Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)

Editor's note: This story was revised Dec 8 to correct the erroneous statement that the World Health Organization had confirmed two more deaths from avian influenza (rather than two cases.)

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed two more human cases of avian influenza, one in China and a fatal one in Indonesia, bringing the global total to 135 cases with 69 deaths in nearly 2 years.

(CIDRAP News) – Although thorough cooking ensures that chicken and other poultry are safe to eat, birds from flocks infected with H5N1 avian influenza should be kept out of the food supply, international health and agriculture authorities said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – State health officials at a Washington, DC, meeting yesterday expressed frustration over problems with supplies of seasonal flu vaccine, while federal officials promised that the government's pandemic influenza preparedness plan will help clear up those problems.

(CIDRAP News) – State and local health officials from around the nation today voiced qualified support for a federal government plan to hold a "summit" meeting on pandemic influenza preparedness in every state over the next few months.

(CIDRAP News) – Romania has reported three new outbreaks of avian influenza this week, while a mild strain of avian flu has surfaced in North Carolina turkeys, according to news services.

Dozens of chickens were found dead in the southeastern Romanian villages of Bumbacari and Dudescu, which lie outside the Danube River delta, according to Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg News reports. The viral strain was not listed.

(CIDRAP News) – An Indonesian woman who died in a Jakarta hospital yesterday has tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza, according to officials quoted in The Jakarta Post. Further testing is pending at a World Health Organization (WHO) reference laboratory in Hong Kong.

(CIDRAP News) – The specter of pandemic influenza raises a raft of questions for businesses, and businesspeople who gathered in Bloomington, Minn., today urged their peers to quickly seek answers to those questions.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today raised the possibility that Indonesia's latest confirmed case of H5N1 avian influenza was part of a family cluster of three cases.

(CIDRAP News) – More than a third of the human cases of H5N1 avian influenza that occurred over a 19-month period were clustered within families, suggesting the possibility that some family members caught the virus from others, according to a recent report.