Avian influenza — known informally as avian flu or bird flu — refers to “influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.” Most human contractions of the avian flu are a result of either handling dead infected birds or from contact with infected fluids.
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:
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.
A 26-year-old Egyptian man died of bird flu on Wednesday, the third member of his extended family to die of the virus, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report highlighted.
A 15-year-old girl became the ninth fatal victim of the avian influenza virus and the first minor to lose her life to the disease in Egypt, said health ministry media official Sayyid Al-Abbasi.
Egyptian health ministry reported that a 15-year-old Egyptian girl has died of bird flu. Nine people in Egypt have died from the H5N1 strain of avian flu since the virus first appeared in the country’s poultry in February.
Bird flu has popped up again in chickens and ducks in Vietnam and Asian countries are scrambling to limit its spread. Vietnam has ordered a mass slaughter of chickens and ducks in two Mekong Delta provinces where bird flu outbreaks were confirmed this week.
South Korea’s quarantine officials have completed slaughtering tens of thousands of poultry after a fresh outbreak of bird flu. A total of 23,000 chickens and ducks have been killed in Asan, about 90 kilometers south of Seoul.
Vietnam has confirmed a lethal H5N1 bird flu outbreak among its domestic poultry in the south of the country.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore will begin a clinical trial in January to test the first cell culture-based pandemic influenza vaccine to see if it will provide immunity faster and more reliably than a vaccine produced in eggs. The new study is also the first test in the United States of a whole virus vaccine for avian influenza, which could produce a stronger response by the immune system.
South Korea has confirmed its third outbreak in three weeks of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu after about 4,000 quail died at a southern farm.