# 808
After more than a year of promises, two virus samples from humans infected by the H5N1 virus have arrived for analysis here in the US. One vital sample, from a soldier who died in 2003, was not included.
WHO: Chinese bird flu samples have arrived in US
By AUDRA ANG
Associated Press WriterBEIJING (AP) -- Two out of three promised virus samples from recent human cases of bird flu in China have arrived in the United States, the World Health Organization said Friday. The samples are 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 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, a power unto itself in China, and is usually secretive about its operations.
China has already sent six bird flu virus samples from humans to WHO's designated laboratories.
Two of them were dispatched in December 2005 and the others in May 2006, state media have reported. Since then, five new human cases have been reported in China.
The case counts we get out of China are suspect, but even given their numbers, that there have only been 5 cases since the last shipment, one has to wonder why they only released 2 of them.
We need, and should have, samples from every human case. Unfortunately, what we need, and what we can get, often are separated by a sizable gap.
