News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today scaled back its estimate of how many doses of pandemic vaccine that producers will likely make over the next year and said it hopes to gather enough vaccine donations to cover about 10% of developing countries' populations.

(CIDRAP News) – An international group of experts has examined and rejected the idea proposed recently by an Australian scientist that the novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) virus is the product of a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) will convene a group of experts May 14 to advise the agency on whether to pull the trigger on production of a vaccine for the novel H1N1 swine influenza virus, a WHO official announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The tentative detection of the novel swine influenza H1N1 virus in an Alberta swine herd over the weekend shook Canada's pork industry and raised concern about the potential for new hybrid viruses to emerge.

WHO confirms Vietnam's recent H5N1 deathThe World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the death of a 23-year-old woman from H5N1 avian influenza. Her Feb 21 death raises the country's death toll to 53 among 109 cases, second only to Indonesia, which has 141 WHO-confirmed cases.[Feb 24 WHO statement]