News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Thailand reported its eighth fatal human case of H5N1 avian influenza today, while China announced it was lifting quarantine orders for the last two of 49 areas affected by the disease, according to news service reports.

Editor's note: This story was revised July 31 to clarify information about previous reports of H5N1 influenza viruses in Russia.

(CIDRAP News) – News services said today the avian influenza outbreak reported last week in Russia involves the dangerous H5N1 strain, while two more fatal human cases of the illness were reported in Vietnam.

(CIDRAP News) – An analysis of more than 600 H5N1 avian influenza viruses collected from several Asian countries suggests that two older antiviral drugs could be more useful in fighting a flu pandemic triggered by H5N1 than previously believed.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today recognized five human H5N1 influenza cases from Vietnam dating back to late May, after publishing formal criteria for accepting positive test results for H5 flu viruses from national laboratories.

The five cases include four fatal ones, which pushes Vietnam's H5N1 toll to 100 cases with 46 deaths. The country has the second highest number of avian flu cases, after Indonesia.

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.

(CIDRAP News) – H5N1 influenza viruses found in chickens seized at Vietnam's border with China in 2008 show a surprising level of genetic diversity, suggesting that the viruses are evolving rapidly and raising questions about disease surveillance and the effectiveness of prepandemic H5N1 vaccines, according to a team of Vietnamese and US scientists.

(CIDRAP News) – An annual report released yesterday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) profiles a wide range of CDC influenza-related projects around the world, from flu surveillance in Indonesia to vaccine effectiveness studies in El Salvador and epidemiology training in Ghana.