all good points.

Re: "What would be most useful to those of us utilizing the data is to better sort into folders and order the information within folders by date."

This can be done for many cases, and I will add this -- but data on precise dates is, believe it or not, not available for many cases, in particular from Vietnam. Although countries now generally report cases and dates, this has not always been the case. Vietnam, for example, has often retrospectively announced as many as 10 cases to WHO with no further details.

In the WHO's "Avian influenza � situation in Viet Nam - update 11; 11 March 2005" it was stated for example that " Pending further information from the Ministry of Health, WHO will issue details showing dates of onset, outcome, and province for all 24 cases in tabular form." That data has not yet been forthcoming.

So while one could give accurate case dates for the past three months, past ones would at best be approximate +/- two months in some cases. It would therefore not be an exact picture, but I have tabulated all this data, and can do this.

Re: " Also, sorting the animal deaths by date so if someone did a "Play Tour" they could travel through the timeline." Animal deaths already are sorted by data within the limits of the data provided by the FAO and OIE; again the problem here is the quality, or rather the lack of, the data available from international agencies. I have contacted them about this.

Hope this helps
Declan