenza H5N1, it is time to acknowledge that the virus has become entrenched in many areas and to begin grappling with its social and economic effects, leading researchers said at a scientific meeting.

– ATLANTA (CIDRAP News) – An Indonesian teenager has been brought forward as a case of simultaneous infection with seasonal and avian strains of influenza—a possibility that health planners have long warned could give rise to a pandemic flu strain.

(CIDRAP News) – Hong Kong school officials made an abrupt decision yesterday to close all primary schools for 2 weeks, starting today, in an effort to block a rising wave of seasonal influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Egypt's health ministry announced recently that an 8-year-old boy has been hospitalized with an H5N1 avian influenza infection, the country's second such illness in a child in less than a week.

(CIDRAP News) – Animal health officials in India reported that H5N1 avian influenza has resurfaced in West Bengal state, as officials in Vietnam said the virus has struck poultry in another province as well as a farm near Hanoi.

Editor's note: This story was revised Mar 6 to include a clarification about the frequency of mutations in influenza viruses.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's health ministry said today that H5N1 avian influenza virus samples it sent to a World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory in the United States in February showed no signs of dangerous mutations, according to a Reuters report.