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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2006;295:748.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 139 words of the full text and any section headings.

Donor nations meeting in China last month pledged nearly $2 billion for a global fund to combat H5N1 avian influenza and reduce the likelihood of a human pandemic. The World Bank, which sponsored the conference, had estimated that developing and middle-income countries would need at least $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion to take necessary measures against the threat posed by avian influenza.

Concerns were heightened in January with the report of human cases of H5N1 influenza in Turkey, the first cases outside east Asia. As of January 25, the World Health Organization recognized 152 laboratory-confirmed cases worldwide, with 83 deaths. However, those figures do not include an additional 17 cases confirmed by laboratory tests performed in Turkey (two of which were fatal) as of January 18.

Updated information about avian influenza is available at http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/.