The new director-general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, warns the threat of an influenza pandemic has not receded. She urges countries around the world to prepare for a pandemic that has the potential to kill millions.
Widespread use of the antiviral Tamiflu to fight pandemic avian flu in humans could actually lead to the development of what public health officials hope to avoid??drug-resistant strains of the virus in wild birds. British researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford have released findings in the January 2007 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) that demonstrate how Tamiflu?s persistence in wastewater and river water could affect the waterfowl that drink from those water sources.
The first human trial of a DNA vaccine designed to prevent H5N1 avian influenza infection began on December 21, 2006, when the vaccine was administered to the first volunteer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD. Scientists from the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the NIH Institutes, designed the vaccine. The vaccine does not contain any infectious material from the influenza virus.
Cornell researchers studied a virus related to the avian influenza virus to see whether a hypothetical mutated form of H5N1 could infect people through drinking and wastewater systems.
Vietnamese family’s four members in southern Vietnam are found suffering from pneumonia. Tests for avian bird flu are negative. These people are not infected with the avian bird flu virus.
Researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology announced today the results of a first of its kind study analyzing all published data worldwide on influenza A virus antibody and T cell epitopes. Antibody and T cell epitopes are small sites on a virus that are the targets of the immune response, and they are critical for developing therapies and vaccines to combat infectious disease.
The Government Influenza Vaccination Programme for 2006-07 will be extended until the end of February, the Department of Health says. It provides free vaccinations to eight needy and high-risk groups.
The Avian and Human Influenza Facility of the World Bank announced today that six grants with a combined value of US$28 million have been approved to assist some 13 countries in five regions to fight the threat posed by avian and human influenza:
Heart disease hits Americans who live in southern states harder than residents of other regions of the country, according to the latest annual survey of cardiovascular disease in the United States.
Vietnam health officials has reported first suspected cases of human bird flu in this year. Four members of a family have been hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu.