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Helen Branswell, perhaps the best Avian flu Journalist on the beat, brings us disturbing details on what has been an ongoing story: China's refusal to share avian flu virus samples.
With Indonesian bird flu standoff in the spotlight, China still hoards viruses
Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press
Published: Sunday, April 15, 2007
Indonesia’s recent refusal to share sample viruses of avian flu has triggered international concern and criticism from some quarters.
But as Indonesia loudly objected, Asia’s giant quietly continued to hoard viruses that influenza experts need to monitor changes in the dangerous H5N1 family.
China has not shared human H5N1 virus samples since early 2006, the World Health Organization has confirmed.
“We would still like to be able to get those viruses, as we would like to be able to get all viruses from H5 cases in a timely way so that they can be compared together,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, head of the WHO’s global influenza program, said in an interview from Geneva.
“It is true that we continue to work with China, both with the ministry of health and the ministry of agriculture, on that process.”
The current director general of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan, was nominated by China.
Chan, who comes from Hong Kong, promised in her acceptance speech late last fall that she would not hesitate to stand up to her home country if she needed to. And some observers believe her overwhelming victory in reflected a hope that China might be less likely to hide disease threats - such as it did with SARS - if one of its citizens held the top job at the WHO.
China’s most recent shipment of human H5N1 isolates was sent to a WHO collaborating laboratory in the spring of 2006. But the newest sample contained in that shipment is said to have been taken from a Chinese patient infected more than a year ago, in late 2005 or early 2006.
