(CIDRAP News) Avian influenza has been ruled out in a 14-year-old Turkish boy who died over the weekend and in three siblings who were hospitalized with him, according to news services.
Tests on the four children were negative for avian flu, according to Turkish health officials quoted in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday.
(CIDRAP News) New outbreaks of avian influenza in birds were reported this week in Romania and Turkey, but wild birds that died mysteriously in Malawi in southern Africa were found to be free of flu viruses.
Tests in Britain detected H5N1 viruses in seven samples sent from four areas in southeastern Romania, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published yesterday. The story did not specify what kinds of birds were involved.
(CIDRAP News) Last month, officials in Italy and Canada aroused concern by announcing they had found an H5N1 influenza virus in wild birds. Neither country had previously been troubled by any reports of the virulent H5N1 virus that has been plaguing poultry and occasionally sickening and killing humans in Asia.
But in both cases, health officials said the virus was not dangerous and was unrelated to the H5N1 virus in Asia.
(CIDRAP News) China has recorded its seventh human case of H5N1 avian influenza, involving a 41-year-old factory worker who died Dec 21, according to the Chinese news service Xinhua.
The victim was a woman surnamed Zhou who lived in Sanming City in the eastern province of Fujian, Xinhua reported today. She became ill with fever and pneumonia on Dec 6 and was hospitalized 2 days later.
(CIDRAP News) Before adjourning last week, the US Senate passed and sent to President Bush a bill providing $3.8 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness and a controversial liability shield for those who produce and administer drugs and vaccines used in a declared public health emergency.
(CIDRAP News) A World Health Organization (WHO) official recently urged China to share more information on avian influenza outbreaks in poultry and to change farming practices to help prevent the disease.
In addition, China said it has developed a new antiviral drug for flu patients and a new avian flu vaccine for poultry, both of which are said to be better than existing products.
(CIDRAP News) Indonesia's human death toll from H5N1 avian influenza rose to 11 today with the report that tests have confirmed that a man and a boy who died last week had the virus.
(CIDRAP News) A new report says oseltamivir-resistant forms of H5N1 avian influenza virus were found in two Vietnamese girls who died of the infection, raising doubts about the antiviral drug that many countries are counting on to help protect them from a potential flu pandemic.
(CIDRAP News) US customs agents have seized more than 50 shipments of fake oseltamivir (Tamiflu), the antiviral drug being stockpiled in preparation for a possible influenza pandemic, according to reports published yesterday.
(CIDRAP News) Laboratory tests in Indonesia indicated that an 8-year-old boy who died Dec 15 had avian influenza, making him potentially the country's 11th victim of the disease, Indonesian officials reported yesterday.
The local test results were awaiting confirmation by a World Health Organization (WHO) reference lab in Hong Kong, Hariadi Wibisono of the Indonesian health ministry told Bloomberg News.
