Veterinary experts in China and Vietnam are scrambling to produce a vaccine capable of beating a new strain of the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus, reports an official of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).
At a time when the World Health Organisation (WHO) faces charges that it hyped up the swine flu pandemic to benefit pharmaceutical companies, India is sprucing up its indigenous capacity to manufacture vaccines against the H1N1 virus.
Government and international non-government organisations need to put as much effort in fighting the spread of complacency in the battle against the H5N1 virus as they do in curbing avian flu itself, experts say.
While the swine flu pandemic has not hit India too hard, it has sorely tested the country’s ailing health delivery system and its plans to remedy the situation through ‘private-public partnerships.’
China is battling hard to contain the spread of the swine flu after stringent border checks and draconian quarantine measures of Mexican nationals failed to prevent the virus from entering the country.
Rebuked in the past for its sluggish response and attempts to cover up the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), China’s measures to curb the spread of the swine flu virus are earning opposite marks of being extreme and "unjustified."
The swine flu epidemic has dealt a new blow to the Mexican economy, already weakened by the global recession, hitting small and large companies alike.
When the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the influenza pandemic alert from phase three to an ominous phase four warning this week, it went beyond the alarm associated with the killer avian influenza virus in Asia.
The deadly new influenza strain that originated in Mexico has led to the closure of schools, universities, museums, libraries, cinemas, theatres and churches here, while it continues to spread to other countries.
Thailand’s plans to contain the spread of the deadly avian influenza virus must involve the tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers employed in this country’s poultry industry, say experts.
New cases of avian influenza across Asia in recent weeks confirm warnings that the deadly virus still lurks in the region and raise questions of gaps in efforts to contain it in affected communities.
A severe outbreak of flu could kill tens of millions of people and spur a "major global recession", the World Bank is warning world leaders preoccupied with financial, food, and fuel crises.
So where is the pandemic? This is a question most often asked of health experts years after they warned about a pandemic influenza that could infect up to 35 percent of the world's population.
The bustling city of Can Tho is the capital of southern Vietnam’s fertile Mekong Delta and one of the country’s two main rice baskets. Good food in abundance makes it an ideal place to raise ducks and chickens, but this also means it is also one of the most high-risk areas in the country for bird flu.
Vietnamese researchers have announced significant progress in their effort to develop a prototype vaccine for the H5N1 avian influenza, despite criticism from some scientists that their methods are "unorthodox".
Authorities here have stepped up surveillance against avian influenza after the case of a 16-month-old boy, who took ill in January, was diagnosed as one of infection with the deadly H5N1 virus.
In a display of national sovereignty, Haiti is continuing an embargo against the importation of all poultry products from the Dominican Republic, prompting some Dominicans to boycott border markets in northwest Dajabon province.
Although genetic sequencing tests conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of samples from a man who died of H5N1 avian influenza do not confirm human-to-human transmission, authorities in this region, bordering Afghanistan, are taking no chances.
When nine out West Bengal state’s 19 districts were declared on Wednesday to be in the grip of a bird flu outbreak, it belied Chief Minister Buddhadeb Battacharya’s assertions, earlier in the week, that the spread of the deadly H5N1 virus was well under control.
An outbreak of bird flu virus among poultry in Burma’s eastern Shan State, close to the Thai border, is being greeted with a mix of concern and relief.
As the temperature drops and another cool season approaches, attention is turning to Vietnam’s duck population, suspected to have become vulnerable to the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus.