(CIDRAP News) The head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the creation of a new assistant commissioner position to provide guidance on food safety and defense strategies.
(CIDRAP News) The World Health Organization (WHO) says nations and vaccine manufacturers agreed yesterday that it may be feasible to set up a world stockpile of H5N1 influenza vaccine and find a way to ensure that developing countries could access pandemic flu vaccine supplies.
(CIDRAP News) Bavarian Nordic, a Danish company, announced this week that the US government plans to buy 20 million doses of the company's Imvamune smallpox vaccine, but a US official said no decision has been made yet.
Imvamune is Bavarian's version of modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), which is considered safer than the conventional smallpox vaccine, particularly for people with weakened immune systems, pregnant women, and children.
(CIDRAP News) Governmental plans for an influenza pandemic are missing an important opportunity to improve US preparedness, according to two new reports: They are not reaching out to communities and grass-roots groups that could refine plan details and increase public support.
(CIDRAP News) The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved the nation's first H5N1 influenza vaccine, made by Sanofi Pasteur, which federal officials hope will buy some time to develop a more precisely targeted vaccine if the virus evolves into a pandemic strain.
(CIDRAP News) – In a major effort to track influenza viruses in nature and learn more about how they interact with the human body, the federal government this week announced a $23-million-a-year program to fund research centers at six institutions around the country.
(CIDRAP News) Social control measures such as closing schools and banning public gatherings played a significant role in slowing the advance of the 1918 influenza pandemic in a number of US cities, but their success depended on how soon the measures were deployed and how slowly they were lifted, two teams of researchers reported yesterday.
March 30, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Genetic elements that confer multidrug resistance (MDR) in both plague and foodborne bacteria have a common origin and may represent a significant public health threat, according to a study published Mar 20 in the journal PLoS One (Public Library of Science One).
(CIDRAP News) - Indonesia's health minister today announced her country would immediately resume sharing its H5N1 avian influenza virus samples with the World Health Organization (WHO), apparently ending a months-old impasse, say reports from Jakarta.
(CIDRAP News) Indications today are that Thailand will continue to share H5N1 avian influenza viruses with the World Health Organization (WHO), contrary to a news report yesterday.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Thailand would restrict access to its H5N1 viruses, and CIDRAP News passed along that report. But a senior Thai health official said Thailand had no plans to withhold samples, according to a Reuters report published yesterday.
