Word: viruses
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...expected to fall short of its goal, but most experts still consider the plan a success. Fourteen of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic now provide therapies to at least half their patients who need them. Such aggressive treatment programs are critical as the AIDS virus continues to spread and mutate. The WHO and U.N. last week reported that an estimated 40 million people are HIV-positive, including a record 1 million in the U.S. In New York City, doctors were alarmed to discover a particularly powerful strain of HIV in a sexually active gay man. Resistant...
...Society of America in October found that Merck's experimental vaccine Gardasil was 100% effective against two strains of human papillomavirus that cause 70% of all cervical cancers. Another experimental Merck vaccine was tested this year for protection against shingles, the painful blistering disorder caused by the chicken-pox virus. In a trial of more than 38,500 adults 60 and older, the vaccine cut the risk of shingles by more than half. It also reduced by two-thirds the symptoms of chronic pain that afflict many of the 1 million U.S. adults who develop shingles each year...
AVIAN FLU The possibility of a flu pandemic dominated the news for much of the fall, although the death toll from the virus that has health officials most worried--the so-called H5N1 strain--remains vastly greater in birds than humans. So far, 132 people in Southeast Asia and China are known to have been infected, and more than half of them have died. Meanwhile, millions of chickens and ducks have been slaughtered in a last-ditch attempt to keep the virus from spreading--an effort made more difficult by migrating flocks of wild birds that have carried the virus...
...Though there are no known cases of avian flu being transmitted by eating infected birds, chicken is off the menu for many in Southeast Asia. At least 130 people in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have contracted the virus-and 67 of them have died-this year. While human fatalities in Indonesia have been relatively few (13 known infections and eight dead), the number of infected birds in the country is thought to be significant. "Based on our research, the virus has spread all over the city," Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono told reporters last week in Jakarta...
...government has so far resisted mass killing of birds even though the virus has been detected in at least 23 of the country's 32 provinces. Compensation to farmers remains the main issue, with the government opting for vaccination as a less expensive way of controlling the spread of the virus in birds. "The government has allocated 134 billion rupiah [about $15 million] for vaccines, surveillance and prevention, but only a small amount for compensation, as mass culling is not the official policy," explains Mulyanto, an expert from the Agriculture Ministry's surveillance department...