November 1, 2006

 

WHO criticises China for not sharing new bird flu strain samples

 

 

The World Health Organization on Wednesday (Nov 1) criticised China's Agriculture Ministry for not sharing samples of a newly discovered strain of bird flu that has become the primary version of the disease in southern China and parts of Asia.

Scientists said this week that the strain, called H5N1 Fujian-like - was found in almost all poultry infections and some human cases in China in the past year and is now prevalent in Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand.

 

While it's normal for new strains of viruses to emerge, it is imperative for health officials to know if one has become dominant, said Julie Hall, an infectious disease expert at the WHO's Beijing office.

 

"There's a stark contrast between what we're hearing from researchers and what the Ministry of Agriculture says," Hall said. "Unless the ministry tells us what's going on and shares viruses on a regular basis, we will be doing diagnostics on strains that are old."

 

She said the ministry has not shared bird flu virus samples - a key step in developing diagnostic tools and vaccines - since 2004.

 

The ministry's reluctance has been an ongoing source of aggravation at the WHO and international health experts have repeatedly complained about Chinese foot-dragging in cooperating in investigating emerging diseases like bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome.

 

"This is a new disease. Nobody knows how to tackle it, nobody in the world has all the answers," Hall said. "But if they share ... then we will all gain from that."

 

The Agriculture Ministry has so far not responded.

 

95 percent of the poultry tested after October 2005 were positive for the Fujian-like strain, according to the results of the study reported in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

"The ministry needs to tell us just how many substrains are circulating in China and whether some strains are dominant or becoming more dominant," Hall said.

 

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, where bird flu is believed to be the most widespread, no such mutations have been discovered as yet, according to Deputy Coordinating Minister for the Economy Bayu Krisnamurti.

 

"All over Indonesia, for the last three years, we've studied the DNA and strains of the virus," Krisnamurti said, referring to the government-backed Indonesian National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness, or Komnas, of which Krisnamurti acts as chief executive.

 

"Until the present day, no report has been (submitted) to the National Committee of a mutated strain," Krisnamurti said.

 

According to Komnas research, "until now, the virus is still (in the original forms in which it was first detected in Indonesia)," he said.

 

The new variant has become the primary version of the bird flu in several provinces of China and has spread to Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand, the researchers report.

 

The virus in some provinces is primarily of a North Vietnamese-like strain, while in others Chinese strains are more prevalent, Krisnamurti said.

 

But these differences are attributed to the different forms of the origin points of the virus - which is believed to have spread to Indonesia via poultry or wild birds from China and Vietnam - and are not local mutations, Krisnamurti said.