News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The strain of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) that erupted from obscurity to kill 774 people worldwide has gone quiet, at least for now. Yet its lessons will keep benefiting people even if it never reappears.

(CIDRAP News) – The recent series of cases of avian influenza in a single province in Vietnam has increased concern about whether the nature of the illness is changing.

(CIDRAP News) – US officials this week promoted international efforts to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, announcing an international flu surveillance partnership and promising aid to Vietnam for avian and human flu surveillance.

(CIDRAP News) – Thailand has confirmed its 20th human case of avian influenza, this time in a 50-year-old woman near Bangkok, according to the BBC today.

Thawat Suntrajarn, director general of the Thai Department of Disease Control told Agence France-Presse (AFP) today that the woman is "fine" and under treatment at a Bangkok Hospital.

(CIDRAP News) – About 9,000 chickens have died and close to 370,000 have been culled in China in the largest of several outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza reported this week in Asia.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States proposed today that a small group of experts be appointed immediately to plan a fast response in case an influenza pandemic erupts, as an international conference on avian and pandemic flu continued in Geneva.

(CIDRAP News) – China reported its 18th human case of H5N1 avian influenza today as Ivory Coast awaited the results of tests that will tell whether it is Africa's latest country faced with outbreaks in poultry.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed that a 15-year-old Indonesian boy who died May 30 had H5N1 avian influenza, but the agency said four nurses who had suspicious symptoms after caring for avian flu patients were not infected.

(CIDRAP News ) – An H5 avian influenza virus was found in a dead gosling in a backyard flock in eastern Canada late last week, but authorities said today there is "no evidence" that the virus is the deadly H5N1 strain.

Meanwhile, Hungary was culling poultry following the recent confirmation of the country's first H5N1 outbreak in domestic birds, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Maryn McKennaContributing Writer

(CIDRAP News) – This in-depth article investigates the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Its seven parts put advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.