Tests have confirmed that three people on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion are not carrying the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, as first feared, the Health Ministry said today.

Tests showed that a man at first thought to have possibly been infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus is in fact suffering from another type of flu, French authorities said today.

The world is seeing an explosion in dengue infections as the virus-carrying Aedes mosquito adapts to city environments and grows immune to traditional methods of population control, a panel of experts in Singapore said today.

A Cambodian man who died this week has tested positive for a severe strain of bird flu, the government said today, raising the country’s death toll from the disease to two.

A Cambodian woman has died of bird flu, becoming the first confirmed victim infected outside Vietnam in an outbreak that has killed 13 people in the past month.

A man whose brothers contracted bird flu has tested positive for the deadly virus, Vietnam’s state-controlled media reported today, as the World Health Organisation said it was investigating the possibility that one of the siblings passed the disease to another.

Vietnam today confirmed the country’s fourth death from bird flu in two weeks, as the World Health Organisation called the disease a “frightening virus” and urged stronger measures to combat its spread.