China's government has begun disinfecting poultry markets and inspecting farms in the capital and a nearby province after bird flu killed a woman in Beijing earlier this week, the country's first death from the illness in nearly a year.

Bird flu re-emerged as a threat in Asia on Tuesday when China reported the disease killed a woman in Beijing and neighboring Vietnam said a girl had contracted the virus.

Chinese authorities have informed Taiwan of a confirmed human case of H5N1 bird flu in Beijing, an official of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) under the Department of Health said yesterday.

The deadly H5N1 virus, bird flu, has resurfaced in poultry in Hong Kong for the first time in six years, reinforcing warnings that the threat of a human pandemic still exists.

The World Health Organization on Friday confirmed the Ebola virus had killed three people in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo and said more deaths were being investigated.

A Hong Kong-born infant has contracted a mild form of bird flu, the fifth case of its type in the territory, health authorities said Tuesday.

Bird flu has struck two poultry flocks in northern Vietnam, a newspaper reported Sunday, after authorities warned that the killer virus could resurface strongly in the cold and wet winter months.

A strain of influenza virus in the U.S. was found to be resistant to Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu, prompting U.S. health officials to recommend rival treatments.

mysterious disease that has killed nine people in southern Democratic Republic of Congo has been identified as the deadly Ebola virus, the Congolese health minister said on Thursday.

The Ebola-Reston virus has been detected in pigs for the first time in the world, in the Philippines, the U.N. food agency said Tuesday.