Influenza Development, including H1n1, Surveillance and Post-vaccination Monitoring of H5n1

Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have spread from SouthEast Asia to sixty-two Asian, Middle East, African and European countries. H5N1 viruses isolated from dead water birds in Mongolia and Hokkaido, Japan on the way back to their nesting areas in Siberia in April to May 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009 were genetically closely related to those isolated from birds in China, Iraq, Croatia, Nigeria, Korea, and Japan, but different from those from poultry in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. It is a serious concern that these HPAI viruses may perpetuate in the lakes where migratory water birds nest in summer. In the intensive surveillance studies on avian influenza fulfilled in autumn from 2004 to 2009 in Mongolia and Japan, no HPAI virus was isolated from migratory water birds that flew from Siberia, indicating that the virus has not yet dominantly perpetuated in their nesting lakes in Siberia. Careful surveillance of avian influenza in migratory water birds is to be continued as far as HPAI viruses are circulating in Eurasian countries.