WHO Accepts Vietnamese H5N1 Confirmations
# 1105
The WHO (World Health Organization) has always had strict testing criteria when it comes to confirming human H5N1 infections. In most cases, local testing has not been accepted, and virus samples had to be sent to officially sanctioned reference laboratories.
While this policy undoubtedly helped maintain quality control, particularly since isolating and identifying the H5N1 virus has proved to be so difficult, it has led to delays in officially recognizing human cases.
The WHO, since July, has been running the EQA project, where labs are tested twice yearly on their ability to detect H1, H3, and H5 subtypes from a simulated RNA panel.
According to CIDRAP News, the new criteria for accepting test results from local labs basically boils down to two items.
In yesterday's statement, the WHO spelled out the two main requirements for accepting positive H5 test results from national laboratories:
- The lab must participate in the EQA project and must have correctly detected all H5 viruses in the most recent set of samples, without reporting any false-positive H5 findings.
- Since 2004, the lab must have tested for human H5 infections and must have made at least three positive diagnoses that were later confirmed by a WHO H5 reference lab.
While the WHO has accepted test results from China and Indonesia in the past, most countries, until now, had to send samples out to be verified. Now, using this criteria, some country's test results will be accepted by the WHO.
Meeting this criteria is Vietnam, leading to this WHO UPDATE on Aug 31st.
Avian influenza – situation in Viet Nam - update
31 August 2007
WHO has introduced an External Quality Assessment Project (see description of EQA project) for national reference laboratories for the detection of subtype influenza A viruses by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and has now amended the criteria for accepting confirmed cases of A(H5) infection (see amended WHO criteria).
Based on the amended criteria, the Ministry of Health of Viet Nam confirms the following 5 additional cases of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza, including 4 deaths, in the country. The table of cumulative number of confirmed human cases has been amended accordingly.
