News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials today released a lengthy plan for dealing with the potentially overwhelming threat of an influenza pandemic like those that occurred three times in the last century.

(CIDRAP News) – A bleak picture of the world's ability to cope with an influenza pandemic is painted in an essay by infectious-disease and bioterrorism expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

(CIDRAP News) – The British magazine Nature trained a floodlight on the threat of an influenza pandemic today with a collection of 10 articles that explore the danger and possible remedies and demand a more serious global response.

"The level of current efforts is not commensurate with the threat we face," the editors write. "The time for diplomacy and denial is over. It is time for advocacy and action."

(CIDRAP News) – A national conference scheduled Feb 14 and 15 in Minneapolis will give business leaders an opportunity to learn from experts about the risk of pandemic influenza and help figure out how their industries can prepare for it.

(CIDRAP News) – A mathematical modeling study suggests that a modestly effective vaccine could keep an influenza pandemic from striking more than 10% of the US population, but only if large amounts of vaccine were distributed quickly and the virus was not too highly contagious.

(CIDRAP News) – Public health and infectious disease experts today called on the United States to develop a "master plan" for development of pandemic influenza vaccines in order to translate scientific advances more rapidly into improved pandemic preparedness.

(CIDRAP News) – In a recent update on pandemic influenza preparedness planning, the US government reported meeting more than 90% of a long list of objectives it set for itself about 6 months ago.

The report charts progress on a wide range of preparedness measures, from shoring up laboratory capabilities to planning for distribution of critical medical supplies and preparing checklists for various sectors of the economy.

(CIDRAP News) – New federal recommendations on nonpharmaceutical measures communities can use to fight an influenza pandemic are drawing generally high marks from public health officials and others, but they say the plan spells a massive workload for local planners.

Editor's note: This is the second in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The series puts promising advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing large amounts of an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

Editor's note: This is the last in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The series puts promising advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing large amounts of an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time.