May 28, 2007

 

WHO: Bird flu samples from China arrive in US

 

 

Two out of three promised virus samples from recent human bird flu cases in China have arrived in the United States, the World Health Organization said Friday (May 25), the first sent by Beijing in a year.

 

The sample updates of the H5N1 virus from China's Health Ministry are awaiting customs clearance, said Joanna Brent, a spokeswoman for the WHO's Beijing office.

 

They include specimens from a 2006 case in Xinjiang in China's far west, and a case in the southern province of Fujian in 2007, Brent said.

 

But a sample from a 24-year-old soldier who died in 2003 in Beijing was not part of the batch, she said. The Health Ministry in April had promised one from that case, which was disclosed last year after new tests determined he had succumbed to the disease.

 

The ministry "says the procedures for sharing the Beijing 2003 samples involve the military and are extremely complex," Brent said.

 

The Chinese military is a power unto itself in China and is usually secretive about its operations.

 

China has already sent six samples of the human bird flu virus to WHO's designated laboratories. Two of them were dispatched in December 2005 and the others in May 2006, state media reported. Since then, five new human cases have been reported in China.

 

While sharing virus samples is not mandated by the WHO, they are needed to produce diagnostic tools and vaccines. The lack of cooperation, experts say, could slow efforts to track diseases and develop vaccines and other strategies to deal with them.

 

In the past, China has been slow to share animal samples and international health experts have repeatedly complained about Chinese foot-dragging in cooperating on investigating emerging diseases like bird flu and the SARS pneumonia.

 

Beijing has since vowed an aggressive fight against the H5N1 strain of bird flu, launching a massive vaccination programme and reporting improved surveillance systems.

 

At the World Health Assembly earlier this week, UN health officials welcomed a tentative agreement to share bird flu virus samples.

 

The preliminary deal was reached after months of debate and strong opposition from developing countries, which argue that the existing system of unconditional sample sharing puts poorer nations at a disadvantage because they are unable to afford commercial vaccines.

 

It could potentially be even more unfair if the vaccines are created from virus samples the poor countries supplied to WHO.

 

Only time will tell if the agreement will work. Its implementation is voluntary, and exceptions are possible.